By Joe Mahr, Tribune reporter
April 26, 2014
A onetime top ethics officer
for Harvey police was accused in a lawsuit Friday of breaking a suspect's legs
and then trying to frame him for crimes that were not committed.
Officer Marcus Patterson was
one of several officers featured in February in a Tribune series that
documented how officers with questionable backgrounds policed a suburb with
rampant, largely unsolved violent crime and millions in legal payouts for
police misconduct. Patterson was accused of, but never charged with, striking
two girlfriends, driving drunk twice and spying on a woman in a bar restroom,
according to records and police video. He was demoted from heading internal
affairs after he crashed a police car with alcohol in his system, records show.
The federal suit filed Friday
accuses Patterson of responding to Larry's Lounge in April 2013 over a
complaint of an unpaid bar tab, handcuffing Sandreano Green and beating Green
as he lay on the ground. The lawsuit says Green was beaten by Patterson, and
possibly other officers, until Green urinated on himself. The lawsuit says he
was dragged into a cruiser, taken to jail and dragged into a cell. A sergeant
later called for an ambulance, which took Green to a hospital, where doctors
found broken bones and other injuries, the suit says.
The lawsuit accuses police of
then trying to frame Green by claiming he had a gun when he didn't. Court
records show Green was charged with unlawful use of a weapon, resisting police,
battery, theft of services and criminal damage, with all charges dropped by
prosecutors in November.
A Harvey spokesman said he
could not comment on the lawsuit, other than noting that Green had not filed a
complaint with the suburb alleging mistreatment.
Friday's suit was filed by
Loevy & Loevy, which won a high-profile lawsuit against another Harvey
officer accused of planting a gun on an unarmed 19-year-old man the officer had
shot in the back in 1997. The new lawsuit argues that the suburb's leaders are
liable for not cleaning up the department despite warnings of problems from
prior verdicts, a Department of Justice review, an unflattering internal audit
and media accounts.