If Chicago p*olice are to be believed, they simply don’t know what a black 8-year-old boy looks like.
That’s the defense the department is giving for why it handc*uffed a child during an early morning r*aid by Chicago P*olice Department and SWAT on a family home on March 15.
The r*aid—one of several local news station CBS 2 Chicago has i*nvestigated over the last year—left 8-year-old Royal Wilson t*raumatized, his family says, and is the center of a new laws*uit, to be filed Thursday morning against the Chicago PD.
The i*ncident began before 6 a.m. on a Friday morning, when the Wilson family were startled by flashing lights and a p*olice bullhorn commanding them to go outside their South Side home, single file, with their hands up.
The Wilsons said they did their best to comply with the orders of the p*olice and SWAT team, who had come by to r*aid their home off a tip from an anonymous source claiming the Wilsons had guns in their house.
Still, p*olice saw fit to handc*uff Domonique Wilson and her sons, including Royal Wilson, and held them out on the street—where it was cold, windy, and drizzling—as p*olice conducted a r*aid that turned up nothing.
“I didn’t know what was going to happen. I was just scared, my legs were shaking,” Royal told CBS 2 Chicago. “I was worried about my sister most because she was only six years old. I thought that my family was going to get taken away from me.”
As Royal, his 9-year-old brother and his 6-year-old sister began crying, their mother, Domonique tried to reassure her children and keep her composure, asking po*lice if they could take the handc*uffs off her young son.
“It took the breath out of me, the life out of me,” she said. “I had to be strong in front of my children. You have to be the leader to be strong to tell your children to just stand and be still while I’m being embarrassed, humiliated,” she said.
According to the family, p*olice took the handc*uffs off Royal after 30 minutes, long enough for the restraints to leave bruises on his arm. Domonique Wilson, her adult sons, and their girlfriends all remained handc*uffed and detained outside their home for two hours, they say.
Responding to CBS 2 Chicago’s report last week, Chicago p*olice issued a statement saying o*fficers were responding to information that an a*ssault r*ifle was being kept at the Wilson’s home. P*olice also told the local news station that Royal was handc*uffed because p*olice didn’t know the boy’s age.
“Once they determined his age, [po*lice] said they removed the handc*uffs,” writes CBS 2 Chicago.
But the i*ncident has stayed with the family for the last few months. S*mashed drywall in her hallway and bedrooms remain unfixed—one photo from inside the Wilson’s home shows a gaping hole in a hallway ceiling—and Royal still has n*ightmares about the event.
“[Royal] wakes up every night crying, asking, ‘Why?’” Saying he can’t sleep, thinking they’re going to come back here.
Saying he had dreams that they sh*ot us,d” Domonique said.
“They v*iolated my home,” she said. “They v*iolated my constitutional rights. It’s not fair at all.”
A*ttorney Al Hofeld Jr. filed a federal civil rights complaint on behalf of the Wilson family on Wednesday—his fifth such s*uit against the Chicago PD to date.
“There is a silent epidemic of t*rauma being perpetrated upon the children and families of the South and West Sides of our city by Chicago po*lice barreling into the wrong homes, handc*uffing innocent adults, holding g*uns on children, handc*uffing children, t*rashing their homes, refusing to show w*arrants, and s*creaming d*ehumanizing commands,” Hofeld said in a press release shared with The Root.
He noted that currently, the p*olice department has “no training or policy” addressing how o*fficers should treat children during these events, and no understanding or acknowledgment of the ways these v*iolent, shocking r*aids can impact them.
“These cases get little attention because most of the i*njuries—which are profound and psychological—are invisible,” he added, “and because these p*olice r*aids on the wrong homes are so pervasive in these communities they are, shamefully, accepted as inevitable.”