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A Chicago officer\u00a0faces felony charges after he was filmed pinning a 14-year-old boy to the ground with his knee.<\/p>\n
According to\u00a0CNN<\/a>, the incident occurred in\u00a0Park Ridge, Illinois, last month,\u00a0when Chicago police sergeant\u00a0Michael Vitellaro wrongly accused the teen of stealing his son\u2019s bike.\u00a0Vitellaro reportedly learned that the bicycle had been stolen at a library and later\u00a0spotted outside\u00a0a Starbucks. He then took his son to the location and found that the bike was propped up against a pillar. The officer, who has worked for the CPD since 2000, then \u201cwaited in his car to hopefully observe who had stolen the bicycle.\u201d<\/p>\n After several minutes, Vitellaro saw the 14-year-old boy\u2014identified as J.N.\u2014riding his own bike before getting off to move the supposed stolen bike. The off-duty officer then approached the teen and began accusing him of theft. A bystander captured the incident on camera, showing\u00a0Vitellaro putting the boy\u2019s arms behind his back before pinning him face down on the ground. The officer proceeded to kneel on J.N.\u2019s back as others attempted to pull him off.\u00a0Vitellaro then called 911 for backup, and eventually released the boy.<\/p>\n Witnesses say J.N., who is Puerto Rican-American, arrived at the Starbucks after the bike had been placed on the sidewalk. His family says their son was simply trying to move the bicycle so he could get by. His parents and their attorney believe the incident was racially motivated.<\/p>\n\n \u201cThe off-duty officer used excessive force on a child and escalated the situation where this type of aggression was clearly not necessary,\u201d attorney Bhavani K. Raveendran said in a statement<\/a>. \u201cThe boy was not a threat, was not armed, had committed no crime. Furthermore, after the murder of George Floyd from prone restraint, the whole world knows how dangerous a knee in the back or neck can be \u2026<\/p>\n \u201cThis is a clear cut case of racial profiling. The off-duty officer is white and [the]\u00a0boy was the only person of color in a group of teenagers,\u201d Raveendran continued. \u201cChicago police have a history of racial bias and they continue to racially profile people, even outside of Chicago, and that culture permeates officers\u2019 lives.\u201d<\/p>\n More than a month after the incident,\u00a0Vitellaro was charged with felony official misconduct and aggravated battery. The Park Ridge Police\u00a0confirmed he turned himself in on Thursday and was taken to a Cook County courthouse for a bond hearing.<\/p>\n\n \u201cI am grateful to our partners at the Cook County State\u2019s Attorney\u2019s Office for their assistance in bringing a resolution to this investigation,\u201d Chief Frank Kaminski said in a statement<\/a>.\u00a0\u201cI am extremely proud of my staff and their professionalism in conducting a thorough and complete investigation which they took seriously from day one. The Park Ridge Police Department has and will continue to honor their oath of office, continuing to serve our community with professionalism, dedication, pride, and respect.\u201d<\/p>\n Vitellaro\u2019s next court hearing is scheduled for Sept. 8.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\u0642\u0627\u0644\u0628 \u0648\u0631\u062f\u067e\u0631\u0633<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Chicago officer\u00a0faces felony charges after he was filmed pinning a 14-year-old boy to the ground with his knee. According to\u00a0CNN, the incident occurred in\u00a0Park Ridge, Illinois, last month,\u00a0when Chicago police sergeant\u00a0Michael Vitellaro wrongly accused the teen of stealing his son\u2019s bike.\u00a0Vitellaro reportedly learned that the bicycle had been stolen at a library and later\u00a0spotted […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":134189,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[228,293,1084,111,270,5,7,8,319,2061,93,116],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-134188","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-arrested","category-arrests","category-chicago","category-dfp-politics","category-dfp-politics-social","category-featured","category-music","category-news","category-police","category-police-brutality","category-tier-one","category-videos"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134188","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=134188"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134188\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":134190,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/134188\/revisions\/134190"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/134189"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=134188"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=134188"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/freshestfm.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=134188"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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