The Chicago Police Department is the subject of a lawsuit filed Wednesday by a mother who claims officers from their department used excessive force on her 8-year-old son during a home raid in March.
A hoard of armed police officials surrounded Alberta Wilson's home the morning of March 15 and commanded that she and her family exit the premises at once. According to a portion of the lawsuit obtained by The Chicago Sun-Times, law enforcement handcuffed her young child Royal Smart and left him shivering in frigid temperatures as the invasion continued.
"Officers handcuffed short, 8-year-old Royal for no reason for approximately 35 to 40 minutes while he stood in the street shaking from fear and cold and drenched in the freezing rain. The handcuffs were too tight, and his wrist bruised."
Wilson described her son's fear during a news conference Wednesday.
"He was crying and complaining the handcuffs were too tight, he felt like he was about to fall, I had to reassure him God was not going to let anything happen to us," Wilson said, via ABC 7 Chicago.
Officers were searching for firearms inside the home. Per the news station, they never found the weapons that were supposedly identified in the warrant. No one was arrested, however Wilson and other family members were handcuffed for several hours as law enforcement looted her home, ripping parts of the ceiling in the process. Royal's cuffs were removed when a sergeant arrived at the scene. To this day, Wilson has yet to receive an apology from Chicago police.
"Chicago police officers behave as if our children of color and their trauma is collateral damage in Chicago," Al Holfield Jr., Wilson's lawyer said regarding the excessive force on Royal.
Wilson added that her children now live in fear as a result of the ambush.
"They are afraid to go to the washroom, they are afraid to sleep by themselves, they are very nervous and jump," the mother of three told reporters.
In a response to the suit that, police explained to NBC Chicago that officers on the scene were not made aware of Royal's age, justifying the raid in a statement saying the individual identified in the search warrant was at the scene of the alleged crime.
"The target of the search warrant was on scene, and while there was no weapon located during the search, the location searched was the same as described on the search warrant," the statement read.