Throughout her arrest for DUI in Chicago earlier this month, a Democratic member of the obscure however influential Cook dinner County Board of Evaluation made certain that cops on the scene of a crash she brought about knew they had been coping with a politician.
In police body-camera movies from the incident in Andersonville on Nov. 11 which WBEZ and the Chicago Solar-Instances obtained this week, Board of Evaluation Commissioner Samantha Steele repeatedly refused to cooperate with officers who responded, together with requests from cops to get out of the smashed automotive she was driving.
One officer instructed her, “Ma’am, in the event you don’t exit the car … I’m going that can assist you to exit, and also you don’t need that.”
“You don’t need that! I’m an elected official,” Steele shot again.
“Elected official of what?” the officer requested.
“Cook dinner County,” Steele instructed him.
When the officer requested for her identify, Steele held out her hand and mentioned, “I’m Sam.”
The cop replied, “Sam who?” However Steele didn’t give the police her full identify at that time.
The officer instructed different cops, “She’s saying she’s an elected official of Cook dinner County.” Steele then mentioned, “I don’t wish to be on the video.”
However police instructed her she was certainly on video and so they continued to document the interplay with Steele.
Regardless of a number of requests, Steele wouldn’t initially present officers together with her driver’s license or get out of the automotive. Sitting within the driver’s seat, she drank from what gave the impression to be a water bottle and used her cellphone to name the individual she described many instances as her lawyer – Democratic Cook dinner County Commissioner Scott Britton of Glenview.
She solely gave her driver’s license to police and exited the automotive after Britton suggested her over the cellphone to take action.
After Britton arrived on the scene within the 5000 block of North Ashland Avenue, Steele mentioned she was not ingesting the wine from the bottle within the automotive. Britton interjected: “Don’t say something. Don’t say something.”
Two days after the arrest, Britton mentioned he was not a protection lawyer and wouldn’t be representing Steele in her case. Britton mentioned Steele had an lawyer however he wouldn’t establish the lawyer.
The three-member Board of Evaluation has the facility to rule on property tax appeals, successfully decreasing tax payments. Steele lives in Evanston, and she or he represents the Board of Evaluation’s district masking a lot of the North Aspect of Chicago and northern suburbs.
The video from her arrest additionally reveals the second when police searched the automotive Steele was driving and found what information point out was a half-empty bottle of pink wine close to the entrance passenger seat. Within the video, officers joke that the cabernet sauvignon was “good things” and that breath mints in addition they discovered “didn’t assist” – an obvious reference to the robust odor of alcohol that officers allege they detected on Steele’s breath.
After at first refusing to do a area sobriety take a look at, Steele agreed to do it, however then Steele mentioned she had hit her head within the crash and wished to take an ambulance to be handled. She was handcuffed once more and positioned in an ambulance, which took her to the hospital, in response to police experiences.
Steele quickly was transported to Chicago’s Lincoln police district, the place she allegedly made lewd feedback to an officer, information present. The cop wrote in his report that Steele “repeatedly mentioned, ‘Is your penis that small’” to him.
However the newly launched video doesn’t embody Steele making these feedback, which allegedly had been mentioned on the hospital. None of those recordings embody footage from the hospital.
Police charged Steele with one misdemeanor depend of driving inebriated. She has not commented publicly on the case. Her court docket date is Dec. 27, information present.
The following Board of Evaluation assembly is scheduled for Dec. 2. Steele, 45, was first elected to the Board of Evaluation in 2022, after being an elected county official in Indiana.
The Democrat and her chief of workers are dealing with a federal whistleblower lawsuit filed lately by former aide Frank Calabrese, who obtained the body-camera footage of the arrest by means of an open-records request to police and shared it with WBEZ and the Chicago Solar-Instances.
Earlier within the yr, Steele defended giving a job on the Board of Evaluation to a former northwest Indiana politician who had pleaded responsible in a federal case.
And she or he additionally has discovered herself on the middle of the high-stakes dispute over the Chicago Bears’ property tax invoice for the outdated Arlington Park racecourse property, the place the soccer crew has thought-about constructing a brand new stadium.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Authorities & Politics Workforce. Tom Schuba is a felony justice editor for the Solar-Instances.
