By: Dave Newbart, Chicago Sun-Times: February 11th, 2004
A Chicago police officer alleges she was the victim of torture – at the hands of fellow police officers.
Twenty-three-year police veteran Jane Kasper claims in a lawsuit filed Tuesday in federal court that she was pushed to the ground and burned with a cigarette by officers arresting her after she had an argument with her brother in July 2002.
She also claims she was the victim of false arrest and imprisonment and malicious prosecution because her brother had declined to press charges. The incident started when Kasper, 50, of Chicago, got into a fight with her brother in which he started choking her outside her mother’s South Side home. She called police, but they arrested her instead of her brother, the suit states. During the arrest, she claims she was thrown to the ground and her head and leg were smashed against a squad car.
A former patrol officer, Kasper has been answering phones for the city’s 311 information line since the incident. She is seeking unspecified damages.
