CHICAGO (AP) - Chicago is being sued for a 2015 raid of an apartment in search of a man then serving time in prison for murder.
Jolanda Blassingame contends in a lawsuit filed Tuesday that police were looking for Derec Bell when they raided her apartment. Attorney Al Hofeld says police didn’t bother to verify information provided by an informant with a criminal record. It turns out Bell had been a tenant of the apartment nine years before the raid and was in a southern Illinois prison.
Blassingame asserts police officers swore at her and pointed assault rifles at her and her children and trashed their apartment during a search for drug and drug-related paraphernalia. Hofeld says Blassingame was given a copy of the search warrant as officers left the apartment.
Chicago’s law department had no comment on the lawsuit.
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