Wrong Family Takes Man Off Life Support After CPD Misidentify Him

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Man Is Taken Off Life Support By Wrong Family After Chicago Police Misidentify Him, According To Lawsuit

Smh.

The cops effing up again, it appears.

According to the Chicago Tribune, the Chicago Police Department has found themselves in a lawsuit claiming they misidentified a badly beaten man. Their mix-up reportedly led to the wrong family deciding to take the man off life support earlier in the year.

On April 29, Elisha Brittman, 69, was found naked and beaten underneath a car in the South Side neighborhood of Bronzeville, according to the lawsuit. He was transported to the Mercy Hospital and listed as John Doe for two weeks until cops used a mugshot to wrongly identify him as Alfonso Bennett, despite his face being badly disfigured to even recognize.

The hospital staff then reached out to the family of Alfonso. The family said they told doctors and nurses that they didn’t believe the man in a coma was related to them.

“I said, ‘How did you all verify that this is Alfonso Bennett?'” Rosie Brooks, Bennett’s sister, said. “They said, ‘Through the Chicago Police Department.'”

Brooks said her family was constantly told by the hospital staff that they didn’t recognize Bennett because they were in denial. However, eventually, the family agreed to take the man off life support on the advice of doctors.

Brooks said the family was by his side when he died three days later, and they eventually started making funeral arrangements.

So imagine their shock when Alfonso Bennett strolled through his sister’s front door after the arrangements were already made. In the meantime, the guy who died was identified as Brittman due to a fingerprints test.

Brooks said both families are livid that the police didn’t do more. They’ve both filed a lawsuit that contend police failed to use fingerprints to positively identify Brittman before reaching out to families.

“They find a guy naked, beat up, under a car, no ID and just take him to Mercy,” Brooks said. “My thing is if it had been a different ZIP code, would it have made a difference? Because you have a John Doe, no ID, naked and under a car, wouldn’t you want to know how he got under the car? Who put him under there? What happened?”

Brooks continued:

“To me that means Black lives don’t matter. You carried him to Mercy, didn’t even know who he was and didn’t even take the time to find out. You should have fingerprinted him then.”

The CPD argues that they don’t fingerprint folks unless they’ve been arrested because it’s a privacy issue. In this situation, they provided a series of mugshots to the hospital and, with hospital employees, decided the man in the hospital bed resembled Bennett.

The Police Department said they have now opened an investigation into Brittman’s death.