Action Injury Law Group

Attorney Andrew Stroth stands next to Arewa Karen Winters, great-aunt of Pierre Loury, who was killed by Chicago police when he was 16 years old. Arewa Karen Winters is someone who seeks Justice for Impacted Families and is a leader of The 411 Movement for Pierre Loury. This image was taken in May at our event in Chicago to honor mothers and loved ones.

A Chicago police officer has been charged with two felonies, for shooting an unarmed man during a clash at a CTA Red Line subway station last year.

Officer Melvina Bogard, 32, is charged with aggravated assault and battery and official misconduct on one count each in the shooting of Ariel Roman on February 28, 2020, at the Grand Red Line stop, according to the prosecutor’s office of Cook County State.

Lawyer Gloria Schmidt Rodriguez said Roman was diagnosed with an anxiety disorder and suffered from a panic attack while riding a Red Line train that day.

Roman’s lawyers said that although he admitted to moving between the cars of a CTA train – in violation of the city’s ordinance – he did not commit any crime that would have warranted his arrest. He was not armed or a threat to the police or anyone else.

Chicago Police Superintendent, David Brown fired Bogard and her partner, Officer Bernard Butler, for violating the policies of several departments, calling the Roman shooting unnecessary, arguing that Bogard had violated department rules for deploying her Taser gun and then shooting Roman. Brown said this was unnecessary because Roman posed no deadly threat to her or anyone. Brown also accused Butler of violating departmental rules for the use of his Taser gun and failing to use approved de-escalation techniques to stop Roman. Butler has also been cited for putting Roman in danger for catching him at the edge of the subway platform.

“The officers – who are trained – should have relaxed, relaxed, and taken the time to call in reinforcements. The idea that an officer shoots his duty revolver twice is amazing,” Roman’s lawyer Andrew Stroth said last year.

Read more: tinyurl.com/CPDMelvinaBogardCharged

Newsweek interviewed James Gibson who was 23 and home for Christmas in 1989 when he was falsely arrested for a double homicide at a parking garage.

He is not just fighting for $65 million as compensation for the years he spent wrongfully incarcerated, he wants the Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration to admit the truth about what he endured, in a court of law.

Lightfoot is the first African American woman mayor of Chicago and she had previously vowed to make it right, Gibson said. "Then all of a sudden, she shifted," he added. "She's playing games with these lawyers."

According to Dick Simpson, a former Chicago alderman: "Why the city most likely doesn't simply admit in court that there is such a pattern is they are attempting to protect the taxpayer from paying unduly highly settlements”

"If Mayor Lightfoot and the city officials really took ownership and acknowledged all this happened, paid the victims and put systems in place to prevent it from happening to other people, it would be historic in Chicago," Andrew Stroth, managing partner at Action Injury Law Group, told Newsweek. “Instead the city of Chicago is paying millions of dollars to outside lawyers to defend cases that are indefensible. James Gibson has a certificate of innocence. He's factually innocent. And he spent 30 years in four different maximum-security prisons."

He added: "Part of it is James wants to have an impact on other people's cases, on other people's lives, as he did when he was in prison helping hundreds of people with their legal cases."
Stroth added: "It's much bigger than just getting millions of dollars, James Gibson wants to change the game."

Read more: tinyurl.com/JamesGibsonNewsweek

On Feb. 28, 2020, a Chicago Police Officer shot 34-year-old Ariel Roman on a platform at the Grand train station.

The 2020 Chicago police shooting at a Red Line station was caught on cellphone video and posted on the internet, which prompted added attention and interest in Ariel Roman’s case.

Civil rights attorney Andrew M. Stroth, who represents Roman, said at the time that his client’s life had “changed forever” as a result of the incident.

“He has a bullet lodged in his lower back next to his cystic nerve, and he had another bullet go through his abdomen,” Stroth said. “He had additional surgeries to his intestines.”

Stroth said the case will be a "test" for Supt. David Brown "on what he will do in Chicago as it is related to excessive use of force, and is he going to follow through as related to consent-decree (matters) and substantive police reform.”

Read more tinyurl.com/FedsProbeChicagoPolice