‘I Ain’t Doing Nothing!’: Chicago Cops Kill Black Man Over Seatbelt Violation—Then Change Story to Tinted Windows. Now City Must Pay Family $1.2M
Acting like straight-up gangbangers, a group of Chicago cops driving an unmarked car in a residential neighborhood and dressed in plainclothes cut in front of another car driven by a Black man named Dexter Reed last March, forcing him to stop before ordering him out at gunpoint — and never identifying themselves as officers or informing him why he was being detained.
Police claim Reed, 26, responded by firing a single shot, striking one of the cops in the wrist, but that is not clear in any of the multiple videos released by the Chicago Office of Police Accountability.
The cops then fired 96 shots within 41 seconds, striking him 13 times and killing him after he stepped out of the car with both hands in the air, showing he was unarmed.
Chicago police claimed the reason for the traffic stop was that Reed was not wearing a seatbelt, but bodycam videos show none of the officers were wearing seatbelts when they hopped out of their car with guns drawn.
Then, when questioned how they could have seen the seatbelt violation through Reed’s dark tinted windows, police changed their narrative to claim they had pulled him over because his tints were too dark.
The lawsuit filed by Reed’s family states that the real reason for the stop was to racially profile Reed in the hopes of finding something more serious than a seatbelt violation — a decades-long pattern of profiling Black citizens in what are called pretextual traffic stops — using minor traffic infractions as excuses to harass, intimidate and arrest Black citizens.
Earlier this week, it was announced that Reed’s family will receive a $1.25 million settlement.
“This case is about an unlawful and violent escalatory traffic stop in a city that has a pattern and practice of these types of discriminatory, pretextual stops,” Andrew Stroth, an attorney representing Reed’s family, told the Chicago Sun-Times on Monday.
“First, they said no seatbelt. Then they said tinted windows. It was all pretextual,” he said.
“The city has spent tens of millions of dollars defending cases [like this]. Because this is a pattern-and-practice case about traffic stops and about the policies and procedures of the Chicago Police Department, the cost of defense is several millions of dollars.”
According to the lawsuit:
Defendant Officers violated numerous laws and CPD policies during their encounter with Dexter. The initial stop was unlawful and pretextual. Defendant Officers had no reasonable suspicion that Dexter violated any law, and they falsely stated otherwise in official CPD reports.
Defendant Officers who initially approached Dexter’s vehicle were outrageously escalatory. They started by sideswiping Dexter’s vehicle—approaching him aggressively in an unmarked vehicle without any forewarning. Next, while wearing hoodies, jeans, and other casual clothing, they brandished their weapons in a threatening manner, screamed curse words at Dexter, and attempted to unlawfully enter his vehicle. Defendant Officers unlawfully pointed their guns at Dexter, thus escalating the situation and exponentially increasing the risk of death for everyone—Dexter, Defendant Officers, and bystanders alike.
Then, Defendant Officers used wildly disproportionate force against Dexter—repeatedly shooting at him even when he clearly presented no threat. Finally, Defendant Officers ignored Dexter as he was handcuffed and bleeding out on the street. For many critical minutes, Defendant Officers refused to attempt to provide him with any lifesaving aid.
Watch the video below:
The Shooting
The shooting took place on March 21, 2024, in the Humboldt Park neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side after the group of police officers in the unmarked SUV ran a red light to stop him for what they initially claimed was a seat belt violation.
The first cop to confront Reed was Alexandra Giampapa, who ordered him to “roll the window down” without identifying herself or explaining why he had been stopped.
Reed started rolling the window down, and Giampapa asked, “What are you doing?”
“I ain’t doing nothing,” responded Reed.
Giampapa and other cops then ordered him to roll down his passenger-side window, which was when he began rolling the driver-side window back up.
The family’s claim states Reed most likely pushed the wrong button out of nervousness, which resulted in him rolling the driver-side window back up.
“Don’t roll the window up, don’t roll the window up,” Giampapa ordered as she grabbed onto the door handle and tried to open it.
“Unlock the door now!” she yelled with her gun drawn while a male cop next to her yelled, “Open the f_cking door!” with his gun drawn.
“OK, OK, I’m trying,” responded Reed, who never fully rolled his window up, indicating he had made a mistake rather than deliberately trying to close the window.
The cops began yelling at him with their guns drawn as he repeatedly told them, “I’m trying to.”
That was when Reed allegedly shot an officer standing at the front passenger side window, although that is not visible in the videos, prompting the five officers to fire 96 times.
A security video from a nearby home shows Reed tried to drive away but was blocked by the unmarked cop car that had forced him to stop, so he stepped out of the SUV and ran to the back of it with his hands in the air as police continued firing at him.
But once they ran up to him to handcuff his body, they were unable to find a gun.
“I don’t know where it is,” one cop said.
The cops searched under his body and car but found no gun, eventually finding it on the passenger’s seat, according to the Chicago Office of Police Accountability.
Pattern of Profiling
The lawsuit cited a survey that states Black people in Chicago are four times as likely than white people to be stopped by police driving, walking or just standing.
“Ten percent of Young Black Men reported experiencing a use of force (other than handcuffing) by a CPD officer, a rate six times greater than all Chicago adults during this time period,” the claim states.
“Eleven percent of Young Black Men reported having had a gun pointed at them by a Chicago police officer over the past 12 months, over five times the rate of Chicagoans overall.”
The five cops involved in the traffic stop, Giampapa, Thomas Spanos, Victor Pacheco, Gregory Saint Louis, and Aubrey Webb, were the subjects of numerous complaints from citizens in the months leading up to the shooting death of Reed, according to Block Club Chicago.
In the three days leading up to the shooting, the same group of cops pulled over 50 cars without issuing a single citation, the Sun-Times reported.
Following the shooting, the cops were all placed on paid administrative leave, but Giampapa resigned in November to take on a new job at the Tipp City Police Department in Ohio, WTTW reported last week.
The settlement was criticized by Chicago Alderman Matt O’Shea, who called it “absurd,” according to the Sun-Times.
“If you go to any neighborhood that’s stricken with crime, those residents are terrified to leave their homes after dark. … They want to see more cops. They want to see cops questioning people,” he said.
But when Block Club Chicago interviewed residents of the neighborhood, they came away with a different perspective.
“The cops [here] are not really doing the job of a police officer,” said Angie Smith, who lives around the corner from where Reed’s shooting death took place.
“They are here really intimidating people just because they have a badge. … They are not serving and protecting us anymore. It seems like they are here just because they have a quota to hit.”