On an early summer evening in August 2020, Jonathan Ridgner, a Black cop in his second year on the force, and his white partner, Nicholas Abramson, were driving through Humboldt Park in their squad car when they spotted 26-year-old Leroy Kennedy IV, who is Black, sitting against the wall near a corner store with some acquaintances. Upon seeing the cops pass, Kennedy’s body stiffened and his eyes “enlarged,” according to the arrest report Ridgner authored that day.
Ridgner said that was enough for them to suspect Kennedy was concealing a weapon.
Ridgner jumped out of the vehicle and chased after Kennedy on foot. As he approached, he claims Kennedy flailed his arms and yelled, “Don’t touch me,” before slapping the cop’s hands multiple times. That amounted to battering a police officer, a criminal offense, Ridgner wrote in the original police report. For this reason, he used an “emergency takedown,” grabbing Kennedy “by the collar” and throwing him to the ground.
After leaving the scene because a “hostile” crowd had started to form around them, he searched Kennedy and found nothing on the young man aside from a few credit cards and a cell phone.
Two of their superiors, Lieutenant Kevin Keefe and Sergeant Nicholas Urban, later signed off on their use-of-force reports. After watching the body camera footage and listening to audio of Kennedy’s arrest, they claimed to have observed nothing untoward.
But an investigation of the incident by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), released in August 2022, identified glaring holes and “willfully misleading” statements in the officers’ narratives. Investigators found that Ridgner and Abramson unjustly stopped Kennedy, whose actions they deemed innocuous. They said Ridgner used excessive force by grabbing Kennedy around the throat—not by the collar—before slamming him face down on the sidewalk pavement, which left him dizzy and with multiple welts and bruises on the right side of his face. COPA also found the two officers crafted a story to justify the attack while laughing about it in their car afterward.
COPA ultimately sustained findings of violations of the CPD’s Rule 14—which prohibits officers from making false statements—and recommended all four be fired.