Oak Lawn Cops Deserving Of Charges, And Should be Fired: Opinion

This is an opinion piece submitted by Laila Zayed, a Youth Organizer at the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), and Hatem Abudayyeh, the AAAN’s Executive Director.

OAK LAWN, IL — On July 27, 2022, Oak Lawn, Illinois, police officer Patrick O’Donnell pulled over a vehicle with teenagers in it. Then 17-year-old Palestinian American Hadi Abuatelah was in the back seat, and after exiting the car, fled the scene with a bag. O’Donnell and two other cops chased the minor, wrestled him to the ground, and continuously and viciously beat him about the head, face, and body, even though he was already restrained and not a threat. The beating was caught on a citizen’s Facebook video and went viral. Hadi spent six days in the hospital with internal bleeding in his brain and numerous broken bones.

In a March 7, 2023 opinion piece in The Patch, the author argues, “O’Donnell is a hero for protecting law abiding [sic] citizens from punks who carry loaded weapons while driving around
the neighborhoods.”

The cops did not know that there was a gun in Hadi’s bag when they chased and caught him.
Police officers are not judges, juries, and executioners, and have no right to beat a teenager
nearly to death just because he ran from them.

The author then makes a red herring argument, suggesting that Hadi will go “on to bigger and
more deadlier [sic] headlines,” a blatantly vile and disgusting attempt at fear-mongering to
justify and defend the police officers’ violence against the boy.

The Arab American Action Network (AAAN), a community-based organization with offices in
the southwest suburbs of Chicago, is leading the #JusticeForHadi grassroots organizing campaign, and has been calling for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx to charge the three white cops — O’Donnell, Brandon Collins, and Mark Hollingsworth — responsible for the beating.

AAAN declared a partial victory last month when O’Donnell was finally indicted on charges of aggravated battery and official misconduct, but will continue to demand that the other two get charged as well. The organization has been mobilizing for every monthly Oak Lawn Police and Fire Commission meeting since the incident, and continues to call for the firing of the three officers.

For the past eight months, the Village of Oak Lawn has unequivocally supported the police and
stonewalled all demands for accountability. Village residents and supporters organized by the
AAAN and its allies, including Southsiders for Peace, Rainbow PUSH Coalition, and
Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the latter a major Black-led police
accountability institution, have been met with attempts at intimidation by armed police, simply
for exercising their First Amendment-protected rights. Meanwhile, the village board has colluded
with the police and its supporters to detract from and cover up the officers’ misconduct.

At the March 1 post-indictment meeting, protesters forced the commission to shut down a
video montage (ostensibly produced by an Oak Lawn resident and supporter of the police) that
played at the very beginning of public comments. The video blindsided the Arab and other
community members who were there to call for justice, broadcasting only the footage of Hadi
running (and not the beating, of course), along with several other scenes of police from across
the country encountering people pointing guns at them — which had absolutely no relevance to
Hadi’s case.

This was a political ploy to detract from the fact that the commission refuses to accede to
the protesters’ demand that it remove an officer (O’Donnell) charged with a violent felony
from its police force. The meeting was abruptly ended by the commissioners when attendees
demanded that they all be treated equally and given the opportunity to show video as well. A
week later, the commission called for an emergency meeting, where “rules” of conduct for
attendees were distributed, voted upon, and passed without discussion. A number of these rules
may possibly violate the Illinois Open Meetings Act.

Police violence against Black, Latino, Arab, Asian, Native, and other communities is not new to
Oak Lawn, the southwest suburbs in general, Chicago, the state of Illinois, or the United States. Last year, the AAAN published this groundbreaking report on racial profiling and other law enforcement violations against Arabs, Muslims, and other communities of color in Illinois. The Village of Oak Lawn, some of its residents, and other supporters of law enforcement who believe that cops are above the law should be reminded of the police murders of Michael Brown, George Floyd, Rekia Boyd, Miriam Carey, Sandra Bland, Laquan McDonald, Tyre Nichols, Adam Toledo, and so many others.

The call for justice and accountability in Oak Lawn is especially important because, as we have
seen in a number of the aforementioned cases, officers who commit misconduct and get away
with it become officers who kill. If O’Donnell, Collins, and Hollingsworth are not held
accountable, the message from the Oak Lawn Police Department is that its officers can violate
the rights, and even potentially take the lives, of Oak Lawn residents with impunity.

As AAAN Lead Organizer Muhammad Sankari was quoted by CBS 2 Chicago, “If officers are
trained that while two other adults are restraining a child to repeatedly punch them in the face,
you grab their hair, and repeatedly punch them in the face, and you break their nose, and you
fracture their pelvis, and you cause internal bleeding in their brain — what is wrong with policing
in this state?”

Protesters will again demand the firing of O’Donnell, Collins, and Hollingsworth at the next
police commission meeting on Wednesday, April 5, at 5:30 p.m., at Oak Lawn Village Hall, 9446 S. Raymond Ave., then attend O’Donnell’s next court hearing in room 204 at the Leighton Criminal Court Building, 26th and California, Chicago the following morning, at 9 a.m. Thursday, April 6.

Laila Zayed is a Youth Organizer at the Arab American Action Network (AAAN), and Hatem
Abudayyeh is the AAAN’s Executive Director.