City to pay $168,500 over claims cops stole $3,000, forced man to soil himself

The city has agreed to pay out a total of $168,500 in two lawsuits accusing Chicago Police officers of stealing $3,000 from one man and forcing another man to sit in his own excrement, a city official said Friday.

The lawsuits were filed against members of a gang enforcement team. Two of them, Sgt. Xavier Elizondo and Officer David Salgado, were charged last year in an FBI investigation into police corruption.

Devante Boldon will get $69,500 and Cornell Ferguson $99,000 in separate legal settlements with the city, said Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the city’s law department.

Boldon, 25, said he was in a friend’s apartment in the 2100 block of East 70^th when the officers conducted a raid on April 1, 2017, according to his lawsuit.

He said they stole $3,000 in cash from him and falsely arrested him for holding a Glock handgun. The lawsuit doesn’t say why Boldon was carrying so much cash.

Boldon accused the officers of roughing him up and injuring his arm.

One of the officers, Rocco Pruger, is accused in the lawsuit of giving false testimony to a grand jury about Boldon holding a gun. Boldon said he was wrongly held in the Cook County Jail for nine months. Prosecutors dismissed the charges in May 2018.

Boldon awaits trial on drug charges after he was arrested on Jan. 25 about a block from his 2017 arrest, court records show.

In the other lawsuit, Ferguson, 37, said he had walked into a friend’s apartment in the 4200 block of West Jackson after Elizondo, Salgado and other officers raided it on May 19, 2017.

Ferguson said he was planning to use a bathroom in the apartment. But he said the officers allegedly beat him up and he defecated on himself.

A warrant for the search listed Ferguson as the subject of the raid. The warrant said the officers were looking for crack cocaine. They said they recovered a rifle, a handgun, drugs and ammunition.

He said he was taken to a West Side police facility where he was handcuffed to a pole for hours.

Ferguson was charged with illegal gun possession by a felon and possession of cocaine and marijuana. He was booked into the Cook County Jail and said he spent a week in the medical wing. He said he required dental work for injuries from the alleged beating.

Police records show Elizondo was the supervisor of that raid on May 19, 2017, and Salgado filled out the application for the warrant. Their team did at least two other raids on the West Side on the same day, the records show.

The charges against Ferguson were dismissed on Feb. 14, 2018, court records show.

In May 2018, Elizondo and Salgado were charged in federal court with using anonymous “John Doe” informants who gave false information to judges to obtain search warrants. As a result, Cook County prosecutors have dismissed dozens of criminal cases handled by the two officers. They are on desk duty as they await trial.