Former Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson proposed a wager during a Bears game in London that he would get his female driver’s underwear if the team won, according to a filing in a lawsuit accusing him of sexual abuse and harassment.
The driver, Officer Cynthia Donald, sued Johnson and the city of Chicago in 2020, saying he had subjected her to unwanted sex in his office at police headquarters and on work trips to New Orleans, New York and Springfield. She joined his security detail in 2016 and became his personal driver six months later.
Johnson said the sex was consensual and that they continued to have a friendly, nonsexual relationship after he was fired from the Chicago Police Department in late 2019.
U.S. District Judge Elaine Bucklo says she’ll rule next month on Johnson’s motion to dismiss the case before trial.
Over the last year, both sides have filed hundreds of pages of documents, including sworn depositions by Johnson and Donald, Donald’s mother and some of Donald’s friends who say she confided to them that Johnson was harassing her.
A female friend says she traveled with Donald to London, where they joined Johnson and his wife during the Bears’ 24-21 loss to the Oakland Raiders on Oct. 6, 2019. Donald took the trip on personal time.
The friend, in a deposition, says Donald invited her for support “if something was to happen.”
The friend says she and Johnson bet on the game. If he lost, Johnson, a White Sox fan, would wear a Cubs jersey, she said, adding, “He said, ‘OK, well, if the Raiders lose, I get to have the panties that Cynthia has on right now.’ And I told him, ‘Look, I don’t have anything to do with that. At this point, the bet is off because that’s inappropriate.’”
Donald says she had sent photos of her underwear to Johnson at his request on dozens of occasions.
On Oct. 16, 2019, almost two weeks after the Bears game, Johnson and Donald went drinking at Ceres, a downtown Chicago bar. Later, Chicago police officers found Johnson parked in his car, asleep at the wheel, not far from his Bridgeport home.
According to Johnson’s deposition, Donald was moved from the superintendent’s security detail after he met with then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Oct. 18, 2019, and the mayor told him, “Sources are telling me that you are having a sexual relationship with Ms. Donald, and I want that b---- gone from your office.”
In his sworn pretrial testimony, Johnson says Lightfoot told him, “This isn’t up for debate. I want her gone today, by the end of business.”
“Mayor Lightfoot has denied all allegations made by Eddie Johnson and Cynthia Donald. She will have no further comment, given the pending litigation,” a spokesperson for Lightfoot said.
Also on Oct. 18, 2019, Donald was transferred to the records division at police headquarters, where, according to her suit, Johnson “continued to sexually assault Ms. Donald, including by calling her into his office and forcing unwanted sexual contact.”
Donald’s sexual relationship with Johnson was “never consensual,” according to her friend’s statement.
“I feel like he took advantage of her because of his title and the position he held with the city, and anybody that’s not on his level, he treats like the gum on the bottom of his shoe,” the friend says. “She was frightened. The situation pretty much put her career down the drain.”
In court filings, Johnson acknowledged texting Donald a photo of his penis “on one occasion and at the urging and request” of Donald. Johnson says he was hospitalized when he sent the photo — and was intoxicated from beer — and that he thought she asked for the photo having “ulterior motives.”
In a deposition, another female friend of Donald said she didn’t see the photo but that Donald “sounded like she was disgusted by it. She goes, ‘This is what this guy had the nerve to send me today.’”
The city’s policy on sexual harassment says, “The existence of a romantic relationship between supervisors and subordinates” has the “inherent danger of coercion or at least has the appearance of impropriety.”
But Karen Konow, a former police department head of internal affairs, testified that “reporting this type of misconduct would be challenging,” according to a court filing.
Johnson has called Donald’s harassment accusations “intentionally manufactured.”
Lightfoot fired Johnson Dec. 2, 2019, citing a “series of ethical lapses.” Afterward, Donald continued to “seek out and to continue to engage in a friendship” with Johnson, according to the former superintendent, who says Donald suggested they get “burner phones” to communicate.
Later, according to Johnson, he gave her a loan and drove her to a meeting, which he learned was with her lawyers. He says Donald was “hoodwinking her own attorneys and keeping it from them that she was continuing to have a friendly and cordial relationship” with him.
Donald went on disability leave Nov. 4, 2019, receiving an “ordinary disability” benefit, which pays about half of her previous salary, according to police and pension officials. According to her suit, she suffers from post-traumatic stress syndrome stemming from her relationship with Johnson.
