An HIV-positive Blue Island man has filed a complaint against the city of Blue Island and two of its police officers, claiming, among other things,assault, battery, malicious prosecution and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Demetrius Anderson, in a suit filed through Chicago’s Civil Rights Center, said that on April 20, 2009, he attempted to stab himself in the chest with knife. (Anderson claimed he suffered from clinical depression and anxiety.) After his sister summoned an ambulance, Anderson informed the emergency medical technicians (EMTs) of his HIV status.
Anderson, according to the complaint, started to panic as they neared the ambulance, and he started running. Two policemen, identified as Officers Benton and Podbielniak, gave chase and eventually apprehended him. Anderson claimed that the officers handled him so roughly as they handcuffed him that, among other things, he suffered numbness in his right hand.
Anderson also alleged that the officers verbally assaulted him, saying, among other things, that the plaintiff would have nightmares for the remainder of his life because of his HIV status.