An Oak Park man has been charged with three felonies, including the transmission of HIV, after he reportedly bit a police officer’s thumb, according to a Chicago Tribune item.
The man is also facing charges of aggravated battery of a police officer and retail theft after being arrested outside Old Navy, 417 N. Harlem Ave., Oak Park.
Ann Hilton Fisher, executive director of the AIDS Legal Council of Chicago, said in a release that the arrest shows the outdated and stigmatizing nature of HIV criminal-transmission laws, both in Illinois and across the United States.
“There is, of course, no risk that the officer will get HIV from this bite,” she said. “These laws reflect, and fuel, outdated notions of HIV transmission. How many people will read this article and think that they need to know the HIV status of the two year old who bit their child in the arm in a nursery school tussle over a toy, or worry that they shouldn’t share a meal, let alone a kiss, with someone who is HIV-positive?”
She also said that the “Illinois’ Criminal Transmission of HIV Law [720 ILCS 5/12-16.2] makes it a class B felony for anyone with HIV to ‘engage in intimate contact’ with another person unless the person with HIV has first disclosed his or her status and the other party has consented to the contact. ‘Intimate contact’ is defined as ‘the exposure of the body of one person to the bodily fluids of another in a manner which would result in the transmission of HIV.’ An individual with HIV can be prosecuted under the statute whether or not HIV is in fact transmitted.”
The trial date is Dec. 2 at Maywood Courthouse.