A judge on Friday found a former employee of the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center not guilty on criminal charges related to a 2023 incident at the facility that left a 15-year-old boy unconscious and with visible bruising on his face.
Kevin Walker, 58, was charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct, after allegedly throwing a handcuffed boy to the ground while attempting to escort him to a holding cell. During a bench trial that lasted 2½ hours, prosecutors argued Walker used excessive force and was acting outside the scope of his duties as a member of the youth jail’s rapid response team when he allegedly threw the boy.
In delivering his verdict, which lasted only a few minutes, Cook County Circuit Judge Kenneth J. Wadas said the state had not met its burden of proof.
“I don’t even think it’s close,” Wadas said.
Wadas questioned the strength of the evidence presented by prosecutors, including surveillance video footage of the incident and body-worn camera footage from another employee.
“The defendant puts his hand on [the boy] and maybe pushes him at best,” Wadas said. “There is no picking up and throwing down. I didn’t see it that way.”
Injustice Watch has filed public records requests seeking the footage through the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the Chicago Police Department.
Wadas also questioned prosecutors’ claims that Walker ignored his training as a rapid response team specialist around permissible uses of force.
“He is authorized to use force,” Wadas said. “He’s been trained to use force.”
Finally, the judge argued that the boy was not compliant in the moments leading up to the incident and during the investigation that followed, pointing to testimony from a juvenile detention center investigator who said the boy initially refused to meet with a representative from the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services and had to be restrained when a uniformed officer appeared at his cell.
“The judge made the right decision,” Walker’s attorney, Craig Campbell, said after the trial.
Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen O’Neill Burke did not respond to a request for comment about the verdict.
Friday’s trial marked the first time in more than a decade that a current or former employee of the detention center had been criminally charged for allegedly harming a child at the facility.
It also follows a class-action lawsuit filed last year by more than 300 former detainees who claimed they were sexually and physically abused while at the facility dating back to the early 1990s. That case is ongoing.
Experts say the verdict could have a chilling effect on how allegations of abuse are handled by the detention center, which they say already lacks meaningful oversight and transparency.
The verdict “could lead young people to reasonably conclude that violence against them will not be pursued or punished,” said Stephanie Kollmann, the policy director of the Children and Family Justice Center at Northwestern University’s Bluhm Legal Clinic. “It therefore reduces their willingness to report [allegations of abuse].”
Revelations at trial
Records previously obtained by Injustice Watch detailed how Walker and Michael Collins, another rapid response team member, or “rover,” escorted the boy to a holding pod in handcuffs after he refused to get out of bed on Dec. 14, 2023. Once there, Walker asked a third employee, Nsisong Ekanem, for a room in which to place the boy, according to reports.
Collins testified that Walker told Ekanem to “give [the boy] a good room,” to which Ekanem responded that the boy “looked like he could be a cop.”
According to prosecutors, the boy became agitated and attempted to leave the cell.
Collins said he heard the boy threatening Ekanem, but prosecutors said that testimony was inconsistent with Collins’ previous statements to law enforcement.
As the boy attempted to turn around, Collins said, Walker tried to restrain the boy. They then pushed the boy into the cell, causing him to fall facedown onto the floor, Collins said.
According to footage from Collins’ body-worn camera, Walker placed the boy on the bed and removed his handcuffs. In the video, the boy can be seen lying facedown with his legs hanging off the bed, breathing heavily. He remained unresponsive even as Walker and Collins repeatedly asked him to place his hands on his head.
Dr. Thomas Messer, a trauma surgeon at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital, testified that on the day of the incident, he observed the boy with visible bruising and swelling around his left eye. Coupled with the boy’s reported loss of consciousness, Messer said he determined the boy suffered a mild traumatic brain injury. He said he conducted multiple tests that confirmed the boy did not suffer a severe brain injury.
Michael Bernardini, an investigator at the juvenile detention center, testified that he was called to respond around 9 a.m. the day of the incident. He immediately pulled video of the incident, he said. When he interviewed the boy that afternoon, he noticed visible bruising and swelling on the left side of his face. He also described the boy as groggy, sluggish, confused, and without “a lot of cognizant things to say.”
“From what I saw on the videotape and the condition of [the boy], I didn’t know what caused his condition,” Bernardini told prosecutors. “But it was definitely something that was out of the ordinary.”
He said he called Chicago police and notified DCFS about the incident, as is routine in cases in which a youth is reportedly harmed.
The next day, Bernardini said, a DCFS investigator showed up to the facility to interview the boy. The boy initially refused but eventually agreed to be interviewed. However, when the boy saw a uniformed officer approach his cell, Bernardini said, he became agitated and had to be restrained.
In their closing statement, prosecutors argued Walker ignored years of training and lost control of the situation. They urged Wadas to remember that both Walker and Collins were significantly bigger than the boy, who stood at just 5 feet 5 inches and weighed just 120 pounds to Walker’s 190 pounds and 6-foot-1-inch stature.
Walker’s attorneys, however, insisted he was just following procedure.
“You heard testimony that it is [JTDC] policy to match force with force,” Campbell said. “They are authorized to use force when appropriate.”
But other experts reached after the verdict questioned that assertion.
“They called a restraint team on a kid who was no threat to anybody.” said Gene Griffin, a retired lawyer and child psychologist who chaired a 2021 committee convened to study the use of room confinement at the facility.
“The kid’s locked in his room, yelling. … That’s when you’re supposed to be doing de-escalation. That is not when you call a team of rovers to go in and handcuff him. I question the entire premise of the incident.”
Kelly Garcia reported this story while participating in the USC Annenberg Center for Health Journalism’s National Fellowship and Fund for Reporting on Child Well-being.
Read More
Rare criminal trial of former Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center employee expected to start Thursday
Superintendent of Chicago’s youth jail might not live here, records show
Teens at Cook County juvenile jail face excessive force, extreme isolation, and other civil rights abuses, watchdog finds
Republish this article for free under a Creative Commons license.
