Two Chicago Police Officers Who Sodomized Man With Screwdriver Are Still on the Force

By Shaun King, New York Daily News

08 October 16

 

he more I do this work, researching and telling stories of injustice, the more I learn just how unjust this country truly is. Now, on a daily basis, hundreds of families from coast to coast write me in the hope that they can have the injustice they’ve experienced exposed. They’ve tried to fight against the machine alone and have normally been chewed up and spit back out by the time they come to me.

I struggle to not only keep up with the volume, but also with whether or not what I’m reading is even true. Don’t get me wrong, I generally take victims of injustice at their word, but nowadays, it’s hard to tell a hoax from a harrowing tale of hardship.

What I’m about to tell you is true, but it’s so far fetched, so outrageous, so ridiculously unjust, so extreme, that I confess now that I did not believe it when I first saw it with my own eyes. I had to see the source documents for myself.

On Aug. 28, 2004, Chicago Police Officer Scott Korhonen did something truly heinous to a young man named Coprez Coffie. Just 20 years old at the time, Coffie was spotted by Korhonen and his partner in what they claimed was a drug deal. Coffie, who was employed as a security guard at a local hotel, was then driven to an alley, handcuffed and strip-searched with his pants down. During the strip search, Korhonen got a screwdriver and jammed it deep into the rectum of Coffie — causing internal injuries to Coffie.

Yes, you read that correctly. Yes, that is not simply inappropriate, it is as illegal as it gets. Chicago Police Officer Scott Korhonen sexually assaulted Coprez Coffie. Coffie reported the injuries when they took him to the police station and immediately reported the injuries at St. Mary of Nazareth Hospital that same day. The man was literally bleeding from his rectum.

As you could imagine, Coprez Coffie refused to simply accept what happened to him. For the next three years he fought like hell to prove that he was brutalized and assaulted by Korhonen. At first, Coffie and his attorneys fought for the case to go to trial and filed several motions before judges requesting his day in court. In the meantime, the Chicago Police Department stonewalled and refused to even discipline Officer Korhonen or his partner, Officer Gerald Lodwich, who stood by and did nothing when the assault took place.

Finally, on Oct. 17, 2007 a civil jury found Officers Korhonen and Lodwich guilty of the “unreasonable search” and ordered the City of Chicago to pay Coffie a $4 million settlement plus nearly $675,000 for his legal fees. In the process of the investigation, it was determined that not only did the officers have screwdrivers in the glove compartment of their car, but that human fecal matter was found in the glove compartment as well. The injuries to Mr. Coffie’s rectum were also confirmed and documented.

Still, this was not good enough for Coffie. It shouldn’t have been. These men deserved to go to jail for what they did. Anybody who did what they did should go to jail. So, Coffie continued to push for a new trial. The following year, in a preliminary ruling, look at what District Court Judge James Holderman said:

“Considering all the evidence, which is now conceded by the defense to be sufficient to support the jury's verdict for the plaintiff, including the circumstantial evidence, which strongly supports the jury's verdict for Coffie, this was a clear case. The evidence established by a preponderance of the evidence each of Coffie's claims that Korhonen unreasonably inserted a screwdriver in Coffie' rectum in violation of Coffie's constitutional rights and that Lodwich knowingly failed to stop Korhonen's unconstitutional conduct. In addition, the evidence clearly showed that Korhonen and Lodwich each knowingly testified falsely at the trial.”

Not only did the judge call this injustice a “clear case” where a “preponderance of the evidence” prove that Korhonen inserted a screwdriver into another man’s rectum, the judge also said that the “evidence clearly showed” that they both lied under oath and gave false testimony.

I have to make a full stop here to give us all a recap.

A young black man was sodomized with a screwdriver by a Chicago cop. A nine-member jury determined that he did it. A United States District Court judge determined that he was guilty and that judge also determined that both officers involved lied under oath.

Judge Holderman went on to say, “In Korhonen and Lodwich's post-trial motion, they have not argued that the evidence was insufficient to support the jury's verdict in favor of Coffie.” Instead, in their future motions, they just argued that they should be let off on legal technicalities because the physical evidence against them was simply irrefutable.

Well, here is where I drop the damn hammer.

Officers Scott Korhonen and Gerald Lodwich are still employed by the Chicago Police Department to this very day. Lodwich made $90,618 last year as an officer. The rapist Scott Korhonen made $87,384.

These men not only avoided jail time, they kept their jobs in law enforcement — in spite of costing the city nearly $5 million and multiple independent investigations finding that they were guilty of several felonies.

This is unthinkable. It is criminal. It is indicative of every single thing that is wrong with policing in America. These men should be fired immediately. No doubt the statute of limitations may have passed for their crimes, but they must never be in law enforcement again.

Every officer and superior who covered for these men should also be fired. All of this is criminal.