Most of us know how to stay out of trouble with the law: Always call the officer “sir” or “ma’am.” Don’t fight city hall. Don’t get caught. “Don’t yell at the super” wasn’t always on the list, but if you ask Peter Francis Geraci, it is now.
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At Larrabee and Division, Geraci was held for “verbal assault,” a class C misdemeanor. For example, “if you threaten to kick my ass, that’s an assault,” Jackson explained. “Words used that make you believe that you are about to receive a battery. The offender expressed himself to the three victims and made them believe he was capable of giving them a battery.”
There were 5,512 reported simple assaults in Chicago last year, and countless threatened ass kickings that never wound up in the papers. But if there’s anything people dislike more than a lawyer, it’s a lawyer who advertises. Even the police spokesman couldn’t resist a shot: “The notable attorney lost his cool,” Jackson mused. Neither Jackson nor the police officer who filed the report actually heard the alleged assault. Several calls to the management company to speak to the three “victims” went unanswered and unreturned. But Geraci was willing to talk.
Geraci thinks the arrest was payback too. He’d written a letter complaining about drug dealers on Hubbard between Clark and LaSalle and sent it to the 18th District commander, cc’ing Mayor Daley and Superintendent Hillard. “I understand when you send a letter to the mayor it goes through the system like Ex-Lax. It goes right down to the beat cops with your name on it.”
“This was done deliberately to intimidate me on the part of this condominium association and the police department, and they do it to a lot of people. I’ve got all this stuff documented, a lot of the stuff is already in litigation, and there will be more to come. I am not going to be falsely accused by three goons that want to keep me from looking at the books of my own condo association and then taunted and humiliated by the police and just do nothing.”
