Jeffrey Amon didn’t expect trouble when he left work on the evening of Tuesday, October 1. Amon is a 25-year-old musician whose specialty is the djembe, a West African drum. He’d just finished accompanying a dance class at the Old Town School of Folk Music on Lincoln and was hurrying to a class he teaches on the near west side.
At this point, Amon says, he had two options. He could shut up and take the ticket, or he could plead his case. He decided to plead. There are three spots specifically reserved for Old Town employees, he told the officer. “I had a perfect right to be there. I told him, ‘I really do work here. It’s not a problem. I can give you a number so you can call the front desk.’ He didn’t respond. I said, ‘How about I get you one of my business cards?’ Then the cop said, ‘Where’s your sticker?’ I said, ‘We don’t have stickers.’ Then I said, ‘Hey, maybe I have a pay stub in my truck. Will that work?’ You know, to prove that I work at Old Town. He didn’t respond. Then I was like, ‘Can I get somebody? I will get somebody from the front desk.’ That’s when he said, ‘That’s fine, but expect to have a ticket and to be towed when you get back.’”
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Amon pressed on. “I’m like all the other people who can’t stand the parking situation in Chicago, but I pay my tickets,” he says. “But here I had done nothing wrong, and I’m still getting a ticket–and now he’s talking about towing me! I said, ‘Look, I work for Old Town. I’ve worked there for three years–you can’t give me a ticket. I don’t think you have the right to give me a ticket.’ The cop said, ‘Shut up.’ I said, ‘Look, I’m not going to shut up. This is illegal. I know my rights.’ As soon as I said that–as soon as I mentioned the word ‘rights’–I could see he was starting to get pissed off. I could tell by his body language. He said, ‘All right, you’re under arrest.’ I said, ‘What? For what?’ I was flabbergasted. He said, ‘Are you resisting?’ I said, ‘No, I’m not resisting. Why am I under arrest?’ He said, ‘I will use whatever force is within my power to take you into custody.’ I mean, it was absurd. He didn’t have to use any force–because I wasn’t resisting and I wasn’t going to resist. I was merely asking why I was being arrested.”
Amon had no watch, so he wasn’t sure what time it was. After what seemed like a few hours the police let him out to make a phone call. He phoned his friend Michael Taylor, another musician. “He was upset,” says Taylor. “He said he didn’t know the charges or how long he’d be in.”
He did have a ticket. “They hit me for having an expired state sticker. You see, the state had counted my truck as a passenger car, and when I tried to get my tags renewed they said, ‘You don’t have a truck, you have a car.’ And then–oh, forget it. It’s another long story.”
The arrest report also states that Amon is charged with battery, having an expired sticker on his license plates, carrying a dangerous weapon, and resisting arrest. He faces a maximum penalty of a year in jail and a $25,000 fine. Bayless says that while Amon’s criminal case proceeds, his OPS complaint remains under investigation. “I can’t get into specifics about that investigation,” says Bayless. “Of course we’re going to investigate the allegation that he was mistreated and come to a conclusion as soon as we can. If there’s a finding that this took place the officer will be held accountable.”
He also says he’s learned a practical lesson about surviving in Chicago–never argue with a cop, especially if you have shoulder-length hair. “I think if I had short hair and was dressed in a business suit this whole thing wouldn’t have happened,” he says. “I guess I shouldn’t have argued with that cop. I should have just taken the ticket for the nonexistent crime. I still wonder what he was going to write on that ticket. I guess I’m guilty of pleading my case with a Chicago cop. But whatever I did, it didn’t warrant a night in jail and getting beat up.”
