On June 13, Forest Park police were dispatched to Happy Chef on Harlem Avenue for reports of someone wielding a hammer. They found an employee had locked himself in the restaurant and had a 6-inch-long, bleeding laceration on top of his head, according to the police report. He also reportedly had contusions on his body and scratches on his neck. The employee told police that a man came in to pick up his order, left, then returned a short while later to complain about his half-eaten food. The employee told police he gave the man half of his money back. But the man wanted a full refund, threw the remaining food at the employee, then backed him into the kitchen aggressively. The employee said the man punched him in his torso and head, then grabbed the carving fork that the employee picked up for protection and proceeded to hit the employee with it. The employee reported that a second man got out of a car outside, and punched him several times, as the group ended up fighting in the Walgreens parking lot. The victim gave police the license plate of the car that the two offenders drove away in. The employee was taken to Rush University Medical Center. Security video that police retrieved reportedly shows a man hitting the employee on the top of the head. The offenders had not been located at the time of the report.
Deceptive practices
On June 14, a woman told police she thought she was scammed out of $2,200 from a self-employed contractor. She said she had a verbal agreement with the contractor to fix the back deck of her Hannah Street residence but never drew up a contract before paying. She said the contractor worked on her deck for two hours on June 9, then left and never came back. The contractor hasn’t returned several attempts to reach him. Police hadn’t yet contacted the man at the time the police report was drawn up.
Open alcohol and littering
While on patrol just after midnight on June 15, police saw a man with a red plastic cup near the corner of Des Plaines Avenue and Randolph Street. When police asked the man what was in the cup, he said alcohol, then poured it out. He said he was drinking at Pioneer Tap and wanted to return. The man was given a citation for open alcohol, but as he was walking back to Pioneer Tap, he threw the citation on the ground. Police issued him another citation for littering, according to the police report.
DUI
While on patrol in the early hours of June 15, police saw a car on the 7600 block of Jackson Boulevard with windows tinted darker than Illinois code allows. The car’s registration was expired, so police pulled the car over. Police reported that the driver smelled of alcohol and had slurred speech, so they asked him to get out of the car. The man said he had a beer at Mugsy’s earlier and refused to take any standardized field sobriety tests. In his car, police found two open bottles of tequila and two empty gun magazines – though the man has a suspended firearms owner identification and concealed carry license for an active order of protection against him. Police took him to the police department, where he said he was having a panic attack and asked to be taken to Rush University Medical Center. Around 3 a.m., the man agreed to chemical testing. He returned to the police department, where he was charged with driving under the influence, operating an uninsured car, illegal transportation of alcohol, violating Illinois vehicle code and having an expired registration.
Battery
Police were dispatched to the Forest Park Public Library on June 17 to remove a man who had previously trespassed. Police escorted him out and gave him a notice of suspension for one year. Moments later, police were dispatched again to the library after the same man returned and punched someone in the face. The victim told police he was standing outside the library, offered the man a cookie, and then the man punched him. Police found the man at the intersection of Des Plaines and Jackson, but when they tried to handcuff him, he repeatedly refused requests and tensed his body before they took him to the police station. He was charged with three counts of resisting officers, battery and obstructing his identification.
These items were obtained from Forest Park Police Department reports dated June 13-18 and represent a portion of the incidents to which police responded. Anyone named in these reports has only been charged with a crime and cases have not yet been adjudicated. We report the race of a suspect only when a serious crime has been committed, the suspect is still at large, and police have provided us with a detailed physical description of the suspect as they seek the public’s help in making an arrest.