Chicago police officer accused of beating teen faces firing after having criminal case tossed

After having his criminal case dropped ahead of trial, a Chicago police officer now faces dismissal for allegedly beating a teenage boy after he crashed a stolen car during a chase in Woodlawn in January 2021.

Police Supt. Larry Snelling filed formal disciplinary charges against Officer Jeffery Shafer last month, alleging that Shafer had engaged in an improper pursuit, attacked the 17-year-old driver, verbally assaulted another person and failed to turn on his body camera.

Shafer and his partner, Officer Victor Guebara, were previously charged criminally, but Guebara hasn’t faced similar disciplinary charges filed with the Chicago Police Board, records show. Their criminal charges were dropped roughly three years after the alleged beating, just as a bench trial was set to begin. Prosecutors said the alleged victim had stopped cooperating.

Shafer and Guebara were patrolling on the morning of Jan. 10, 2021, when they saw the teen driving a Chevrolet Camaro and learned it had been reported stolen, prosecutors previously said. The Camaro drove onto a sidewalk, lightly struck the officers’ squad car and ultimately crashed into a brick garage in the 6400 block of South Cottage Grove Avenue.

Another officer detained the boy in a vacant lot, and Guebara punched him in his face as he “laid on his stomach with his left arm behind his back and his right arm under his chin,” prosecutors said.

When Guebara walked away, Shafer punched the teen four times in his head while he laid on the sidewalk, then pushed his face into the concrete, prosecutors said. After the teen was handcuffed, Shafer allegedly brought him to his feet and pushed him “face-first into a metal fence.”

Shafer and Guebara failed to activate their body cameras, prosecutors said, but the incident was recorded by other officers and police surveillance cameras nearby.

After a gun was found in the Camaro’s glove box, the two officers claimed the teen had aimed at them during the pursuit, prosecutors said. But they hadn’t reported the gun-pointing over police radio or mentioned it during the arrest.

The boy’s charges were dropped earlier in 2021, prosecutors said.

Shafer’s attorney didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

Shafer was previously named in a lawsuit alleging that he and other officers executed a “bad search warrant” as an infant slept in her crib and the mother and her other children got ready for bed. No contraband was found during the 2019 raid, and the target of the warrant didn’t live at the apartment that was searched, the suit stated. It was settled for $325,000.

Shafer has been the subject of at least eight other complaints, including a sustained allegation for unintentionally firing his gun, according to city records. Four of those cases involved allegations of excessive force.

In one case, Shafer was accused of punching a protester in July 2018 in South Shore, near the scene of a fatal police shooting days earlier. A commander told investigators that he saw video footage that showed Shafer was punched first.

Shafer wasn’t interviewed because he was “on an extended leave of absence from the Department due to an unrelated criminal matter,” according to a report by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

He has elected to have his case heard by an independent arbitrator, instead of the police board, records show. The state Supreme Court will soon decide whether such cases can be heard behind closed doors after the Fraternal Order of Police appealed an appellate court ruling that required the most serious police disciplinary cases to be arbitrated in public.