Civil suit claims city, county police beat woman

April 30, 2007 (WLS) -- Chicago photographer Dolores Robare claims she was beaten by two Chicago police officers and two Cook County Sheriff's deputies last August. Monday, she announced she is filing a civil lawsuit against the officers.

The alleged beating took place on the city's North Side. Robare's attorney claims the pictures tell the story. Her bruised and swollen face reveal the affects of what she claims is a case of police brutality.

Dolores Robares, who is known as Lorie, is a 52-year-old freelance photographer who lives in the Andersonville neighborhood, and she claims that four law enforcement officers, two from Chicago and two from Cook County, brutalized her last summer during an altercation that took place after she was nearly hit by a car driven by one of lawmen. The officers claim, in a report filed after the incident, that Robares was drunk, she attacked them, and that's how she was injured.

"I got all these infected bruises on my face and my nose was broken, and I was in a great deal of distress and pain and humiliation," said Robare.

Dolores Robare is filing a brutality lawsuit against two Cook County Sheriff's deputies, John Darge and Margie Sullivan, and two Chicago police officers, Michael Musznsky and Josephine Christopher, for their alleged role in an altercation near the corner of Irving Park and Ashland last August that sent her to a nearby hospital in an ambulance with a broken nose and injuries to her face, head and knee.

Robare says in the lawsuit that she was crossing the street on foot when a car driven by Sheriff's Deputy Darge nearly hit her and when she objected to a request for her driver's license the situation got out of control.

"The first officer, Darge, grabbed me, threw my hands behind my back, handcuffed me, put his arm around my neck, knocked me to the ground," said Robare. "He pushed me down again and I continued to try to get up. He kept pushing me down several times."

"What happened was an unnecessary beating of a woman who was defenseless and in handcuffs . It was extremely violent, extremely brutal," said Lawrence Jackowiak, Robare's attorney.

Robare says she filed a brutality complaint against the Chicago cops, but nothing happened, and the Cook County Sheriff's report indicates that she was drunk, abusive and provoked the incident by attacking the officers.

"There's no justification, even if she was drunk, for these types of beatings. She wasn't charged with anything," said Jackowiak.

"This was even more distressing to me, to discover they're somehow trying to turn this into my fault," said Robare.

Lawyer Lawrence Jackowiak says, if Robares had been drunk and attacking the officers, she would have been charged with a crime and at least one of the officers would have been injured. But they weren't hurt and she wasn't charged. Jackowiak says she had a couple drinks that afternoon but wasn't drunk. He also says the lawsuit is being filed eight months after the incident, because it took a long time to learn the names of the officers, not because he is trying to take advantage of public opinion following the two high-profile bar beating cases involving police officers in Chicago.

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