Black patient arrested outside hospital being accused of trying to steal the IV machine he was hooked up to
A black patient recovering from pneumonia has filed an official complaint after being arrested while taking a doctor-ordered walk around an Illinois hospital, after a security guard accused him of trying to steal the IV machine he was hooked up to.
Shaquille Dukes, a 24-year-old Chicago man, said that the situation escalated after police confronted him and two friends outside the hospital, in Freeport.
In a Facebook post, Mr Dukes wrote that police had confronted him in a hospital gown rand accused him of planning on selling the medical equipment on eBay, before removing the IV on the sidewalk.
“Officers stoody by and watched while my IV was removed on the sidewalk, and it was NOT by a doctor,” Mr Dukes wrote of the incident, which took place on 9 June just after 5 pm.
Mr Dukes, who was on holiday in Freeport when he fell ill, wrote that he told the officers that he was being treated for pneumonia and asthma, but received little sympathy: “I don’t care why you’re here, you’re going to jail,” he quoted the officers as telling him.
While being transported to the city jail, Mr Dukes claims he began to have a seizure and an asthma attack.
“I pleaded with officers for almost four minutes to retrieve my inhaler from the transporting officer, and finally, when I became unresponsive, it miraculously appeared,” Mr Dukes wrote.
A representative of the Freeport Police Department told The Independent that a third party investigator has been hired to look into the incident, “given the serious nature of the individual’s complaint”.
Following the incident, Freeport Police officials released body camera footage, and the department’s chief, Todd Barkalow, told ABC News the video shows the officers “handled it in the best way they could … given the situation that they had in front of them.”
In a cell phone video posted online, the security guard who initially confronts Mr Dukes can be heard telling police officers: “He’s stealing hospital property, basically, by leaving. I don’t care if he was coming back, that’s stealing.”
The officers involved remain on active duty. FHN Memorial Hospital referred The Independent to a third party public relations company for comment, but a subsequent request to that company was not returned.
