News

On January 17, 2025, we filed a seven-count complaint against the Woodridge Police Department and several officers on behalf of our client, Derrick House. The lawsuit stems from a traumatic incident on January 19, 2024, when Derrick was wrongfully stopped at gunpoint, handcuffed, and threatened by police—despite driving a vehicle that clearly did not match the suspect description. This was not only poor police work but a clear case of racial profiling. Derrick survived the encounter, but its emotional toll remains. We are pursuing justice to hold the officers accountable and send a message that communities deserve better. To view the complaint and body cam footage, see below.

January 17, 2025, Ekl, Williams & Provenzale LLC filed a 7-count complaint against the Woodridge Police Department and several of its officers on behalf of our client, Derrick House. A copy of the complaint, and police body camera video footage of what happened on January 19, 2024.

On January 19, 2024, Derrick was driving home from Costco to make dinner with his wife and kids when an unmarked Woodridge squad car rushed up and abruptly cut in front of him, pinning his car to the curb. Immediately, in sheer terror and unimaginable stress and tension for Derrick, multiple Woodridge police officers surrounded Derrick, standing feet away from Derrick, pointing their guns at his head, barking out contradictory commands, and threatening to kill him.

They had the wrong man and the wrong car for the report they were acting on, and everything about Derrick and his car told the involved officers before any of this happened that they had the wrong car – wrong number of occupants; wrong make of VW; wrong color of car; and most incredulously, the wrong plate – in fact, the plates were so obviously not close, much less the same, that it only took a matter of seconds from when Derrick was placed in handcuffs, in front of a street full of Derrick’s DuPage neighbors, for all of the involved officers to know it was the wrong car. The reason this happened is not just a tragic mistake, not just bad police work; it happened because Derrick was a black man driving a VW SUV.

Perhaps not surprisingly, the defendants say they acted reasonably, even though the real suspects remained in the area and were allowed to remain a threat to the community. We cannot disagree more.

Derrick escaped those perilous moments with his life that day, but he has not escaped, and likely never will, the terror and turmoil of those moments. Patrick Provenzale and his colleagues at Ekl, Williams & Provenzale LLC will be seeking justice for Derrick in this case, to hold the responsible parties accountable to Derrick and his family for the harm caused, and to send a clear message to police departments that this kind of police work is not reasonable, and that the communities they serve – the very people who vest police with the extraordinary powers they have – deserve better. Read the Complaint: Complaint.pdf