County official charged with DUI will keep driver's license, judge rules
Appearing in court for her first hearing in a DUI case, a Cook County elected official successfully fought off an effort to revoke her driver’s license on Friday, after her defense lawyer aggressively questioned the arresting Chicago Police Department officer.
Samantha Steele — a first-term Democratic member of the county’s property-tax appeal panel — was arrested last month on Chicago’s North Side and charged with driving under the influence after crashing a vehicle into parked cars.
Prosecutors argued her license should be revoked, but Steele’s lawyer, John Fotopoulos, convinced Associate Judge Athena James Frentzas to block the revocation, arguing CPD Officer Danny Yu failed to properly warn Steele before the Cook County Board of Review commissioner refused to submit to DUI testing.
Fotopoulos said Yu, a seven-year CPD veteran, “meant well” but made technical mistakes in the arrest on Nov. 10 on Ashland Avenue.
“The officer clearly doesn’t do a lot of DUI arrests,” Fotopoulos told the judge. “The CPD probably needs more training in DUIs.”
In his testimony, Yu repeated the assertion he made in the police report that Steele repeatedly made crass comments about the size of his penis.
“She repeatedly said, 'Is your penis small?’ and ‘I refuse to answer any of your questions,’” Yu said under oath at the Daley Center.
Fotopoulos shot back: “What about the size of your penis has to do with her refusal?”
The defense lawyer then alleged Yu told Steele, “You Democrats are going to have to start following the law now.”
Neither that nor the alleged comment about penis size were caught on police body camera footage because they were made at a hospital where Steele was treated after the accident and the cameras were turned off there.
But videos taken at the scene show Steele repeatedly let the officers know she was a country elected official and refused to cooperate, at one point declining to follow orders to get out of the heavily damaged vehicle she was driving.
Frentzas at first said she found Yu credible and denied the motion from Steele’s lawyer to block the license revocation, which the state’s attorney’s office had wanted. She reversed herself after Fotopoulos objected and Yu was brought back to the witness stand, where the defense lawyer grilled him again.
Steele left the courtroom without commenting. Fotopoulos also declined to comment, as did prosecutors.
The next court hearing in the case was scheduled for Feb. 14.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team.