A mother filed an excessive force lawsuit Tuesday against the Chicago Police Department and two officers, claiming they roughed up her 13-year-old son last summer after breaking up a group of boys drumming on buckets in the West Englewood neighborhood.

Chantey Newsom filed the suit Tuesday in U.S. District Court. She claims her teenage son -- identified only as I.M. -- was with his friends, drumming on buckets near the corner of 67th Street and Ashland Avenue the night of July 31, 2012, when a police car approached them.

The boys ran from police because they thought someone complained about the noise, Newsom claims. The suit asserts the boys were not out past curfew and were not breaking any law.

She claims her son -- then 13 -- never heard police command him to stop running, the suit said. An officer who caught up to him in an alley allegedly tackled her son, threw him against a metal gate, then threw him to the ground.

Other officers allegedly began to kick and knee the boy in his upper body until he started to bleed from the head, the suit claims.

However, Newsom alleges police told her the teen fell and hurt himself while running from police. She was out of town at the time of the incident, and police called her about two hours after her son's arrest, according to the suit.

The boy was then taken to a local hospital, where doctors stitched up a wound above his left eyebrow before his mother could consent to the procedure.

He was eventually taken to the Englewood District Police Station and released to an aunt. He was not charged or cited, the suit said.

A spokesman for the city's Law Department could not be reached for comment Tuesday night.

The mother claims the officers' use of excessive force violated her son's Fourth Amendment rights. She is seeking more than $350,000 in damages.

--Contact: Atty. Phillip L. Coffey, (312) 850-2600.
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