Elburn sued for wrongful arrest

A man has sued the village of Elburn claiming his Constitutional rights were violated when he was wrongly arrested by police and detained for three hours in December 2010.

Roger Gilbert filed the suit in federal court this week, seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages for the Dec. 22 encounter.

In the suit, Gilbert says he is a U.S. citizen who has lived in South Korea the past three years as an English teacher.

Gilbert was visiting relatives in Illinois for Christmas and he and his younger brother took the train into Chicago for a day. After they left the Elburn train station, police pulled Gilbert over for speeding.

Gilbert showed officers his South Korean license, which is sufficient to drive in Illinois as long as the person is visiting, but he was arrested anyway for having an expired license, the suit contends.

“These officers should know the law. It’s their job to enforce the law. Obviously, they were ignorant of the law,” said Gilbert’s attorney, Lawrence Jackowiak.

The suit claims Gilbert tried to tell officers about the law, but he was arrested anyway. Gilbert also had his uncle, a Wheaton police officer, call the Elburn jail to explain, but his efforts were rebuffed.

Finally, one of the officers called the state’s attorney’s office for an explanation and released Gilberts, the suit states.

The suit argues that the officers — not identified in the suit — acted “willfully and wantonly, maliciously, and with a conscious disregard and deliberate indifference to (Gilbert’s) rights.”

Jackowiak did not say whether officers apologized after Gilbert was released. Jackowiak said an officer drove Gilbert’s car to the Elburn station and it was not searched.

The suit claims Gilbert’s Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable seizure were violated.

Messages left for Elburn Police Chief Steve Smith and Village Attorney Robert Britz were not immediately returned.

Gilbert is back in South Korea and was not available for comment Friday.

An initial court hearing has not been set.