John Jefferson
Samantha Steele (Cook County Board of Review).
An elected official in Chicago was arrested this week after she drove drunk, crashed her car, and then berated a police officer about the size of his penis, according to law enforcement.
Samantha Steele, 45, a Democrat, was first elected to the Second District of the Cook County Board of Review in 2022.
Now, after an ill-fated Sunday drive, she faces one misdemeanor count of driving while under the influence.
The incident occurred sometime after 8 p.m. on Nov. 10 on a stretch of North Ashland Avenue, near the Winnemac and Wolcott Gardens neighborhoods of the Windy City.
There, police came across a car wreck, according to a report obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times. Two vehicles evidenced “extensive” damage and Steele was found lying on the sidewalk, police allege.
The recently-minted commissioner was allegedly forthcoming about the fender bender — telling the responding officer she crashed her Dodge Charger into a parked Subaru Forester while making a wide right turn off Winnemac Avenue and onto Ashland Avenue.
“I observed her eyes were bloodshot and glassy,” one of the officers wrote in their report. “I also detected a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from her breath as she spoke.”
Police say there was additional physical evidence that led to the DUI charge: an open bottle of red wine on the passenger side floor.
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Steele allegedly declined to perform field sobriety tests when asked to do so, according to police. When police directly asked her how much she had to drink that night, the elected official allegedly replied: “I want my lawyer, and I am not talking to you.”
But talk she did, police say.
“Is your penis that small?” Steele allegedly asked one of the officers who handcuffed her. This question was posed “repeatedly,” police say.
There was no indication why that body-focused question was asked of the officer.
Later, however, Steele allegedly did not call her defense attorney at all. Instead, she phoned a fellow elected official.
After being arrested, she asked Scott Britton, a member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, to serve as her lawyer, according to law enforcement. Britton for his part, reportedly said he does not practice criminal law and then referred Steele to another attorney.
Steele complained of head pain during her arrest and was taken to a hospital police said.
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The defendant’s elected position puts her in charge of property tax appeals, among other tax-related duties. She is a “certified Level III Assessor/Appraiser” with over 15 years of experience in the field of property valuation, according to her county profile.
“Commissioner Steele previously served as a County Assessor in the state of Indiana, where she was the first Democrat elected county-wide in more than 30 years,” the profile reads. “In this role she implemented the use of innovative regression models to settle a backlog of property tax appeals en masse, addressed appeals at the Indiana Board of Tax Review, and taught extensively on assessment topics.”
Steele is not in custody as of this writing.
She is currently slated to appear in court on Dec. 27.
Law&Crime reached out to the Chicago Police Department for additional details on this story but no response was immediately forthcoming at the time of publication.
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