CHICAGO — A veteran Chicago police supervisor has been relieved of his police powers while officials investigate allegations of off-duty misconduct.
The move comes after Instagram videos posted Sunday showed men engaged in an altercation at a downtown venue over the weekend.
In one clip, a man looks down the length of a bar, angry at another man standing several feet away.
“What’s up with that?” someone asks.
“I dunno,” replies the apparent source of irritation, identified by Instagram users as Andrew Dakuras, a 29-year veteran of CPD.
A second clip is much more intense.
In it, the man identified as Dakuras, who appeared calm in the first clip, is irate, screaming obscenities and insults while jabbing his finger in the face of a man standing calmly with his arms at his side.
“You’re fucking nobody, n****,” the angry man appears to say. As he is led away, a bystander remarks that he had been “dropping N-bombs.”
In a third clip, the man identified as Dakuras appears calm again.
“Ain’t you a police officer?” asks the man who has been recording the incident.
“Not me, dude. I ain’t nobody, dude.”
Here are the Instagram videos. Be advised that they contain strong language.
On Tuesday, a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department confirmed that the incident is under investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. However, the spokesperson said they could not identify the officer or officers who were under investigation by name.
Asked for the employment status of Lt. Andrew Dakuras, the spokesperson said he had been relieved of his police powers earlier in the day.
Before being relieved of his powers, Dakuras, 55, was assigned to the Near North (18th) District.
Wrigleyville case
Three years ago, a federal jury awarded a man $54,000 after he sued the city and Dakuras, claiming Dakuras punched him while working undercover at the Cubs World Series victory celebrations in 2016.
Asher Kaufman, who was 40 when the Cubs won the World Series on November 2, 2016, decided to walk from his Lakeview home to Wrigley Field with his girlfriend and another friend to join the huge street party that overtook Wrigleyville after the game.
Along the way, they stopped to buy a beer and a half-pint of Crown Royal, according to the federal suit Kaufman later filed. One uniformed cop asked Kaufman to hurry up and drink his beer as he walked.
“You got it,” Kaufman reportedly replied. Then, as the group reached Gingerman Tavern, 3740 North Clark, an undercover cop grabbed Kaufman, snatched his beer, grabbed his Crown Royal, and completely searched Kaufman, according to the allegations.
Kaufman, who said he thought the man was a bar bouncer, asked for his beer back, but the undercover cop allegedly told him, “F**k you, get the f**k out of here.”
At that point, another undercover cop, alleged to be Dakuras, ran up and struck Kaufman in the chest, according to the suit.
“Come on, mother f***er. Let’s go,” Dakuras allegedly said before hitting Kaufman again and taking the phone Kaufman was carrying. The alleged assault continued while Kaufman, still unaware that Dakuras was a cop, pleaded with a uniformed officer for help, the lawsuit said. Eventually, several uniformed officers pounced on Kaufman.
“I’m an undercover cop. You’re f***ed now,” Dakuras allegedly told Kaufman.
“I love this part. Free shots,” Dakuras said before striking Kaufman repeatedly in the head while other officers held Kaufman, the suit claimed. Dakuras arrested Kaufman and drove him to Weiss Hospital for treatment.
Kaufman was charged with resisting police, battery, and drinking alcohol on the public way, according to CPD records. A judge convicted him of misdemeanor resisting police during a bench trial the next year.
The jury awarded Kaufman $35,000 from the city, $18,000 from Dakuras, and $700 for the phone he said police never returned. The jury did not return any awards in connection with the allegations Kaufman made against a second officer.
Dakuras, a sergeant at the time of the Wrigleyville incident, was promoted to lieutenant in 2020, according to CPD records.
Special honors
The year before being promoted, Dakuras was given special recognition for rescuing a woman from her “altered state” boyfriend, who was found choking and biting flesh from her face in a Streeterville apartment.
On an evening in June 2019, Dakuras responded to a “person calling for help” dispatch in the 400 block of North McClurg. Stepping off of the elevator, Dakuras heard the 27-year-old victim crying, “Please help me. He is killing me. Please help.”
Dakuras forced his way through the reinforced door and found the woman sitting on the kitchen floor with her boyfriend, choking her from behind with his forearm and biting the flesh from her cheek and face, officials said.
After several attempts to break the man’s grip failed, Dakuras discharged an entire can of pepper spray into the boyfriend’s mouth, which caused the man to loosen his grip on the woman.
“Not only had the man been eating at her face, he had bit her ear halfway off,” the Chicago Police Memorial Foundation said in a press release honoring Dakuras.
The boyfriend continued to struggle as Dakuras tried to handcuff him. At one point during the six-minute fight, the man bit down on Dakuras’ forearm. The boyfriend kept his mouth clamped on Dakuras’ arm despite Dakuras’ attempts to free himself by pushing on pressure points, including the man’s eye sockets.
Eventually, backup officers arrived and helped Dakuras detain the boyfriend. They later learned that during the struggle with Dakuras, the man was trying to crawl to another room where he had stored a loaded handgun, the foundation said.
The man, his girlfriend, and Dakuras were all treated at Northwestern Memorial Hospital.
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