A man with a long record of arrests for groping and attacking women is now in custody, but only after prosecutors dropped cases that were filed after a string of other women lodged complaints against him.
Hassan Flowers, 36, was arrested most recently on July 4 in Rogers Park after a 49-year-old woman told police he grabbed her breast over her clothing near Clark Street and Pratt Boulevard, according to court records. Officers detained Flowers after the woman flagged them down, and prosecutors said he admitted what he had done.
Hassan apologized to the woman, saying, “I thought you smelled good,” Assistant State’s Attorney John Meacham told Judge James Murphy III during Flowers’ detention hearing.
Meacham told the judge that Flowers stated he was “just going to go around and keep touching women.”
The prosecutor also ran down Flowers’ background, saying his convictions include a 2014 kidnapping with bodily harm that was originally filed as a criminal sexual assault and a 2019 aggravated battery in a public place.
“All right. I have heard enough on this,” Murphy said. “I have heard enough to detain the defendant based on the current actions and based on the defendant’s promise to continue going around and grabbing women.”
Meacham also revealed to Murphy that Flowers had “additional sex offense related arrests” this year that were dropped. CWBChicago decided to look into those cases.
Months of dropped cases
Public records show Flowers’ arrest on Independence Day came after a series of incidents that followed the same pattern: police arrested him and, after a short period, prosecutors quietly dismissed the charges.
On March 15, Chicago police arrested Flowers in the 500 block of South State Street after a 19-year-old DePaul University student accused him of sneaking up behind her inside a CVS, pressing his cane against her buttocks, and saying, “I know you want this.”
He was placed on electronic monitoring by Judge James Costello. A week later, Judge Peter Gonzalez lifted that requirement. Within weeks, Flowers was arrested again.
Loyola University police detained Flowers in the 6500 block of North Sheridan Road on April 5 after a campus employee said he pulled down his sweatpants and “humped” a cafeteria window. That same day, he allegedly groped a 41-year-old woman’s buttocks in Edgewater. Judge Ankur Srivastava ordered Flowers onto GPS monitoring, but prosecutors dropped all charges on April 28.
A month later, prosecutors dropped all charges in the March 15 case, too.
Within weeks, on June 19, Chicago police arrested Flowers at the intersection of Clarendon and Montrose after two women reported that he groped their buttocks, and one said he exposed himself when she confronted him. A witness backed up both women’s accounts. Despite that, only misdemeanor charges. Those charges were dropped on July 25 — three weeks after Murphy detained Flowers in the new felony case, which is still pending.
CWBChicago asked the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office why it dismissed all three misdemeanor cases against Flowers. Was it due to uncooperative witnesses? Insufficient evidence? The office did not respond.
Sourcing: This report is based on official court transcripts of Flowers’ detention hearing, purchased through the generosity of CWBChicago readers like you.
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