Chicago’s former police chief asked his driver to stake the panties she was wearing on the outcome of a Bears game, court filings have claimed.
Superintendent Eddie Johnson was sacked in disgrace in 2019 after he was found asleep at the wheel of his police car, having knocked back 10 drinks at a downtown bar and then lied about it.
Fresh details have now emerged of the claims made by his former assistant Cynthia Donald who is suing him over years of ‘sexual and emotional torture’ she suffered at his hands.
Donald, 48, had accompanied Johnson and his wife on an October 2019 trip to London where the Bears were due to play the Oakland Raiders, according to a friend who was also there.
As they discussed a bet on the game Johnson said: ‘OK, well, if the Raiders lose, I get to have the panties that Cynthia has on right now,’ the friend told the court.
Former Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson (pictured) asked his driver to stake the panties she was wearing on the outcome of a Bears game
Former driver Cynthia Donald, 48, is suing Johnson for years of ‘sexual and emotional torture’
Johnson and Donald had travelled to London to watch the Bears take on the Oakland Raiders
‘And I told him, ‘Look, I don’t have anything to do with that. At this point, the bet is off because that’s inappropriate’,’ she added.
The lawsuit claims he intentionally moved Donald onto his security detail in 2016 because he was attracted to her then, three months later, pushed her onto a couch, took off her pants and performed oral sex on her without her permission.
He then ejaculated on her, the lawsuit claims, and said: ‘Now you belong to me.’
The relationship was ‘never consensual’, the friend’s statement claims.
‘I feel like he took advantage of her because of his title and the position he held with the city, and anybody that’s not on his level, he treats like the gum on the bottom of his shoe,’ she adds.
‘She was frightened. The situation pretty much put her career down the drain.’
The married 63-year-old has admitted sending Donald a photo of his penis, insisting she urged him to do so.
Johnson (pictured with his wife Nakia) eventually admitted a ‘lapse of judgement’, after being found asleep at the wheel, having originally blamed blood pressure medication
Chicago officials eventually released body camera footage from officers who approached the car, which had been illegally parked in the middle of an intersection for two hours
But another friend of Donald’s said she ‘sounded like she was disgusted by it’.
‘She goes, ‘This is what this guy had the nerve to send me today’,’ the friend remarked.
Donald joined Johnson’s security detail in 2016 and became his personal driver six months later.
‘For more than three years, I was subjected to unwanted, uninvited sexual abuse, and intimidation in a hostile environment by my boss,’ she told a press conference in 2020.
The lawsuit claims Mayor Lori Lightfoot told Johnson to ‘dump’ Donald from his security detail and move her to a desk job
‘He referred to me by derogatory names and in demeaning ways.
‘He referred to me as his girl. At times I was able to avoid his advances, he would tell me ‘you got away this time’.
‘He made it clear I had to follow his orders, which included engaging in unwanted sexual acts with him in order to keep my job.’
Donald was with Johnson on the evening he was found drunk, and security cameras recorded them kissing in the city center Ceres bar.
She claims she had been ordered to accompany him to the bar where he drank ‘several large servings of rum’.
Johnson initially blamed his failure to take blood pressure medication when he was found slumped over the wheel of his police issue vehicle after it had been illegally parked in the middle of an intersection for two hours.
An inquiry found that Johnson had driven Donald back to police headquarters and then tried to return to his own house in the tony Bridgeport district but only made it as far as the Southside intersection before crashing out.
Police body camera footage later revealed an officer approaching him and asking: ‘Sir, you alright?’ and ‘You good, you have your ID?’ before Johnson flashed his ID through the window.
‘You just sitting here or you wanna go home?’ the cop asked, to which Johnson replied: ‘I’m good.’
‘You good, alright sir, you have a good night,’ the cop said before turning off his body camera.
Two days later he was hauled before then mayor Lori Lightfoot who ordered him to transfer Donald out of his staff, he claims in his own deposition.
‘Sources are telling me that you are having a sexual relationship with Ms. Donald, and I want that b—- gone from your office,’ he quoted her as saying.
‘This isn’t up for debate. I want her gone today, by the end of business.’
Donald was transferred to the records division at police headquarters, but her lawsuit claims that Johnson ‘continued to sexually assault Ms. Donald, including by calling her into his office and forcing unwanted sexual contact’.
Johnson says Donald was happy to maintain the relationship and suggested they get ‘burner phones’ to communicate.
Later, he claims, he gave her a loan and drove her to a meeting which turned out to be with the lawyers she was instructing to sue him.
‘She was hoodwinking her own attorneys and keeping it from them that she was continuing to have a friendly and cordial relationship’ he claims.
Lightwood fired Johnson in December 2019 citing a ‘series of ethical lapses’, a month after Donald took disability leave from the department.
Johnson has denied Donald’s claim of sexual harassment and assault describing it as ‘intentionally manufactured’.
US District Judge Elaine Bucklo is due to rule next month on Johnson’s motion to dismiss the case before trial.