Former CPD sergeant indicted for kidnapping, sexually assaulting transgender woman in 2019
CHICAGO (CBS) -- A former Chicago police sergeant has been indicted on federal charges accusing him of kidnapping and sexual assault in March 2019.
James Sajdak, 64, pleaded not guilty to a federal civil rights charge on Wednesday. He is due back in court on Oct. 12.
The indictment against Sajdak includes few details, but Sajdak and the city of Chicago are also facing a federal lawsuit from the incident.
Tyshee Featherstone, a transgender woman, sued Sajdak and the city in 2019, accusing Sajdak of sexually assaulting her on March 5, 2019.
Featherstone's lawsuit accuses Sajdak of approaching her near Fifth and Cicero avenues that evening while in uniform, driving a marked police car, and asking her what she was doing there.
"The Sergeant told her told her that she had no choice except to perform a sex act on him, 'because that's what you do or you will go to jail,'" Featherstone's lawsuit states.
Sajdak then ordered Featherstone to get into the front passenger seat of his squad car, and drove her to a secluded area near Kostner Avenue and Lexington Street, overlooking the Eisenhower Expressway, and ordered her to give him her phone number, according to her lawsuit.
The sergeant told her "he comes out there frequently and that Tyshee would become one of his regulars," the lawsuit states.
Sadjak then closed the cover of his police computer, exposed himself, and demanded Featherstone perform a sex act on him, according to her lawsuit. She complied out of fear, and then Sadjak left her in an alley, where she spit what she believed to be his semen into a bottle.
A friend then took Featherstone to Rush University Medical Center, where Featherstone reported the sexual assault, and gave hospital staff the bottle she had spit into, according to the lawsuit.
The lawsuit also claims the city "knew or was recklessly blind to" a pattern of misconduct by Sadjak. According to the lawsuit, Sadjak had faced at least 44 complaints of misconduct as of 2019.