Caine, 47, said police there have pulled him over repeatedly for traffic violations and once tried to search his home over a false domestic dispute call. He says one officer, Benjamin Laird of the River Forest Police Department, has targeted him for arrest, made racially-charged comments and falsely accused him of assaulting a police officer. Laird arrested Caine twice in July. Caine was arrested on July 15, for resisting a police officer and aggravated assault against Laird, and on July 30 for driving with a suspended license and an open container of alcohol. On the suspended license arrest, Caine was initially stopped for playing his stereo too loud.
James O’Shea, River Forest deputy chief of police, declined comment on the pending criminal cases against Caine, but he said in an email response to questions that River Forest police were not targeting him. He confirmed that Caine also was arrested by the Forest Park police in 2012 for driving under the influence, and by Oak Park police in 2013 for driving with a suspended license.
Caine went public with his charges of harassment on Aug. 1 to David Protess, president of the nonprofit Chicago Innocence Project and a former Medill journalism professor who helped free Caine. Protess wrote about the situation in a column for the Huffington Post. Caine also appeared on the television talk show Windy City Live on Aug. 6, telling host Val Warner, “[Laird] likes to harass me. Because I don’t commit crimes and don’t do anything, there’s nothing for them to really get me on, so he’d get me on traffic stuff.”