Jussie Smollett’s special treatment began long before prosecutors’ stunning call to drop the case — and included a private jail cell and a mere 16 hours of lightweight community service.
Jussie Smollett’s special treatment began long before prosecutors’ stunning call to drop the case — and included a private jail cell and a mere 16 hours of lightweight community service.
“This looks like because he’s an actor, a person of influence, he got treated differently than anybody else,” Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday on ABC’s “Good Morning America.”
Emanuel — who on Tuesday blasted the handling of the case as a “whitewash of justice” — was remarking on the head-scratching decision to abandon the 16-count felony case against the star of TV’s “Empire.”
But the assessment could be extended to a series of seemingly sweetheart concessions Smollett, 36, received from the moment he surrendered for questioning in the wee hours of Feb. 21.
“At no point while in the 001st [Police] District, was Smollett handcuffed, placed in a cell or subjected to the media,” according to official reports obtained by public-safety watchdog CWBChicago through a Freedom of Information Act request.
Smollett was “placed into an unmarked police vehicle, with tinted windows, which was located inside the 001st District sally port” for the ride from the police station to Cook County Jail, the documents revealed.
Not in any rush, the cops offered to make a pit stop for Smollett along the way.
“While in route, [a cop] offered Smollett breakfast, coffee or something to drink, which Smollett declined,” the papers said.
Instead, the $65,000-per-episode actor had a different kind of order for authorities.
“At the request of Smollett,” a Chicago cop asked a Cook County Sheriff’s Department lieutenant at the jail, “if Smollett could be kept segregated and housed alone until his attendance in bond court.
