Republican Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison on Friday called for the resignation of Democratic Board of Review member Samantha Steele, who was arrested and charged with DUI in Chicago.
WBEZ and the Sun-Times first reported on Steele’s arrest Sunday — and detailed her allegedly making lewd comments to a police officer. According to police reports, she repeatedly told a Chicago police officer, “Is your penis that small?”
Morrison said that behavior toward police, more than the DUI arrest itself, prompted him to issue a statement calling on Steele to resign from the three-member, elected county panel that rules on property tax appeals.
“We can’t have elected officials that demonstrate that’s their mindset that they carry, to have contempt for law enforcement,” Morrison said. “Someone like that should probably not be in office.”
Steele, 45, lives in Evanston and was first elected to the Board of Review in 2022, toppling an incumbent board commissioner in the Democratic primary. She previously was the elected assessor in Tippecanoe County, Indiana.
Steele has not publicly commented on her arrest and the misdemeanor DUI charge filed against her this week.
According to public records, officers found Steele lying on the sidewalk near two vehicles that suffered “extensive” damage at about 8:50 p.m. Sunday, in the 5000 block of North Ashland Avenue. Steele told officers she drove into another vehicle.
Officers spotted an open bottle of red wine on the floor of the passenger side of Steele’s car, the records allege.
“I observed her eyes were bloodshot and glassy,” an officer wrote in a report. “I also detected a strong odor of alcoholic beverage coming from her breath as she spoke.”
The officer said Steele refused to perform field sobriety tests and when asked how much she had had to drink, she replied, “I want my lawyer, and I am not talking to you.”
In doing so, Steele showed “total disregard and arrogance toward the arresting officers who were there doing their jobs,” Morrison said.
“If we have an elected official that has that kind of disdain and disrespect for our police officers, how can we ask the general citizenry to have respect for police officers?” Morrison said.
Steele summoned Scott Britton, a Democratic member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, to serve as her lawyer on the evening of the crash, records show. Britton has since said he is not a criminal attorney and referred Steele to another lawyer, whom he declined to identify.
Steel’s court date was scheduled for Dec. 27.
Steele represents the Board of Review’s District 2, which includes much of the North Side of Chicago and the northern suburbs.
An aide to Steele, Frank Calabrese, recently filed a whistleblower lawsuit against her and her chief of staff in federal court.
Earlier in the year, Steele defended giving a county job to a former northwest Indiana politician who had pleaded guilty in a federal case.
And Steele has found herself at the center of the dispute over the Chicago Bears’ property tax bill for the old Arlington Park racecourse property, where the football team has considered building a new stadium.
Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government & Politics Team. Tom Schuba is a criminal justice editor for the Sun-Times.