During her arrest for a DUI in Chicago earlier this month, a Democratic member of the obscure but influential Cook County Board of Review made sure the cops at the scene of the crash she caused knew they were dealing with a politician.
In police body camera videos of the incident in Andersonville on Nov. 11 obtained by WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times this week, Review Board Commissioner Samantha Steele repeatedly refused to cooperate with responding officers, including the officers' requests to stand off the police. The wrecked car she was driving.
One of the officers told her: “Ma’am, if you don’t get out of the car… I will help you get out, and you don’t want to.”
“You don't want that!” “I'm an elected official,” Steele responded.
“Elected official what?” – asked the officer.
“Cook County,” Steele told him.
When the officer asked her name, Steele extended her hand and said, “I'm Sam.”
The policeman replied: “Sam who?” But Steele did not give her full name to police at that point.
“She says she's an elected official in Cook County,” the officer told the other cops. Steele then said, “I don't want to be in the video.”
But police told her she was already in the video and they continued to record the interaction with Steele.
Despite numerous requests, Steele did not initially present officers with her driver's license or get out of the car. She sat in the driver's seat, drank from what appeared to be a bottle of water and used her cell phone to call the person she described several times as her attorney — Democratic Cook County Commissioner Scott Britton of Glenview.
She only gave her driver's license to police and got out of the car after Britton advised her by phone to do so.
After Britton arrived at the scene in the 5000 block of North Ashland Avenue, Steele said she was not drinking wine from the bottle in the car. “Don't say anything,” Bretton interrupted. Don't say anything.”
Two days after the arrest, Britton said he was not a defense attorney and would not represent Steele in her case. Britton said Steele has a lawyer but did not say who the lawyer was.
The three-member review board has the authority to adjudicate property tax appeals, effectively lowering your tax bills. Steele lives in Evanston, representing a review board district that covers much of Chicago's North Side and the northern suburbs.
The video of her arrest also shows the moment police searched the car Steele was driving and discovered what records indicate was a half-empty bottle of red wine near the front passenger seat. In the video, officers joke that the cabernet sauvignon was “good stuff” and that the mint they also found “didn't help” — an apparent reference to the strong odor of alcohol that officers claim they detected on Steele's breath.
After initially refusing to take a field sobriety test, Steele agreed to do so, but then Steele said she had hurt her head in the accident and wanted to take an ambulance to receive treatment. She was handcuffed again and placed in an ambulance that took her to the hospital, according to police reports.
Steele was soon transported to the Lincoln Police Department in Chicago, where she allegedly made lewd comments to an officer, records show. The officer wrote in his report that Steele “repeatedly told him, ‘Is your penis that small?’”
But the newly released video does not include Steele making those comments, which were allegedly said at the hospital. None of these recordings include footage from the hospital.
Police charged Steele with one misdemeanor count of driving under the influence. She has not commented publicly on the case. Records show her court date is December 27.
The next review board meeting is scheduled for December 2. Steele, 45, was first elected to the review board in 2022, after serving as an elected official in an Indiana county.
The Democratic nominee and her chief of staff are facing a federal whistleblower lawsuit recently filed by her former aide Frank Calabrese, who obtained body camera footage of the arrest through an open police records request and shared it with WBEZ and the Chicago Sun-Times. .
Earlier this year, Steele advocated giving a review board job to a former northwest Indiana politician who pleaded guilty in a federal case.
It also finds itself at the center of a high-stakes dispute over the property tax bill the Chicago Bears pay for the old Arlington Park racetrack property, where the football team is considering building a new stadium.
Dan Mahalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ's government and politics team. Tom Shuba is criminal justice editor for the Sun-Times.
