After nearly a year-long investigation, the Chicago Police Department said the misconduct of one of its officers has been proven after he pleaded guilty to vandalizing an elderly rabbi’s car.
The news comes just days after The Daily Wire first reported that Mohammed Khan, 35, was arrested last March after he broke the side mirrors off of the vehicle of 77-year-old Rabbi Abraham Wineberg who was visiting his granddaughter and great-grandchildren in Chicago’s West Rogers Park Neighborhood. His family believes the car was targeted because it belonged to a Jew.
“It’s quite interesting that just days after The Daily Wire published on Officer Khan’s vandalism, the Chicago Police finally took action,” Wineberg’s granddaughter’s husband, Yisroel Wolf said. “They have not been forthcoming with information over the past year, so I do not think this is a coincidence.”
Weinberg’s family received an email every few months from the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs telling him that their investigation into his complaint about Khan was still ongoing. But on Tuesday they were notified the investigation was complete, and that Khan’s misconduct had been proven.
Wolf said he called the police after receiving the email, who told him Khan had been temporarily stripped of his policing duties and will undergo an internal process to determine what action to take.
“There is an internal investigation into this, and the process remains ongoing,” a spokesperson for the Chicago Police Department told The Daily Wire. The spokesperson did not immediately give a clarification after being presented with the email sent to Wolf.
Khan was seen in surveillance footage from around 2:30 a.m. on March 3, 2024, where he first issued a parking ticket to Wineberg, who was illegally parked in Khan’s private handicapped spot, issued to accommodate Khan’s handicapped family member. Khan was off duty at the time and driving his personal vehicle.
Footage shows Khan peering through the rear window at Jewish and Hebrew prayer books and paraphernalia. He then returned on foot and was seen in the footage kicking off one of the vehicle’s mirrors, which was left dangling by its wire. A few minutes later, he is seen from another angle returning again to break the other mirror, which Wineberg’s family says was completely cut off with a tool. The vehicle was then later towed.
The next morning, Khan is seen on footage talking to a second police officer, who issued another ticket around 10 a.m. Khan — whom the family had never spoken to before — told Wolf that morning that he was unsure who damaged the vehicle.
“When we confronted him the next day, he tried to use his status as a police officer to get out of the crime, telling me ‘I’m a police officer, I would never do such a thing, I don’t know what you’re talking about.’” Wineberg told The Daily Wire. “That’s how we realized he was the one who wrote the ticket.”
The ticket issued, which was viewed by The Daily Wire, has an illegible signature in the “issued by” section.
“He didn’t legibly sign his name or put his badge number on the ticket, so he knew he was doing something wrong,” Wolf said.
Wolf added that he thought it was unusual the car was towed because after speaking to his neighbors, it’s more typical to just ticket illegally parked cars.
“I believe the act is deeper than road rage because Khan left the scene and then returned twice, once with a tool to cut the mirror,” Wolf said. “It is evident that Khan targeted the car because it belonged to a Jew.”
Khan was sentenced to 40 hours of community service, 10 hours of anger management, and $800 to pay for damages, according to Wolf.
The family filed a complaint to the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois Eastern Division earlier this month to seek action. The complaint seeks damages under the Fourth Amendment, Fourteenth Amendment, and common law of the State of Illinois for malicious acts that damage property.
The suit alleges that the incident caused Wineberg “a great amount of stress and emotional distress” which was compounded “by the realization that Khan had evidently acted in such a fashion after noticing that the owner of the car was likely Jewish.”
Wolf said the ordeal was deeply upsetting for his family because his wife’s grandparents were coming to meet his newborn daughter for the first time and had to drive home in an unsafe vehicle.
“He left very upset, it pretty much ruined the entire weekend for him and their drive back to Michigan was very scary because my grandmother had to act as the mirror and look out for him because we could only tape on one mirror as the other was missing,” Wolf said. “For people their age, that is very scary.”
Wolf said Wineberg accidentally parked in the handicapped spot because it was dark and he was unfamiliar with the neighborhood.
Khan has been a full-time, active Chicago police officer since 2017, according to public records.
