The manager of a Lakeview comedy club has been charged with assaulting a federal immigration officer during a melee Friday that quickly went viral on social media.
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Nathan Griffin, 24, who manages the Laugh Factory at 3175 N. Broadway, was charged in a criminal complaint made public Monday with one count of forcibly assaulting and interfering with a federal agent in the performance of his official duties. Griffin appeared before a U.S. magistrate judge Friday evening and was released on a recognizance bond, court records show. A preliminary hearing was set for 1 p.m. Tuesday.
Videos of the incident were shared widely on social media, with users, as well as Griffin’s mother, calling the incident a kidnapping and claiming Griffin did not make contact with any of the officers at the scene.
The five-page criminal complaint, however, said that body camera footage showed Griffin closed a car door on a U.S. Border Patrol agent’s leg as the agent was trying get get out of his vehicle, causing a “small gouge and scrapes.”
According to the complaint, agents were in the area looking for a body camera “they believed might have been dropped” during a prior immigration related arrest. After stopping the car, one of the agents was exiting the vehicle when he “felt pain and pressure on his leg” and saw Griffin “forcibly trying to close the door.”
The agent was able to push the door open. Griffin, meanwhile, refused to let go of the door handle and a nearby scaffolding “and passively resisted being taken into custody,” the complaint alleged.
In a call with the Tribune Friday night, however, Laugh Factory’s president of operations Curtis Flagg said Griffin was walking with his mother from the direction of Belmont Avenue and Broadway when he saw a man getting detained. As he approached, the manager tried to intervene verbally, Flagg said.
“No physical contact, no touching,” Flagg said. “Then they grabbed him.”
Flagg, who was not at the scene but was called during the confrontation and received a flurry of videos of what had happened afterward, said agents apparently tackled the manager onto the ground with his mother in tow. The manager was then placed in an unmarked vehicle that sped east on Belmont then south on DuSable Lake Shore Drive.
In a statement, Chicago police said officers observed federal agents engaged in a “physical altercation” with two individuals after responding to a call of a battery in progress near the Laugh Factory at about 9:20 a.m. As a crowd gathered, officers “worked to de-escalate and conduct crowd control to ensure all those who had gathered at the location remained safe,” police stated.
Officers did not make any arrests and left after the area was cleared, police added.
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