A Chicago man sued several Evanston police officers earlier this month, claiming that they beat him so badly after a traffic stop that he needed stitches.

Lawyers for Sayyid Qadri, 22, of the 6600 block of N. Seeley Avenue, filed a federal lawsuit Sept. 2 accusing the officers of excessive force and conspiracy to cover-up Qadri’s injuries from the beating.

Qadri’s lawyer, Jon Loevy, said police officers tried to conceal the beating by taking his client into a bathroom at the police station, but that security video footage still recorded parts of the incident.

According to the written complaint filed by Qadri’s attorneys, an Evanston Police Department officer pulled Qadri over March 10 after he made an illegal turn on a red light on Ridge Avenue at 11 p.m.

When the officer discovered Qadri’s license was expired, he arrested Qadri.

The complaint alleges that when Qadri and the policeman entered the police station, Qadri asked if he could receive his traffic ticket and be allowed to leave.

But when Qadri persisted in asking for the ticket, the officer dragged him out of the police station’s office area and into a bathroom stall where he and another officer beat Qadri while two other officers stood guard, according to the complaint.

There were no video cameras in the bathroom stall, but the security tape shows Qadri emerging from the stall with blood on his shirt and face and being slammed against a bench in the bathroom and choked, the lawsuit states.

“They obviously took it to an unlawful level when they shoved him into that bathroom,” Loevy said.

According to the complaint, Qadri was handcuffed during the entire beating and bled profusely from a gash the officers inflicted above his left eye.

Someone called an ambulance, and one of the officers accompanied Qadri to Evanston Hospital, where he received six stitches for the gash, the complaint states.

Loevy said the police then created a story to explain Qadri’s injuries and filed false charges against him, saying he resisted arrest, damaged a pipe in the bathroom and assaulted police officers.

EPD Chief Frank Kaminski would not comment on the lawsuit, but the department issued a statement when the suit was filed, saying it referred the matter to the State’s Attorney’s Office of Professional Standards “shortly after” the incident.

“Since then, the State’s Attorney’s office has been actively investigating this matter and the City has been cooperating with the State’s Attorney’s Office regarding this investigation,” the statement said.

The EPD officers named in the suit were placed on administrative duty in March, according to the police statement.

Tom Stanton, a spokesman for the Cook County State’s Attorney, said the state of Illinois has not yet decided whether to charge the officers.

“There’s no charges at his point,” Stanton said Friday. “It’s a continuing investigation.”

Loevy said he could “only speculate” about the police officers’ motive for the alleged violence but that they might have thought Qadri had an “attitude.”

Loevy’s firm is the largest police brutality civil rights firm in Chicago.

Reach Alison Knezevich at [email protected].