Republican Cook County Commissioner Sean Morrison on Friday called for the resignation of Democratic Review Committee member Samantha Steele, who was arrested and charged with DUI in Chicago.

WBEZ and the Sun-Times first reported Steele’s arrest on Sunday — and detailed her about 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 it was the behavior toward police, more than the DUI arrest itself, that prompted him to issue a statement asking Steele to resign from the county’s three-member elected panel that rules on property tax appeals.

“We can’t have elected officials who demonstrate that this is the mindset that they have, that they have contempt for law enforcement,” Morrison said. “Someone like that probably shouldn’t be in office.”

Steele, 45, lives in Evanston and was first elected to the Board of Review in 2022, unseating an incumbent board commissioner in the Democratic primary. She previously served as assessor-elect 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 sustained “extensive” damage around 8:50 p.m. Sunday in the 5000 block of North Ashland Avenue. Steele told officers he was driving in another vehicle.

Officers noticed an open bottle of red wine on the passenger side floor of Steele’s car, records state.

“I noticed 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 field sobriety tests and when asked how much she had been drinking, she replied, “I want my lawyer and I’m not talking to you.”

In doing so, Steele showed “utter contempt and arrogance for the arresting officers who were out there doing their jobs,” Morrison said.

“If we have an elected official who has this kind of contempt and disrespect for our police officers, how can we ask citizens to have respect for police officers?” Morrison said.

Steele called Scott Britton, a Democratic member of the Cook County Board of Commissioners, to serve as his attorney the night of the crash, records show. Britton has since said he is not a criminal attorney and referred Steele to another attorney, whom he declined to identify.

Steel’s court date was scheduled for Dec. 27.

Steele represents the Review Board Sector 2which includes much of the north side of Chicago and the northern suburbs.

A Steele aide, Frank Calabrese, recently filed a warning 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 woke up to the center of the dispute over the Chicago Bears’ property tax bill for the old racetrack in Arlington Park, where the football team considered building a new stadium.

Dan Mihalopoulos is an investigative reporter on WBEZ’s Government and Politics team. Tom Schuba is the criminal justice editor for the Sun-Times.