City Agrees To Pay Out Millions In Cases Of Police Wrongdoing

By aaroncynic in News on Mar 12, 2013 9:40PM

The City Council Finance Committee approved three settlements Monday stemming from lawsuits over police abuse.

The Sun-Times reports $27.3 million was approved to settle the suits at $4.5 million, $1.8 million and $515,000. The smallest goes to a woman injured in a traffic accident with a Chicago Police officer and the $1.8 million goes to James Andrews, who confessed to a double murder in 1983 after police torture linked to John Burge. Andrews’ conviction was overturned in 2007.

The largest settlement — $4.5 million — will go to the family of Rekia Boyd, who was shot and killed by an off-duty Chicago police officer last year. Boyd was struck by a bullet to her head after officer Dante Servin arrived to check on a reported disturbance. Servin opened fire on a man accompanying Boyd, but instead struck Boyd, killing her. Melvin Brooks, an attorney for the family told the Sun-Times the settlement would bring “some closure in terms of getting the matter resolved at this point without having to deal with two to three years of lengthy litigation.”

So far the city has approved more than $35 million in settlements surrounding police wrongdoing, including cases related to John Burge, a mentally ill woman released into a neighborhood where she was later sexually assaulted and severely beaten, and a man shot by an officer in 2011. The city earmarked a portion of its 2013 budget to deal with lawsuit settlements, but that money is already gone.