Chicago to settle police misconduct suits,bringing tab to $18.6 mil this year Update:Add in 4.7 mil.

stringer bell
stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
edited July 2016 in For The Grown & Sexy
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/breaking/ct-chicago-police-misconduct-settlements-met-0716-20160715-story.html
The city is poised to pay a combined $4.3 million to settle separate Chicago police misconduct lawsuits involving the fatal shooting of a motorist on the Northwest Side and a police raid by a corrupt team of officers on the home of an off-duty firefighter a decade ago.

The City Council's Finance Committee is scheduled to consider the payouts — $3.75 million for the family of shooting victim Esau Castellanos and another $550,000 for Robert Cook in the botched raid — at its monthly meeting Tuesday, according to the committee's online agenda. The settlements would then go before the full council for a vote Wednesday.

The settlements would bring the total paid out so far this year by Mayor Rahm Emanuel's administration for police misconduct to $18.6 million. Agreements to settle at least two other high-profile police shooting cases have been reached in court, but the dollar amounts have not yet been made public.


Law Department spokesman Bill McCaffrey would not comment Friday on the cases before the Finance Committee because the settlements are pending.

The March 2013 shooting of Castellanos was detailed in a front-page story in the Tribune in January that revealed the FBI and Cook County state's attorney's office had launched a joint criminal investigation into the officers' conduct. The probe was still ongoing as of Friday, according to representatives of both agencies.

According to police accounts, on the night of the shooting, tactical Officers Shawn Lawryn and Juan Martinez had chased Castellanos' Honda Civic at a high rate of speed for several blocks before Castellanos sideswiped a car and crashed near Wilson and Kimball avenues.

Martinez said he trained the car's spotlight on Castellanos and that he and Lawryn got out of the car and told Castellanos to show his hands. Martinez said he saw Castellanos point a blue steel revolver at him. Lawryn was less sure of the kind of handgun, but he was certain that Castellanos had a gun.

Both officers claimed that as they approached the wreckage, Castellanos opened fire, forcing them to dive to the ground to dodge the bullets before they returned fire. Lawryn fired 15 shots, Martinez four. Castellanos was hit three times — in the chest and back, and a graze wound to the head — and died at the scene.

Despite the officers' version of events, no gun was found on Castellanos or anywhere in the car. Martinez, who initially told detectives he had been shot in the head, was actually never shot. He later said he suffered just scrapes and bruises from diving to the ground.

Two years later, the officers' account shifted as they suggested for the first time in sworn depositions that a second man might have been in the car with Castellanos. But neither could explain why no gun was found.

"Just because there's not a gun found," Martinez said in his deposition, "doesn't mean he didn't have a gun."

Daniel O'Connor, the attorney for Castellanos' family, could not be reached Friday for comment, but in January he told the Tribune that Castellanos was unarmed and posed no threat to the two officers.

"The city told his daughter that her dad was shooting at the police and that's why he's dead," O'Connor said. "They put it all over the news about how he was a bad guy and how these cops dove for cover and valiantly returned fire. It was a lie.

The second settlement stems from a 2006 lawsuit filed by Cook that claimed four Chicago officers working under the Special Operations Section broke into his Southwest Side home in May 2002, beat him and accused of being a drug dealer. One of the officers was Jerome Finnigan, the crew's alleged ringleader who was later sentenced to 12 years in prison for plotting to hire a hit man to ? a fellow cop he suspected of cooperating with investigators and for carrying out a series of robberies of suspected drug dealers.

According to Cook's lawsuit, the day after the raid he called the Police Department to file a complaint. Not only did police fail to investigate his allegations, another officer allegedly came to his home and threatened that Cook would lose his job with the Fire Department or go to jail if he pursued the complaint.

Terrified, Cook said he dropped the case for four years, only summoning the courage to file his lawsuit after criminal charges were announced against Finnigan and other SOS members. The unit was disbanded amid the growing scandal in 2007, and a total of 10 officers eventually were charged with stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars in cash from suspected drug dealers and others after making illegal traffic stops or searches of their homes.

In 2011, while being held in federal custody, Finnigan signed a declaration about his activities for civil rights attorneys in another lawsuit. In the declaration, which was publicly filed as part of the Cook litigation, Finnigan claimed he was allowed to operate with impunity by his supervisors who would sweep any allegations of wrongdoing under the rug.

"I never bothered to get search warrants," Finnigan wrote. "I figured that by the time I got the warrant the contraband would be gone. Additionally, I never needed a warrant because I would fabricate exigent circumstances or the location where I found contraband, and my supervisors would not question these false assertions - even when the supervisors were on the scene and knew them to be false."

A four-year federal investigation aimed at reaching up the chain of command culminated later that year without any charges against police brass.

Cook's lawyer, Lawrence Jackowiak, did not respond to calls for comment Friday.


But what about black on black crime...

Comments

  • Allah_U_Akbar
    Allah_U_Akbar Members Posts: 11,150 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Just a few "bad apples", right?
  • soul rattler
    soul rattler Members Posts: 18,852 ✭✭✭✭✭
    18.6?

    That's it?
  • Brother_Five
    Brother_Five Members Posts: 4,448 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Imagine the good that money could do in the community... It's their money after all
  • 2stepz_ahead
    2stepz_ahead Guests, Members, Writer, Content Producer Posts: 32,324 ✭✭✭✭✭
    18.6?

    That's it?

    just this year......

    like almost 7 months...
  • the dukester
    the dukester Members Posts: 1,822 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Think about all the community centers, after school programs, and mentorship initiatives that could be funded with that money.

    The loss of those "public tax dollars" is a necessary evil in the grand scheme to eradicate young black men, via killings or incarceration.

    Meanwhile, the public stays preoccupied with what team KD, is going to & the latest catfight on Love & hiphop.
  • Swiffness!
    Swiffness! Members Posts: 10,128 ✭✭✭✭✭
    And again - this is more than New York has to pay out.

    giphy.gif

    NYPD has 3x the officers CPD does!!!! And its the NYPD!

    Chicago Police got the Heavyweight Belt for ? corrupt cops f'real
  • Koltrain
    Koltrain Members Posts: 4,286 ✭✭✭✭✭
    I really hate this notion that cops can ? up and ? ? and the extent of justice is a few million in a settlement...money that comes from the taxpayer anyway.
  • mrrealone
    mrrealone Members Posts: 3,793 ✭✭✭✭✭
    Koltrain wrote: »
    I really hate this notion that cops can ? up and ? ? and the extent of justice is a few million in a settlement...money that comes from the taxpayer anyway.




    This is what hurts us and why these "mistakes" keep happening. Until them cops get hit personally by they actions, the taxpayers for the city/state will continue to keep footing the bill and the cops will keep getting relocated to another force or the same force.....
  • kzzl
    kzzl Members Posts: 7,548 ✭✭✭✭✭
    America has developed a ? -a- ? lottery it seems.
  • stringer bell
    stringer bell Members Posts: 26,212 ✭✭✭✭✭
    https://www.dnainfo.com/chicago/20160719/downtown/375m-settlement-approved-for-fatal-police-shooting-of-esau-castellanos
    $3.75M Settlement Approved For Fatal Police Shooting Of Esau Castellanos

    CITY HALL — The Finance Committee approved $4.7 million in three new police settlements Tuesday, including $3.75 million to the family of an unarmed man shot and killed in 2013 in Albany Park.

    The family of Esau Castellanos was approved for a $3.75 million settlement. According to Jane Notz, of the Law Department, he was shot in Albany Park in the early morning hours of March 16, 2013, by two police officers who had seen him in a car speeding, running a red light and apparently crashing into parked cars.

    The officers stopped him and, according to Notz, asked him to show his hands above the steering wheel, but "he did not comply but instead looked in the officers' direction while holding what they believed was a gun."

    One officer fell to the ground, Notz added, while the other fired 15 shots, killing Castellanos. Police officials originally reported that Castellanos had fired on officers, who were injured diving for cover, but Notz testified that "no gun was recovered."

    "I can see why we're settling. Because nobody believes these reports anymore," said Ald. George Cardenas (12th). "We don't have any credibility any longer.

    "I don't know what to believe anymore, what to think anymore," Cardenas added. "I don't want to say anymore, to be honest with you."

    An autopsy found Castellanos had a blood-alcohol level two and a half times the legal limit, but Notz said Castellanos' three children, aged 18, 15 and 11 at the time of the shooting, "are likely to appear highly sympathetic" in court, and the lack of a gun found on the scene would be damning. The family originally sought $32 million in damages.

    According to Notz, the officers named in the suit, Shawn Lawryn and Juan Martinez, were in a plainclothes car with no video. "They had never fired a weapon on duty," she said, before the incident. She added that the Independent Police Review Authority is still investigating the case, and the FBI and Cook County state's attorney both have open investigations, but the officers remain on "full duty."


    The committee also signed off on a $550,000 settlement in what Notz said was the last police-misconduct case involving former officer Jerome Finnigan.

    According to Notz, Finnigan led a brutal and warrantless search of a firefighter's home in 2002 after an informer had named him as a drug dealer. The firefighter and two children at the scene filed suit claiming mental distress after Finnigan was arrested later that year. Finnigan was later accused of being a rogue officer who shook down drug dealers.

    According to Notz, the Law Department has handled 35 cases involving Finnigan over the years, with 25 settled at a total cost of $1.4 million.

    "This one man has cost the taxpayers a tremendous amount of money," said Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd).

    According to Notz, Finnigan is now serving a 12-year sentence in a murder-for-hire scheme.

    The committee also approved $425,000 for two teens injured in the aftermath of an apparent high-speed police chase on the South Side in 2010. According to Notz, the suspect in that case, driving a car reported stolen, led police on a chase before hitting a pedestrian and crashing into a light post which fell and injured another.


    Smh...
  • S2J
    S2J Members Posts: 28,458 ✭✭✭✭✭
    And a police raid by a corrupt team of officers on the home of an off-duty firefighter a decade ago.

    Hmm I always thought that scene in Training Day where they killed Roger was too random to not be based on real ? . ..makes you wonder