Large U.S. cities have seen significant increases in recent years in police
misconduct lawsuit payout costs, according to The Wall Street Journal. Some huge settlement payments have consequently been recorded in Illinois.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported in 2014 that police misconduct lawsuits cost Chicago taxpayers $521 million during the previous decade, with about 15 percent of that being paid to settle claims filed by victims of a notorious unit formerly known as the “Midnight Crew” and supervised by police Commander John Burge.
Here are seven of the largest police misconduct payouts on record in the Prairie State.
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$55 million in a class-action lawsuit
The Cook County Board of Commissioners agreed to pay $55 million in 2010 to settle a class-action lawsuit over illegal strip searches conducted at the county jail,
according to The Times, which reported at least 250,000 people jailed between 2004 and 2009 were eligible to share in the settlement. The department had a practice of strip searching all incoming inmates, with those searches taking place in an open hallway filled with men standing naked, shoulder to shoulder,
according to WBEZ 91.5. The station said cavity searches were also performed on all the men in that same crowded hallway.
$28 million to the family of Joseph Regalado
A federal jury awarded $28 million in 1999 to the family of Joseph Regalado, who suffered a paralyzing injury when he was allegedly beaten by a Chicago
police officer, according to the Chicago Tribune.
$22.5 million to the family of Christina Eilman
The Chicago City Council voted in January 2013 to pay a $22.5 million settlement to the family of Christina Eilman.
The Chicago Tribune reported Eilman was raped and seriously injured after Chicago police in 2006 arrested her at Midway Airport in the midst of a bipolar breakdown then set her free. Her parents phoned police from California to ask them not to release Eilman but she was let go in a high-crime part of the city, where she ended up in a public housing building,
NBC Chicago reported. The station said a man raped Eilman at knifepoint before she fell or was thrown from a seventh-story window, suffering injuries that brought considerable medical expenses.
$10.25 to Alton Logan
The Chicago City Council voted in January 2013 to pay a $10.25 million settlement to Alton Logan, who spent 26 years in prison after being convicted of a murder he didn’t commit.
NBC Chicago reported Logan was among victims of Burge’s Midnight Crew, which framed people and tortured them to get them to confess. Logan was convicted of a murder committed during a 1982 McDonald’s restaurant robbery but that conviction was vacated in 2008 after it was discovered another man had confessed to that killing but detectives hadn’t told prosecutors,
according to the Innocence Project. Burge was fired in 1993 for the torture of crime suspects and served prison time after being convicted in 2010 of perjury, the Innocence Project reported.
$9 million to Alejandro Dominguez
A federal jury awarded $9 million in 2006 to Alejandro Dominguez in a lawsuit he filed against the city of Waukegan, Illinois, and a retired police lieutenant alleging he was falsely accused of a home invasion and sexual assault committed in that city in 1989,
according to the Chicago Tribune. The newspaper reported Dominguez’s rape conviction was vacated in 2002 on the basis of DNA evidence.
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$5.5 million to various victims
The Chicago City Council voted in June 2015 to pay $5.5 million in reparations to victims of torture and abuse by Burge’s Midnight Crew,
according to The New York Times. The newspaper reported investigators in that group had sought to extract confessions from crime suspects using tactics that included shocking them with cattle prods and suffocating them with plastic bags.
$5 million to the family of Laquan McDonald
The city of Chicago agreed to pay a $5 million settlement in April 2015 to the family of Laquan McDonald, 17,
whom The Wall Street Journal reported died when a Chicago police officer shot him 16 times in October 2014 after responding to a report of a man breaking into vehicles. A police account alleged McDonald lunged at officers with a knife, but attorneys for his family said they acquired a police dashboard camera video that showed an officer shot McDonald 16 times as he walked away from that officer, The Wall Street Journal reported.
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