Crime & Law
City Lawyers Recommend Paying $2.5M to Family Who Say They Were Held at Gunpoint During Botched No-Knock Raid
(WTTW News)
Taxpayers should pay $2.5 million to a family who said their 5- and 9-year-old children were held at gunpoint during a botched November 2017 no-knock raid of their McKinley Park apartment, lawyers for the city of Chicago recommended Thursday.
City lawyers reached an agreement to settle the lawsuit filed by Gilbert and Hester Mendez midway through a federal civil trial after Peter Mendez, who was 9 at the time of the no-knock raid, told a jury that he was traumatized by Chicago police officers’ decision to point a M4 assault rifle and other guns at him and his 5-year-old brother, Jack, while his father was handcuffed face-down on his home’s floor.
“My life flashed before my eyes. My heart was pounding,“ Peter Mendez testified in April, according to CBS2-TV, which has reported extensively on the Mendez raid. “I thought I wasn’t going to have a dad. I thought I was going to lose my father that day.”
It is highly unusual for the city to agree to settle a lawsuit after a trial has begun.
The Mendez family lived on the second floor of a three-flat on Chicago’s West Side at the time of the raid. Seven Chicago police officers had a no-knock warrant for the apartment on the third floor, not the Mendez home, officials said.
No-knock warrants allow officers to enter a home without first announcing their presence.
Chicago taxpayers paid more than $651,000 to two private law firms through March 10 to defend the officers named in the lawsuit, according to documents obtained by WTTW News through the Freedom of Information Act.
The settlement is set to be considered by the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday. A final vote by the full City Council could come as soon as Wednesday.
During the raid, the two boys pleaded with officers not to shoot their father or to take him to jail, while officers used profanity to order Gilbert Mendez to the ground, according to the lawsuit filed by the family, which was represented by Loevy and Loevy and attorney Al Hofeld.
Two of the officers who executed the no-knock search warrant failed to activate their body-worn cameras, in violation of department policy. The body-worn cameras of other officers captured parts of the raid, records show. Before the trial was halted, lawyers representing the city told the jury officers did not point their guns at the two boys, CBS2-TV reported.
Even after Hester Mendez was given a copy of the warrant and she told the officers they were in the wrong apartment and were looking for their upstairs neighbors, officers continued to search their home, according to the lawsuit.
The officers broke the front entry door to the building, the front door to the family’s apartment, and a closet door in a bedroom, but did not pay to repair the damage from the botched raid, according to the lawsuit.
After the raid, Peter and Jack Mendez struggled in school and required extensive therapy, according to the lawsuit.
All seven officers involved in the botched raid violated CPD rules, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability determined after a probe that was not completed until January 2022, more than five years after the incident.
Former Chicago Police Supt. David Brown agreed in May 2022 with those conclusions and recommended that one officer be suspended for 60 days, two officers be suspended for 30 days, three officers for five days and one for three days, records show.
It is unclear whether any of the officers challenged Brown’s decision or served those suspensions, since those records are not made public. All remain active-duty members of the Chicago Police Department, according to the city’s employee database.
Gov. JB Pritzker signed a bill requiring Illinois police officers to be trained on how children experience trauma how to use de-escalation tactics when children are involved. The bill was named for Peter Mendez.
Chicago police officers raided the Mendez home more than two years before other officers raided the home of Anjanette Young in February 2019. During that botched raid, officers handcuffed the social worker while she was naked, sparking a political firestorm after CBS2-TV aired body-worn camera video of the raid.
The City Council agreed to pay Young $2.9 million to resolve her lawsuit.
Since that video put CPD’s use of search warrants in the spotlight, officials have significantly revised the department’s policy five times under intense pressure from Young, a coalition of groups advocating for police reform and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul.
The latest version of the proposed policy would not ban officers from serving no-knock warrants or from pointing guns at children or handcuffing them during raids, records show.
But it would require officers to “avoid handcuffing or intentionally pointing firearms at children unless reasonably necessary,” according to the revised policy.
Current CPD policy requires no-knock warrants to be approved by a deputy chief and used only in cases where there is a documented “danger to life or safety.”
Since 2019, the number of homes searched by CPD dropped nearly 85%, according to CPD data.
Officers served just 210 residential search warrants in 2024. In comparison, the department executed 1,382 search warrants in 2019.
Note: Loevy and Loevy has done legal work for WTTW News.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
