Politics

Chicago to Pay $35.2M to Settle 4 Police Misconduct Cases

The Chicago City Council agreed Wednesday to pay $35.2 million to resolve four lawsuits alleging a wide range of misconduct by Chicago police officers.

Less than seven months into the year, Chicago taxpayers have spent at least $224.5 million to resolve nearly two and a half dozen lawsuits, exceeding the city’s budget to resolve lawsuits alleging police misconduct by more than $142 million, city records show.

It is unclear how the city will find the money to make the payments approved Wednesday by the City Council, since it has already exhausted the $82 million officials set aside to cover police misconduct settlements and judgments in 2025.

In the largest settlement approved Wednesday, Chicago taxpayers will pay $17 million to a man who spent 23 years in prison after being convicted of a double murder he did not commit.

Chicago taxpayers have now spent $236.7 million since January 2019 to resolve 57 lawsuits brought by people who were wrongfully convicted based on evidence gathered by the Chicago Police Department.

Roberto Almodovar Jr. was convicted and sentenced to life in prison after being investigated by Reynaldo Guevara, a former Chicago police detective accused of routinely framing suspects.

It is the eighth lawsuit filed by Chicagoans who said they were the victims of Guevara’s misconduct to be resolved, at a cost of more than $95 million to Chicago taxpayers.

No physical evidence linked Almodovar to the double murder. He testified that he was at work and school at the time of the murder.

Taxpayers will also pay $12.7 million to Jackie Wilson, who was exonerated in the 1982 killings of two on-duty Chicago police officers.

A Cook County judge in December 2020 declared that Wilson was innocent of the murders of Chicago Police Officers William Fahey and Richard O’Brien in 1982. Wilson’s brother, Andrew, was convicted of killing both officers.

Wilson, who was 22 in 1982, alleged disgraced former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge used cables clamped to his ears to deliver electric shocks to his head to force him to confess.

Wilson’s lawsuit claims that not only was he tortured into confessing to killing Fahey and O’Brien but also that he was framed by dozens of prosecutors. The suit claimed former Mayor Richard M. Daley, who was Cook County state’s attorney at the time, and former Chicago Police Superintendents Terry Hillard and LeRoy Martin conspired to cover up Burge’s torture. All have denied those allegations.

An additional $3 million will go to a man left permanently disabled when a police vehicle pursuing a man during a 2018 chase ran him over, the latest massive settlement prompted by police pursuits that violated department policy.

Matthew Aguilar was injured just before midnight on Oct. 9, 2018, when he was struck by an unmarked Chicago police vehicle, which ran over his face, according to an investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

Taxpayers will pay another $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.

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.

Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]

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