Crime & Law
City Lawyers Propose Spending $260.8M to Settle 16 Cases Tied to Disgraced Ex-CPD Detective Guevara
(Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
Chicago taxpayers should pay more than $260.8 million to 17 men who spent decades in prison after they were coerced into confessing to crimes by a disgraced former Chicago police detective, city lawyers recommended.
The proposed mass settlement, which still must be approved by the City Council, would more than double the number of lawsuits the city has settled alleging misconduct by former CPD detective Reynaldo Guevara, who has been accused of falsifying police reports, framing suspects and coercing witnesses, to be resolved.
It has already cost Chicago taxpayers at least $206 million to defend and settle 16 lawsuits naming Guevara, records show.
In all, 41 cases naming Guevara remain pending including the cases lawyers now say should be resolved without a trial, records show.
City lawyers did not immediately provide a breakdown of what each plaintiff would be paid as part of the mass settlement.
A spokesperson from the Chicago Department of Law declined to immediately comment on the proposed settlements, which are set to be considered by the City Council’s Finance Committee on Monday. A final vote could come on Oct. 14.
Members of the Chicago City Council have been pressing lawyers to resolve as many cases naming Guevara, now one of the most notorious members of the Chicago Police Department, as quickly as possible.
A judge determined Guevara told “bald-faced lies” while under oath in 2017, a fact that will be presented to any future jury asked to determine whether the city should be held accountable for claims of misconduct.
Guevara has invoked his Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination hundreds of times during court proceedings, refusing to answer questions about whether he falsified police reports, framed suspects or coerced witnesses into identifying criminals.
That means Chicago officials have little hope of winning any of those cases at trial. Many of the people he helped convict who have sued the city have been granted certificates of innocence by judges.
Guevara, 80, now lives in Texas, and collects an annual pension of $91,000. Since Guevara retired in 2005, he has been paid approximately $1.5 million from the police pension fund.
Most of the people Guevara is accused of framing in the 1980s and 1990s are Latino and lived in Humboldt Park, which was home to many working-class Chicagoans long before the Northwest Side neighborhood began to gentrify.
City officials did not probe Guevara’s conduct until 2013, eight years after he retired and began collecting his pension. That report, which was commissioned by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel, cost the city $1.9 million but has never been released by city officials.
Despite Guevara’s well-documented misconduct that sent 41 now-exonerated Chicagoans to prison for decades, any attempt to revoke his pension is sure to fail, since he was not charged with criminal wrongdoing, much less convicted, while a Chicago police officer.
Mayor Brandon Johnson’s budget forecast anticipates setting aside $401 million in the 2027 budget to resolve lawsuits, $226 million more than in 2026, records show.
The bulk of the city’s legal bills go toward resolving lawsuits that allege Chicago police officers committed misconduct.
In all, the city is facing an $882.5 million budget gap in 2027, Johnson said.
“The people of Chicago deserve the absolute maximum level of transparency around this matter because it has harmed so many different families and lives and has placed a stain on our city,” Johnson said last month when discussing his budget proposal.
Those funds will be used to resolve lawsuits alleging police misconduct dating back decades, and could be used to cover the cost of a new “global settlement” of claims relating to connected allegations of misconduct, according to the forecast.
“I’m prepared to have one of the most robust conversations around what we are actually dealing with, not just individual cases, but how it has had such a tremendous restraint on our budget,” Johnson said.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
