Politics
Chicago City Council to Weigh Paying $90M to Resolve 176 Lawsuits Tied to Disgraced Ex-Sgt. Ronald Watts
(WTTW News)
The Chicago City Council will weigh whether to pay $90 million to resolve 176 federal lawsuits tied to convicted former Chicago Police Sgt. Ronald Watts and his team.
The 180 plaintiffs in the lawsuits, which date back to 2017, spent nearly 200 years in prison after being wrongfully convicted based on what they allege was fabricated evidence gathered by Watts, who was convicted in 2013 of taking bribes, and other officers.
The Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee will consider the proposed settlement, which would be the first global settlement of lawsuits tied to a single officer, on Monday. Chicago taxpayers paid $5.5 million in 2015 to dozens of Black men who said they were tortured by disgraced former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge and the detectives who reported to him.
A final vote of the City Council could come Sept. 25.
“This is the first time we’ve reached a comprehensive settlement to resolve wrongful conviction claims,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said in a statement. “It’s a historic moment that reflects our commitment to accountability and healing.”
Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling said in a statement that “the cases involved in this settlement do not represent the Chicago Police Department of today.”
Taxpayers have already paid $11.4 million to resolve six cases alleging misconduct by Watts, according to a WTTW News analysis. Between 2016 and September 2024, the city had paid private lawyers $25 million to defend the conduct of Watts and the officers who worked with him, Corporation Counsel Mary Richardson Lowry said Thursday.
Ahmed Kosoko, Watts’ attorney, said the former Chicago police sergeant had no comment on the proposed global settlement, but said he and his client “must emphatically reject the false and misleading narrative that continues to link Mr. Watts to cases in which he had no direct involvement. In numerous instances, Mr. Watts was not present at the scene, was not on duty and played no role in the arrest, investigation or prosecution of the individuals now seeking civil recovery. In every single case, Mr. Watts neither accused, arrested, nor testified against the plaintiffs. His limited involvement was administrative and supervisory — often post hoc and entirely detached from the underlying events.”
The lawsuits alleging misconduct by Watts placed “a financial strain on the city due to legal costs and overloading the city Law Department’s docket of pending cases,” a spokesperson for the Law Department said in a statement.
“The global settlement, totaling $90 million, offers a pathway to closure, reducing long-term legal exposure, easing fiscal pressure and reinforcing the city’s commitment to constitutional policing which leads to greater accountability,” according to the statement.
The global settlement was “fiscally prudent,” which she said resolves 64% of wrongful conviction cases pending against the city, Richardson Lowry told reporters.
Fighting each case would have cost taxpayers between $350 million and $500 million, Richardson Lowry said.
“This was not a difficult conclusion for me to reach,” Richardson Lowry said, adding that it would be impossible for the city to prevail at trial since Watts was convicted of a crime. “It was a difficult task to accomplish.”
Richardson Lowry said her evaluation was shaped by the fact that several federal juries have awarded Chicagoans who alleged police misconduct massive awards in recent months.
A federal jury ordered the city of Chicago in March to pay $120 million to two men who were wrongfully convicted of a 2003 murder and spent a combined 32 years in prison, setting a new city record for a wrongful conviction case. The city is appealing that verdict.
Between Jan. 1 and July 31, taxpayers spent $145.7 million to resolve lawsuits filed by Chicagoans convicted and imprisoned for crimes they did not commit, records show.
“The longer these cases remain unresolved, the more expensive closure becomes, driven largely by the potential for extraordinarily large jury awards, rising settlement costs and mounting attorneys’ fees,” Richardson-Lowry said in a statement.
Watts and the officers who reported to him were accused of demanding that residents and drug dealers pay them for protection. They arrested those who refused after planting drugs on them, according to court records.
In 2013, Watts was convicted of shaking down a drug courier who turned out to be an FBI informant. Watts spent nearly two years in prison.
Since 2017, 212 convictions tied to Watts have been overturned, according to Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.
Chicago taxpayers have spent at least $231.2 million to resolve lawsuits alleging Chicago police officers committed a wide range of misconduct — including wrongful convictions and improper pursuits — since the start of 2025, according to an analysis of city data by WTTW News.
The cost of resolving police misconduct lawsuits has become a frequent source of political heartburn for members of the Chicago City Council, who are divided along ideological lines about the cause of the escalating costs. The City Council must ratify all settlements of more than $100,000.
More conservative alderpeople say the city’s lawyers and their colleagues are too eager to settle cases before trial. According to the alderpeople, that encourages those guilty of criminal wrongdoing to sue the city in the hopes of an easy payday.
However, progressive members of the City Council see the expense as perhaps the most visible cost of the fact that city officials have yet to put an end to the decades of scandals, misconduct and brutality that have engulfed the Chicago Police Department.
Despite the fact that the federal court order requiring CPD to reform itself — known as the consent decree — is more than six and a half years old, CPD has fully met just 16% of its requirements, according to the most recent report by the team monitoring the city’s compliance with the reform push.
Even before the proposed global settlement of the cases tied to Watts, Chicago exhausted its annual budget of $82.2 million months ago and had spent nearly triple that amount by July 31, according to WTTW News’ analysis of reports released by the Chicago Department of Law.
Richardson Lowry said the lessons lawyers learned while negotiating a global settlement of the cases tied to Watts would be applied as they evaluate other lawsuits alleging police misconduct.
There are 36 lawsuits pending against the city filed by those who were convicted of crimes they say they did not commit after being investigated by Reynaldo Guevara, a former Chicago police detective accused of routinely framing suspects.
WTTW News coverage of policing and police reform is supported by The Joyce Foundation.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
