Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling blasted Civilian Office of Police Accountability Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten for treating Chicago Police officers so unfairly that he says they are at risk of suicide and compromise public safety.
Police Accountability
The cost to taxpayers of the settlements approved without debate by the City Council on Wednesday is equivalent to more than a third of the city’s annual $82 million budget to cover the cost of police misconduct lawsuits.
In all, the City Council will consider paying $52.7 million to resolve four lawsuits that allege a wide range of police misconduct. The city’s insurance company is set to pay $25 million of that total.
The Chicago City Council is set to consider paying $45 million to resolve a lawsuit that alleges an unauthorized chase left a 15-year-old boy with a traumatic brain injury, unable to walk or talk.
If approved, the settlement would bring the total amount paid by Chicago taxpayers to resolve lawsuits naming former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara to $62.5 million, records show.
Mayor Brandon Johnson faces an April 7 deadline to pick seven members to serve on the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability.
The Chicago Police Department has fully met just 6% of the consent decree’s requirements, according to the most recent report by the team monitoring CPD’s progress.
Former Chicago Police Sgt. Cassandra Williams, who worked for the Chicago Police Department for 32 years, said she faced severe harassment and retaliation for filing a complaint against her commanding officer, Lt. Jason Brown, who remains on the force. “I crossed the blue line,” Williams said.
Wrongful convictions have long been the most expensive kind of police misconduct in Chicago, costing taxpayers $29.25 million in 2024, or nearly 40% of the total amount spent to resolve allegations of police misconduct, according to WTTW News’ analysis.
The seven-member board unanimously approved the resolution, which directs CPS CEO Pedro Martinez to implement a new whole school safety policy, which “must make explicit that the use of SROs within District schools will end by the start of the 2024-2025 school year.”
The proposed settlement is set to be considered Wednesday by the City Council’s Finance Committee. If approved, a final vote of the City Council could come as soon as Thursday.
The Chicago Police Department would be required to immediately launch a new study of whether officers are efficiently and effectively deployed across the city, under a measure set to be considered by a key City Council committee.
Cases that involved at least one officer with repeated claims of misconduct accounted for 60% of the cost borne by taxpayers to resolve police misconduct cases between 2019 and 2022, according to the analysis by WTTW News.
Applications are now open to serve four-year terms on the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, which is designed to give Chicagoans real control of the police department as part of an effort to build trust in officers and police brass and put an end to repeated allegations of misconduct.
The Chicago City Council voted 31-18 to resolve the lawsuit filed by the family of Darius Cole-Garrit, which claimed the officers who shot the 21-year-old threatened him hours before they nearly ran him over and then shot him in the back as he fled.
The vote on Monday by the City Council’s Finance Committee, which came over the objections of at least seven alderpeople, means the full City Council will once again consider resolving the lawsuit filed by Darius Cole-Garrit’s family.