In January, after years of legal and political battles, the city agreed to pay $19.8 million to settle lawsuits by four men who were tortured by police under former commander Jon Burge. Signing off on the deal, aldermen condemned the abusive officers and hoped aloud that the settlements would let the police department start a new era. “I’m glad this is over,” said the Fifth Ward’s Leslie Hairston. “It’s definitely a black eye on Chicago and on our history. But it’s also an opportunity for us to get a chance to turn the page.”
Lawsuits involving the police account for about 44 percent of Chicago’s settlements and judgments. In New York and LA they account for only about a quarter. And the amount Chicago is spending to close police-related lawsuits is increasing—from about $23 million for all of 2005 to more than $62 million for the first half of 2008.
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“But at the Chicago Police Department, if you are someone inclined toward abuse, there is no system in place to rein that in—in fact, quite the opposite. They bury their head in the sand in the face of obvious patterns of abuse. They obviously think it’s cheaper to defend the lawsuits. Plenty of the big payouts would have been avoided if the department took seriously the prior allegations of abuse.
Before he was elected alderman of the 21st Ward in 2003, Howard Brookins Jr. practiced law from several different vantage points: as a public defender, as an assistant state’s attorney, and, in private practice, as counsel to numerous people claiming they’d been victims of police misconduct. He’s been critical of the way the city investigates complaints against police since long before he was an alderman.
Moore’s old boss, Judson Miner, says it’s not his impression that the city is settling just to get out of court quickly. Miner served as the city’s corporation counsel from 1986 to 1989, under Washington and Eugene Sawyer; in the time since, as a partner with Miner, Barnhill & Galland, he’s occasionally squared off against the city in court.
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