Thread: Chicago pays $5.5 million reparations to victims of police torture

The Latest: Chicago pays $5.5 million as part of reparations package to victims of police torture

By The Associated Press Associated Press
JANUARY 4, 2016 — 10:45PM

CHICAGO — The latest on scrutiny surrounding Chicago police shootings, including one in 2014 in which an officer has been charged with murder for killing a teenager (all times local):

10:30 p.m.
The city of Chicago has paid out $5.5 million to 57 people whose claims that they were tortured by police decades ago were found to be credible.

The Chicago Sun-Times reports (http://bit.ly/1INETKY ) the money was paid Monday to victims of a police unit commanded by Jon Burge. Most victims received checks totaling $100,000.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the newspaper that before righting more recent wrongs in a police department that's now the focus of a federal civil rights investigation, the city must heal wounds inflicted decades ago.

More than 100 men have accused Burge and officers under his command of shocking, suffocating and beating them into giving false confessions. Burge has never been criminally charged with torture, but he served a 4 ½-year sentence for lying about the torture in a civil case.

The newspaper reports the months-long claims process included vetting by an arbitrator and by a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Kent School of Law.
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5:05 p.m.
The city of Chicago's law department says one of its lawyers accused by a federal judge of concealing evidence in a civil case regarding a fatal police shooting has resigned.
A statement from the department says Jordan Marsh submitted his resignation Monday.
Judge Edmond Chang earlier Monday criticized Marsh in his ruling. He said Marsh "intentionally concealed" important evidence in a civil trial that ended last year with jurors finding two officers were justified in killing Darius Pinex during a 2011 traffic stop.
Chang threw out that decision and ordered a new trial.
The law department's statement says it "does not tolerate any action that would call into question the integrity of the lawyers who serve" Chicago.
But Chang also had criticism for the department as a whole in his ruling, including about its record keeping. The department's statement says it's continuing to review its procedures.
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4:50 p.m.
The five children of a woman who was shot to death by Chicago police have filed a wrongful death lawsuit against the city.
Fifty-five-year-old Bettie Jones was killed when a police officer opened fire on a 19-year-old man after they responded to a domestic disturbance call. The man, Quintonio LeGrier, was also killed. Police has called the shooting of Jones an accident and claim LeGrier was being combative toward officers before he was shot.
The lawsuit filed Monday in Cook County Circuit Court includes a claim for intentional infliction of emotional distress as a result of the officer's actions.
A wrongful death lawsuit was filed last week by the father of LeGrier. The lawsuit asserts LeGrier never had a weapon and did nothing to suggest he was a threat before police opened fire.
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2:55 p.m.
A federal judge in Chicago has ordered a new trial in a civil case focused on a fatal police shooting after he concluded a city lawyer sought to conceal evidence.
Judge Edmond Chang's ruling Monday also blasts the city's law department that defends accused police for shoddy record-keeping.
The ruling tosses a April jury decision that found two officers were justified in killing Darius Pinex during a 2011 traffic stop.
The officers had said they stopped Pinex because his car matched a description they heard on their police radio of a car suspected of involvement in an earlier shooting. But records emerged after the trial began that officers weren't listening to the channel broadcasting the radio traffic about the suspect's car. The judge said a city lawyer "intentionally concealed" that evidence.
The ruling comes in the wake of protests following the November release of video showing a white police officer fatally shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald.
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8:40 a.m.
Changes are coming to the agency that acts as a Chicago Police Department watchdog.
Sharon Fairley is acting head of the Independent Police Review Authority. She is planning a Monday afternoon news conference to detail restructuring efforts.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed Fairley to reform the agency after outrage over shootings by police including one in which a video showed a white officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
Fairley took the job in early December and IPRA says in a statement that since then she's been determining areas where she can take immediate action. The authority was formed in September 2007.
IPRA says changes will include hiring new senior leaders, strengthening the agency's legal team to increase oversight of the investigative process and establishing a community outreach manager.

http://www.startribune.com/the-lates...ase/364158411/

Chicago reportedly pays $5.5M to victims of decades-old police brutality
Published January 05, 2016

The city of Chicago has paid out $5.5 million in compensation to dozens of people who claimed to have been victims of police brutality decades ago.

The Chicago Sun-Times reported that all but "five or six" of the 57 people whose claims of being abused were deemed credible received $100,000. The others had received previous settlements and saw those amounts deducted from their share.

The checks have been mailed 44 years after the "first known instance" of torture by a police unit led by former commander Jon Burge and known as the "midnight crew."

More than 100 men, most of them African-American, have accused Burge and officers under his command of shocking, suffocating and beating them into giving false confessions, some of which landed them on death row. Burge has never been criminally charged with torture, but he served a 4 ½-year sentence for lying about the torture in a civil case and was released from a halfway house last year.

"Reparations is not a necessity," Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel told the Sun-Times. "But it is a moral compunction and a moral reckoning to right a wrong. There is no statute of limitations on that

The Sun-Times reports that the latest award to victims is a fraction of the estimated $100 million that has been paid in court-ordered judgments, settlements of lawsuits and legal fees — most of it spent by the financially strapped city of Chicago and some by Cook County — over the years related to the torture scandal. The $100,000 payment most victims received Monday is a fraction of some previous settlements.

The payments mark the latest black eye for the police department in the nation's third-largest city, which has come under withering criticism since the release in November of a video showing white police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014.

A months-long claims process for the payments included vetting by an arbitrator and by a professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology's Kent School of Law.

The reparations were part of an ordinance the City Council passed last year that also mandated a formal apology, the construction of a memorial to the victims and the addition of the police torture to the city's school history curriculum. It also provides psychological counseling and free tuition at some community colleges. Some of the benefits are available to victims' children and grandchildren.

One torture victim, Darrell Cannon, said Monday that the payments were only the first step toward healing the city.

"We still have a long way to go," he said.

Cannon was freed after 24 years in prison when a review board determined that evidence against him was tainted. The Sun-Times reported that Cannon has claimed that Burge's officers played a game of Russian Roulette with him and shocked his genitals with a cattle prod.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2016/01/05...l?intcmp=hpbt2

Too many Americans hold people who work for our government in an esteem they may not deserve. This is true with law enforcement like many other positions. Yes, the vast majority do their jobs and do it right and well, but that doesn't mean they all do, so we need to listen to people who feel they had a bad experience if they're still alive to tell their story or their families and friends who have to tell it for them. We have to listen, because many of these stories are true, the details horrific and are not actions that any of us would condone.