Dolton is paying $30,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by an activist who said she was falsely arrested during a demonstration outside Village Hall in support of the family of Alexis Wilson, a 19-year-old Homewood woman shot to death by Dolton police.
The settlement was approved by the Village Board Aug. 5.
Camiella Williams filed the federal lawsuit in August 2023 against the village, Mayor Tiffany Henyard and current deputy police chief Lewis Lacey, who at the time was an officer with the village’s Police Department.
In the complaint, Williams said she and four other protesters was arrested Sept. 1, 2021, after trying to participate in a public meeting held outside Village Hall.
Williams said that in the wake of Alexis Wilson’s death, she had helped in protest planning and other forms of advocacy and organizing in the village.
In July 2022, Wilson’s family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit accusing two Dolton officers of using excessive force when police fatally shot the woman July 27, 2021, outside a restaurant in the village. A hearing in the case is scheduled for Sept. 16.
The shooting prompted protests about the police response and triggered criticism of Henyard barely two months after she took office.
The suit seeks more than $1 million in damages. The complaint names the village and officers Ryan Perez and Gerald Carlton as defendants.
“When racial justice and anti-police violence protests arrived in Dolton in response to Wilson’s death, (police) responded with aggressive and unlawful police tactics,” Williams said in her lawsuit.
Williams said she had helped organize and participate in a demonstration in support of Wilson and her family on Aug. 2, 2021, outside of Henyard’s house. Williams is chair of the board of trustees at Prairie State College in Chicago Heights.
The Sept. 1 demonstration near Village Hall came when Henyard, due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was holding a meeting for homeowners in the parking lot of the building.
Williams, in the lawsuit, said she and other demonstrators were “intending to approach and participate” in the mayor’s outdoor meeting, and they chanted Wilson’s name and held signs reading “Justice for Alexis Wilson.”
She said that several Dolton police officers and officers from other agencies were at the scene, and that officers “became increasingly aggressive as they continued to order protesters to move further away from the public meeting.”
Williams said that Lacey approached her and told her to put her hands behind her back, and that she was handcuffed for 45 minutes before being released. Misdemeanor charges of disturbing a public meeting that had filed against her and others arrested were later dropped.
She had alleged violations of her constitutional rights under the First and Fourth amendments.
The lawsuit had sought compensatory and punitive damages as well as attorney fees and costs.
The matter had been referred to a magistrate judge this past April for settlement talks.
According to police and the lawsuit filed by Wilson’s family, Wilson was driving herself and a passenger at about 1 a.m. July 27, 2021, when they went to a drive-through at Baba’s Famous Steak & Lemonade, 685 Sibley Blvd. Wilson got into a verbal dispute with an employee, who called police, according to the complaint.
Bodycam footage from a Dolton police officer who is trying to enter Alexis Wilson’s car shows Wilson shortly before she was fatally shot by police July 27, 2021. (Jeff Vorva/for the Daily Southtown)
Police arrived and ordered Wilson and the passenger to exit the vehicle. The passenger complied but Wilson refused, saying she was not properly dressed. Perez opened the driver’s door and began punching Wilson, the suit claims
“In fear for her safety, Alexis Wilson began to drive away,” according to the complaint.
As Wilson set the car in motion, Carlton fired his weapon several times at her, the suit claims
The vehicle traveled less than a block before crashing into a nearby business, Compleat Cyclist, 703 Sibley Blvd. Wilson was pronounced dead at the scene.
In recent court filings, attorneys for Wilson’s family have said they have been unable, despite numerous attempts, to schedule dates for the officers named in the lawsuit to sit for depositions.
That is partly due to officers needing to find new lawyers after the Del Galdo Law Group, which represents Dolton in several cases in Cook County and federal courts, told the village in late April that it would bow out of representing Dolton.
The firm said that it was at risk of no longer being paid and warned that Dolton was in danger of being unable to find a law firm to represent it.
