City Hall attorneys are recommending Chicago pay another $62 million to settle a series of police misconduct lawsuits this month.
If aldermen approve the deals in a bid to avoid likely more costly court decisions, $48 million will be paid to a group of three men who spent three decades behind bars after they were convicted for a September 1986 arson that killed two people.
John Galvan, Arthur Almendarez and Francisco Nanez were released from prison and exonerated in 2022. They allege police fabricated evidence and extracted tortured confessions to frame them of the crime.
At the time, police relied as a witness on a man allegedly so drunk the night of the Little Village fire that he could not walk unsupported, according to the men’s lawsuit. The men also alleged detectives fabricated evidence and narratives, including their theory that the fire was started when one of the men flicked a lit cigarette onto a puddle of gasoline, which their lawsuit called “scientifically impossible.”
During interrogation, detectives kicked the men in their legs and genitals and punched them in the head, according to the lawsuit. “Overwhelmed from the physical and psychological torture,” they confessed, the suit said.
The Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee is expected to vote on the men’s settlements Monday, potentially teeing the deal up for final City Council approval Wednesday.
Law Department attorneys are also recommending aldermen approve a deal to give another man $8.25 million
John Velez spent 16 years behind bars for the March 2001 fatal shooting of Anthony Hueneca. His lawsuit against the city alleged police fabricated evidence that Velez murdered Hueneca in an “anniversary killing” after his uncle was shot to death a year prior.
Police suspected Velez was a Satan Disciple gang member, an affiliation that could have tied him to the unknown shooter, who shouted a gang slogan as he fired. But at the time, Velez instead belonged to the Almighty Ambrose gang, his lawsuit said.
In yet another settlement, Leonard Gipson could receive $1.2 million after being sentenced to four years in prison after a corrupt police officer allegedly planted drugs on him twice.
Gipson alleged Sgt. Ronald Watts and other corrupt police at the Ida B. Wells homes shook him down for money and planted drugs on him when he did not comply. He was arrested again after he complained about Watts and pled guilty when he realized he “faced no chance of winning at trial,” his lawsuit said.
When a similar alleged setup occurred four years later, Gipson accepted a plea deal to go to prison, ”knowing that he risked significant time in prison if he went to trial and lost—and that his previous attempts to expose the corruption years ago were ignored.
More than 150 federal lawsuits allege Watts and his team made phony arrests, the first of which was settled in January for $7.5 million. The disgraced police sergeant was arrested in 2012 and received 22 months in prison for shaking down a drug courier who turned out to be an FBI informant.
City attorneys also recommended a settlement for Briana Keys, who had called 911 after being locked out of her New City neighborhood home on a freezing, near-zero February night four years ago.
Police found Keys walking toward their station after the call, but did not take her there, according to her lawsuit. When she finally arrived, “in distress and suffering from frostbite,” she was met with “reckless indifference,” it said.
Keys, who could receive $5 million, did not receive proper medical care at the station and later suffered amputations, it continued.
The mammoth amount of the settlements would take the city far beyond the already-exhausted $82.5 million Mayor Brandon Johnson and the City Council budgeted for police misconduct-related deals this year. The city has paid around $100 million to settle alleged police misconduct so far this year, with hundreds more cases looming.
