City Council votes down $2 million settlement with family of man shot and killed by police in 2014
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The City Council on Wednesday rejected a proposed $2 million payment to settle a lawsuit filed by the family of a man shot and killed by police during a 2014 foot chase, despite the settlement having been backed by the Finance Committee earlier this week.
The city's Law Department had recommended settling the lawsuit even though the Independent Police Review Authority, which was replaced by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability in 2017, had deemed the shooting was justified.
Darius Cole-Garrit was shot and killed by police on the Far South Side in August 2014. His family claimed the officers who shot him had threatened him earlier in the day at a basketball court at Golden Gate Park near 130th and Eberhart, before nearly running him over with their unmarked SUV outside a friend's home near 133rd and Forestville, and then shooting him in the back as he ran away.
"In fact, they announced their intention to commit premeditated murder on the basketball court, and then they followed through with their threat and executed him in front of his neighbors," the family's lawsuit states.
City attorneys said the officers who shot Cole-Garrit denied ever encountering before seeing him riding his bike near 133rd and Forestville, and trying to question him, because they had received a tip about a week earlier that gang members in the area were transporting guns by bike.
The officers said when they approached him in their vehicle, he got off his bike, turned at them, pulled out a gun, and pointed it at them from a "tactical stance," before running away. Two officers began chasing him, yelling at him to drop his gun.
According to city attorneys, one of the officers chasing Cole-Garrit saw him turn and point his weapon at them again, and both officers started shooting, killing him. A gun was recovered at the scene, about 20 feet from Cole-Garrit's body.
There was no video footage of the shooting, as it happened before Chicago police officers began wearing body cameras.
The Independent Police Review Authority investigated the shooting and determined it was justified, but city attorneys told aldermen there was still a risk of a verdict against the city had the family's lawsuit gone to trial, because of witnesses who would have testified to an earlier encounter between the officers and Cole-Garrit, and because there was no video of what happened.
By a 10-9 vote, the City Council Finance Committee on Monday backed the city Law Department's recommendation to settle the lawsuit for $2 million, but when it came up for a vote by the full City Council on Wednesday, it was voted down by a 22-26 vote.
It's extremely rare for a proposed settlement that has passed the Finance Committee to be rejected by the full City Council.
Ald. Bill Conway (34th), a former Cook County prosecutor, noted that not only was the shooting deemed justified by IPRA, but that eight of the nine gunshots that Cole-Garrit suffered were to the front of his body, suggesting he was facing the officers when he was shot, contrary to the family's claim that the officers shot him in the back.
After the City Council rejected the proposed settlement, the lawsuit will proceed to trial, unless the city's Law Department can negotiate a settlement that does not require the council's approval.
Three other settlements involving claims of police misconduct were approved by the City Council on Wednesday:
- A $750,000 settlement with 61-year-old Vincent Tucker, who was seriously injured in a crash in 2018, and accused police officers of violating policy by chasing the car that slammed into him.
- A $750,000 settlement with Bernard Kersh, who was body-slammed by a police officer on Thanksgiving Day 2019, in an incident that both COPA and then-Police Supt. David Brown deemed to be a case of excessive force.
- A nearly $5 million settlement in a class-action lawsuit accusing the city of violating people's civil rights when officers used so-called "stop-and-frisk" tactics to enforce anti-gang and anti-drug loitering ordinances. The vast majority of the money will go to the plaintiffs' attorneys, with the five named plaintiffs in the case splitting only $112,500.