Aldermen again recommend $2 million settlement for family of man killed during Chicago police chase
CHICAGO (CBS) -- The City Council will once again consider paying $2 million to the family of a man shot and killed by police during a 2014 foot chase, after that proposed settlement was voted down in July.
The City Council Finance Committee backed that proposed settlement for a second time on Monday, after the full City Council rejected its original recommendation in July.
Finance Committee chair Ald. Pat Dowell (3rd) urged her colleagues to back the settlement, saying "this is not like a black-and-white kind of case"
The city's Law Department is recommending settling the lawsuit filed by Darius Cole-Garrit's family, who have 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.
City attorneys said the officers who shot Cole-Garrit denied ever encountering before seeing him riding his bike near 133rd and Forestville, and were 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.
City attorneys told aldermen it's in the city's best interests to settle the lawsuit, because the shooting took place before officers were required to have body-worn cameras, and Cole-Garrit's family is expected to present witnesses who will dispute officers' assertions that he was pointing a gun at police at the time of the shooting.
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.
The Independent Police Review Authority, which was replaced by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability in 2017, had deemed the shooting was justified, but city attorneys said COPA has indicated it might come to a different conclusion if it were to reopen the investigation.
Ald. Brian Hopkins (2nd), who was among the aldermen who first voted down the proposed settlement in July and again on Monday, acknowledged it was a difficult case.
"If we choose to reject this settlement, and require our attorneys to go to court, then come back and we lose, then that's on us, and we'll have to bear the responsibility for that decision and the added cost, and that weighs on me," Hopkins.
However, Hopkins questioned whether the attorneys for Cole-Garrit's believe they can win at trial given they urged the city to reconsider the proposed settlement after it was previously voted down.
"The fact that they want this settlement, and seem to be adverse to a trial, is that possible indication that plaintiffs' counsel does not have as much confidence as they would like us to think in their chances at prevailing at trial?" Hopkins asked city attorneys.
Representatives of the city's Law Department declined to speculate on how confident Cole-Garrit's attorneys are in the case, saying only they believe it's in the city's best financial interests to resolve the case before it goes to trial.
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) noted the city has already spent seven years fighting the lawsuit, and would have to spend even more money than it already has preparing for trial if the case isn't settled, regardless of what the verdict ultimately would be.
"When you think about the time being spent, the amount of funds being spent, the fact that in the best-case scenario we're not gaining any funds, we're losing no matter what, and we're going to stand to lose more if we were to take it to trial, I think a settlement just makes fiscal sense," he said.
The Finance Committee originally backed the proposed settlement by a 10-9 vote in July, only to see it voted down 22-26 by the full council after Ald. Bill Conway (34th), a former Cook County prosecutor, urged his colleagues to reject it.
At the time, Conway 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.
Conway did not raise those concerns again on Monday, instead only asking city attorneys to confirm the gun found near Cole-Garrit's body was a semiautomatic handgun.
However, city attorneys also noted the gun was found 20 feet away, and that it didn't have any usable fingerprints to link it directly to Cole-Garrit.
The full City Council is now set to take its second vote on the proposed settlement at its next meeting on Wednesday.
In other business on Monday, the Finance Committee also backed an $8.75 million settlement with the family of a domestic violence victim who was shot and killed by police after he called for help in 2021.
Michael Craig, 61, called 911 for help in October 2021, saying his wife was threatening him with a knife, but when police arrived on the scene, an officer ended up shooting and killing Craig instead of trying to subdue his wife.
