By Naba’a Muhammad
StraightWords.com
Chicago is paying for wrongs done to Marcel Brown after police misconduct led to his conviction for a murder he didn’t commit. Taxpayers in the cash-strapped city are responsible for a $50 million federal jury judgement.
The Windy City is one example of the huge cost of bad cop behavior and failure to rein in or fire these so-called rogues.
Mayor Brandon Johnson said the verdict showed Chicago policing needs to improve. But he quickly added, the abuses happened under previous mayors.
That’s convenient and perhaps true but it doesn’t confront or acknowledge a policing crisis.
Few believe a department steeped in a history of torture, and where a burly White cop knocked out the teeth of a young Black female activist at a pandemic protest, is exorcised of demons.
In Chicago and other cities cops committing these offenses are rarely prosecuted or fired. They stay on. They abuse residents who pay out millions because of brutal, repeated, illegal and often deadly behavior.
Public tv station WTTW reported, “Reynaldo Guevara, a former Chicago police detective accused of routinely framing suspects” has cost the city $62.5 million as a repeat offender. He was responsible for an innocent man serving 22 years in prison.
“At least 11 other lawsuits naming Guevara are pending against the city, all from men who were convicted based on evidence gathered by Guevara and were later exonerated,” reported WTTW’s website.
Officers resign before they are fired to protect benefits or other perks. And cities don’t fight hard to get rid of them. They just budget for payouts.
Chicago has budgeted over $80 million annually to pay for these heinous acts.
Brown, sentenced to 35 years, was exonerated after evidence showed he was coerced into a false confession.
Brown’s lawsuit was against the city and two police detectives. But cops are generally immune from civil lawsuits on the job. The jury rendered its decision Sept. 9.
“The Chicago Police Department has for many years tolerated and even rewarded police detectives who ‘solve’ serious crimes, via coercive interrogations, frequently targeting young, African-American men and boys,” declared the Brown lawsuit.
Does the $50 million payout sound familiar? In June Chicago paid that amount to the “Marquette Park Four,” coerced by cops and convicted in 1995 of a double murder and robbery as teenagers. LaShawn Ezell, Charles Johnson, Larod Styles and Troshawn McCoy spent a combined 73 years in prison. They were 15- to 19-years-old when jailed.
“Charles, Larod, Lashawn, and Troshawn are among the scores of kids who the Chicago Police Department has targeted for false arrest and coercive interrogations over the years, leading to Chicago’s reputation as the False Confession Capital of the country,” said Alexa Van Brunt, director of the Illinois office of the MacArthur Justice Center and lawyer for Charles Johnson. “In fact, three of the officers involved in this case—James Cassidy, Kenneth Boudreau, and Frank Valadez—framed four other teenagers (the ‘Englewood Four’), including my client Terrill Swift, just nine months before the teens in this case were arrested. Yet these officers have never been held to account for stealing so many young lives.”
“Attorney Kim Foxx made the decision to dismiss the case. The court has issued each of these four men a Certificate of Innocence, which is an affirmative finding by the court that these four men are actually innocent of these terrible crimes,” said lawyers.
“Two of the named defendants, James Cassidy and Kenneth Boudreau, who served as homicide detectives under disgraced Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, have amassed their own long track records of coercing and manufacturing confessions from those in their custody, including those as young as seven years old.”
The Black teens endured illegal interrogations, were wrongfully convicted based on false confessions, and served 15 years each before exoneration, lawyers added.
The city will pay $21 million with insurance policies covering $29 million.
A city official said, “This settlement equates to $685,000 per year of custody. Typically at a trial, plaintiffs ask for $1 million to $2 million per year of custody from the jury.” That would equate to a settlement between $73 million and $146 million, reported ABC 7 News Chicago.
Instead of calling for firing bad cops or holding cops financially liable for their crimes, one alderman whined about the payout. “We need to be really thinking about what kind of standard that we’re setting for these things, and this settlement seems to exceed the standards that have been previously set,” said 34th Ward Ald. Bill Conway, according to ABC News 7. “A study of federal settlements from 2000-2023 shows the city paid out nearly $538 million in settlements and jury awards for wrongful convictions and nearly $138 million more for private outside legal fees.”
Beyond the finances is the toll these abuses take on Black lives and Black psyches. It leaves our people in a war zone, the targets of soldiers of repression who get rewarded for abusing us. And we get to foot the bill.
Naba’a Muhammad, award winning Final Call editor, is host of “Straight Words With Naba’a Richard Muhammad, Bj Murphy, and James G. Muhammad,” which airs live Tuesdays, 9 p.m. to 12 a.m. Central Time, on WVON AM 1690 Black Talk Radio Chicago and is livestreamed at the iHeart Radio app and WVON.com. Get more of his writing and content at straightwords.com.
