Chicago, Illinois

On May 31, 2020, Mia Wright, Tnika Tate, Kim Woods, Ebony Wilbourn, and Javon Hill went to a mall to shop for party supplies and baby items, when officers accused them of attempting to loot a sporting goods store. Officer David Laskus falsely claimed that he saw someone with a hammer attempt to break a store window and then get back in the car with Wright and the others, even though surveillance video showed otherwise. When the group started to drive away at the direction of other officers, police used their batons to smash the car’s windows and demanded that everyone get out of the vehicle. Laskus pulled Wright out of the car by her hair and kneeled on her back and neck. Officer Patrick Dwyer, who retired in July 2020, used racist and sexist language during the incident. The City Council agreed in March 2022 to settle the lawsuit with payments totaling $1.625 million to the five individuals in the car.

Taylor was seventeen when he was arrested and wrongfully convicted of a 1992 double murder. He said he was coerced into confessing to crimes he did not commit. At the time of the killings, Taylor was already in police custody after being arrested for causing a disturbance. His attorneys said police officers hid that evidence, which would have exonerated him. Taylor spent more than twenty years in prison before he was released in 2013 after his conviction was overturned.

Morales and his girlfriend were in a car on South Monitor Street when Cabrera—who was off duty and not in uniform—asked them if they needed help. The couple refused, and instead circled the block to find Cabrera still following them. Cabrera then yelled at them to leave. Morales got out of the car and went to speak to Cabrera, but Cabrera placed Morales in a chokehold, punched him, and fired his pistol at Morales. Cabrera later told a 911 dispatcher that Morales attacked him and knocked him to the ground, but an eyewitness disputed this account. Cabrera was charged with attempted first-degree murder, aggregated discharge of a firearm, false reporting, and obstruction. He was stripped of police powers and later resigned from the force.

Johnson claimed that Ayala was speeding and failed to keep a lookout for pedestrians, and he fractured both of Johnson’s knees after running him over. Ayala claimed that this was because he and his partner had been following another SUV that was driving recklessly with no headlights on. However, Deputy Corporation Counsel Mimi Ruether said that Ayala’s crash report did not include any accounts of the other SUV. Neither the police car nor the officers had camera equipment.

Batchelor and Bailey were convicted during the “Burge torture era,” named for the violent practices used under disgraced Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge to coerce individuals into confessing to crimes they often had not committed. After a review of the case, both men were exonerated in 2018. In January 2022, the City of Chicago agreed to pay each man $7 million to compensate them for the wrongful convictions.

In February 2019, 13 Chicago police officers, who were acting on a bad tip that a man with an illegal firearm lived in Young’s home, raided her house, and handcuffed her while she was getting ready for bed, forcing her to stand naked while they searched her home. Following the incident, Young filed a lawsuit against the city and the officers for failing to independently verify the place to be searched and for wrongfully entering her home. Young’s attorney agreed to settle the case for $2.9 million and, amid the uproar of the case, new raid policies were implemented requiring a department member who is at the rank of lieutenant or higher to be present, as well as a female department member when warrants are being served.

One case involved a high-speed police chase that led to a women’s death in 2018. Another resulted in a $175,000 payment to Lavelle Taylor, who accused Chicago Police Detective James O’Brien of framing him for a 1996 murder that was actually committed by Taylor’s brother.

Golatte will be compensated by the city by paying him $525,000 and forgiving approximately $45,000 in debt he owes to the city.

In February 2018, the Chicago Police Board took a vote to suspend Gaeta and Matheos without pay for a year each. The then-Superintendent Eddie Johnson and the Independent Police Review Authority recommended that both officers be fired. The two officers were reinstated in July 2018 and were re-trained. Both officers remain on the force.

One of the men, Ian Andrew Bowman, who received $75,000, said in his lawsuit that officers beat, kicked, choked, clubbed, and stomped on him without legal justification. The second man, Jonathan Ballew, a freelance journalist whose claim was settled for $40,000, alleged that he was “assaulted with a chemical agent.”

After receiving a suspension, officers alleged that Howard refused to leave the school premises. Howard was also charged with misdemeanor and felony offenses, but those charges were dropped by the state’s attorney’s office a week after the incident.

Kubiack’s case raises the “code-of-silence" that discourages officers across the country from reporting problems within their departments. The officer who threatened Kubiack has had 31 internal affairs complaints as well as a federal lawsuit leveled against him. Kubiack initially filed an administrative complaint requesting to be placed back in her assignment with Chicago Police Department’s News Affairs, but her request was denied.

Two of the lawsuits concerned fatal police shootings of two Black men: Paul O’Neal Jr., who was 18 at the time, and Martice Milliner, who was 27, were both shot and killed by Chicago police officers. Chicago also settled a separate lawsuit concerning a claim of retaliation arising out of a report by one police officer against another officer for verbal abuse and threatening conduct and another settlement involved a claim about armed officers breaking into an apartment based on an inaccurate warrant.

Hayes has developmental disabilities and was unarmed at the time of his shooting. It is unclear why he was targeted by an off-duty police officer, but the incident was caught on video and the officer involved in the incident was suspended for six months.

In 2015, The Wall Street Journal released an analysis of settlement totals from instances of police misconduct among the ten largest local police departments in the nation. Many of the cases involved in the analysis involved alleged beatings, shootings, and wrongful imprisonment. The analysis determined that, between 2010 and 2014, the City of Chicago spent $249.7 million on police misconduct cases. In 2015, the city paid $5 million to the family of Laquan McDonald, who was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer 16 times as he walked away from the officer. A separate analysis conducted by local news source NBC5 Chicago determined that the city paid over $45 million to resolve police misconduct cases between January and July 2018.