(CHICAGO) A City Council Committee agreed Monday to pay $5 million to the family of a black teenager shot 16 times by a Chicago Police officer — even before a lawsuit was filed — amid word that the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald is the subject of an FBI investigation.
Corporation Counsel Stephen Patton disclosed the existence of a “pending and active” state and federal investigation of the October 20, 2014, shooting as he justified the unusual settlement before a lawsuit was filed, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.
In a statement issued Monday afternoon, the U.S. Attorney’s office confirmed that the FBI office in Chicago was leading the investigation “in coordination with the Independent Police Review Authority, the U.S. Attorney’s Office, and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office.”
The shooting followed a police chase that ensued after a man called 911 to report that a knife-wielding offender had threatened him and was attempting to break into vehicles in an Archer Heights trucking yard at 41st and Kildare.
Two police officers responded to the call and found the alleged offender, subsequently identified as 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, about a block away holding a knife in his right hand, Patton said.
When McDonald was ordered to show his hands, the knife was visible, Patton said. When the teenager was ordered to drop the knife, he ignored the demand and kept walking along 40th Street toward Pulaski away from the officers.
Patton then described a chase that saw one of the officers follow McDonald on foot “kind of beside” the teenager while the other officer followed behind in a marked squad car and called a dispatcher to request a back-up unit with a Taser.
The chase continued until McDonald neared Pulaski, potentially endangering civilians. That’s when the officer in the squad car pulled in front of the teenager to block his path. According to Patton, McDonald responded by using the knife to puncture one of the squad car’s front tires and struck the windshield with a knife before continuing through a Burger King parking lot and onto Pulaski.
By that point, two additional squad cars had reported to the scene, one of them equipped with a dashboard camera that recorded the deadly shooting. The squad car with the camera followed behind McDonald.
The other squad car pulled up beside, then in front of the teenager and both officers jumped out with their guns drawn. One of those two officers then opened fire and shot McDonald 16 times, all of it captured on videotape.
The shooting officer contends that McDonald was moving toward him and that he opened fire to protect himself.
Plaintiffs attorneys have countered that the teenager was continuing to walk away from police at the time of the shooting. Patton said the video supports that version of events and that McDonald posed no imminent threat because there were no pedestrians or vehicles nearby at the time of the shooting.
“This is kind of a unique case where we had the original two officers who arrived at the scene followed Mr. McDonald for some number of blocks and matter of minutes and never saw fit to discharge their weapons. It also applies to [the shooter’s] partner, who was right beside him when they exited the police vehicle, also got out of the police car with guns drawn but did not shoot,” Patton told the Finance Committee Monday.
Noting that the family initially demanded $16 million, the corporation counsel said, “So, the plaintiffs will contend, if this matter were not resolved, that the unreasonableness of Officer A’s conduct is shown by the restraint that was shown by the other five officers, none of whom discharged their weapons.”
Although McDonald had an “extensive juvenile record,” Patton said he had recently secured a summer job through a church social agency. Just a month before the shooting, he had also enrolled in the Sullivan Alternative School for troubled youth, where his mentor was prepared to testify that McDonald had good grades at the time of his death and was “making progress in turning his life around.”
When West Side Ald. Jason Ervin (28th) demanded to know what discipline had been meted out to the officer who fired the 16 shots that killed McDonald, Patton noted that the Independent Police Review Authority was not alone in investigating the case.
“This is a matter that’s under active current criminal investigation by both federal and state law enforcement authorities,” Patton said.
“As a matter of course, these matters are referred. In some cases, they’re investigated. In some, they’re not. In this case, there is an active investigation and it involves — not just the state’s attorney, but also federal law enforcement authorities.”
Pressed on whether the U.S. Department of Justice is probing an alleged civil rights violation, the corporation counsel said, “I do not know and am not privy to the specific charges that are being considered there.”
Patton insisted that it is “not unusual” to settle cases before litigation is filed. But it “generally happens” in cases involving property damage, he said.
“It is more unusual in police cases, but fully consistent with our policy of assessing cases early and determining whether they’re cases that should be settled and, if we conclude that they are, to try to resolve them before they generate a lot of fees and expenses and become more difficult to resolve,” he said.
“Whether the complaint was filed has very little, if any, impact in terms of our evaluation of the case. It’s what the facts and circumstances are and what we think the potential damages would be…The video was an important part of the evidence. But it also included the witness statements, the conduct of the other officers.”
Under further questioning, Patton acknowledged that not all police officers carry Tasers. That prompted Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke (14th), a former Chicago Police officer, to say, “I believe that, at one time, they were sergeants only that had the Tasers. But now, it’s a weapon that’s optional for the officer to carry.”
He added, “It would appear that, had the Taser been available in this case, maybe the taxpayers wouldn’t be shelling out $5 million.”
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