The Chicago City Council puts a bounty on cops
The recent approval by the Chicago City Council’s Finance Committee of a $280,000 settlement for activist Miracle Boyd has reignited concerns about the city’s pattern of awarding substantial settlements in cases involving confrontations with law enforcement. This incident underscores a troubling trend where individuals who engage in aggressive actions against police officers receive significant financial compensation, raising questions about the city’s commitment to supporting its law enforcement personnel.
The incident involving Miracle Boyd
The Miracle Boyd incident refers to a confrontation on July 17, 2020, during a protest in Chicago’s Grant Park. Boyd, an 18-year-old activist with the group GoodKids MadCity, was filming an arrest near the Christopher Columbus statue. Boyd was documenting the arrest of a fellow protester when Officer Nicholas Jovanovich allegedly knocked her phone out of her hand, and the phone, unfortunately, struck her in the face.
The impact caused Boyd to lose one and a half teeth.
My girl Miracle must have the world’s most expensive dentist. Boyd willfully put herself in harm’s way. The officer, allegedly, inadvertently knocked the phone into poor Miracle’s face. That’s too bad, but it never would’ve happened if Miracle hadn’t decided to join a mob attacking the police and trying to provoke an incident. Even Lori Lightfoot, a notorious adversary of CPD, condemned the Columbus statue rioters for viciously attacking the police.
This was not Miracle’s first profitable engagement with the police. She seems to be making a career of it.
Miracle is an abolitionist; which means she wants to abolish all prisons, and of course she’s an advocate for generous reparations. It seems that she is an entrepreneurial reparationist, getting one massive judgment at a time from Chicago’s taxpayers, even though the citizens of Chicago died in droves to free the slaves.
A pattern of controversial settlements
The settlement with Boyd is not an isolated case. Chicago has a history of awarding substantial sums in situations where individuals involved in confrontations with police have received significant payouts:
• Dexter Reed Case: In March 2024, Dexter Reed was fatally shot by Chicago police officers after he fired his illegally owned handgun, injuring an officer during a traffic stop. Despite Reed’s initiation of violence, his family filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city. In February 2025, the city proposed a $1.25 million settlement to Reed’s family, pending approval from the City Council.
• Paul O’Neal Case: In July 2016, 18-year-old Paul O’Neal was shot and killed by Chicago police officers following a car chase involving a stolen vehicle. Although O’Neal was unarmed at the time he fled on foot, the city settled a wrongful death lawsuit filed by O’Neal’s mother for $2.25 million in 2020.
The message the City Council is sending to the criminals of Chicago is that it pays to provoke or assault police, and it pays well.
Financial implications for taxpayers
These settlements have significant financial repercussions for Chicago taxpayers. In 2024 alone, the city spent at least $107.5 million to resolve lawsuits alleging police misconduct, setting a new record. This trend has been escalating, with taxpayers bearing nearly $400 million over five years to cover such settlements.
Impact on law enforcement morale
The city’s propensity to settle, even in cases where individuals have engaged in criminal behavior or posed threats to officers, has a detrimental effect on police morale. Officers may feel undermined and unsupported, knowing that the city might financially compensate individuals who have attacked or endangered them. This environment can lead to hesitation in critical situations, potentially compromising public safety.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot‘s aversion to settlements related to police chases has stopped Chicago Police Department officers from chasing criminals except under the most extreme circumstances, at grave risk to their careers.
The current approach of awarding substantial settlements to individuals involved in confrontations with police sends a concerning message. It not only places a heavy financial burden on taxpayers but also erodes the confidence and morale of the police force.
Chicago must emulate the successful example of the Illinois State Medical Insurance Exchange, the captive medical liability, insurance company of the Illinois State Medical Society. When faced with a similar plague of frivolous lawsuits against physicians in the 1970s, ISMIE adopted a policy of refusing to settle. This forced every plaintiff to go to trial, which is an expensive and risky proposition. As a result, frivolous lawsuits became virtually extinct.
Chicago should take a similar posture. The council should absolutely refuse to settle these frivolous cases and make the plaintiffs take them all to trial and then appeal them at every possible level. Not one dime should be paid out unless absolutely mandated by the highest court available. This determined, uncompromising policy will discourage plaintiffs from bringing ridiculous suits and hoping to make a career out of provoking the police into an actionable reaction.
Beyond that, the city needs to seek legislation at whatever level is necessary to give itself sovereign immunity for any liability related to law enforcement. Criminals should not be eligible for settlements for the consequences of their crimes, including those that result from law enforcement actions that are necessary at public expense to stop their criminal activity. This includes the results of chases and unfortunate injuries incurred in obvious disturbances of the peace that in Miracle’s case were specifically designed to attack the police.
Of course, the underlying ostensible cause of this protest was the compelling need after decades and decades to suddenly remove the statue of Christopher Columbus from public display as a result of an unfortunate law enforcement-related incident involving a petty criminal named George Floyd in Minneapolis. Amidst the poisonous woke political environment of the time, the absurdity of attacking Chicago police for an incident that occurred in Minnesota and, now that cooler heads prevail, was clearly provoked by Floyd himself (whose demise was in all likelihood a result of his ingestion of copious amounts of fentanyl), was not as obvious as it is today. Nor was it obvious that demanding the removal of statues of an alleged colonial oppressor in reaction to such an incident was beyond absurd. The final irony in this “miraculous” case is that the protest compounded the injury toll from incidents involving law enforcement and people of color, exactly what the protesters purport to oppose!
Today we are in a different political environment. DEI is under attack at the national level while still being fiercely defended by our local and state politicians. However, we should work to take advantage of national trends, particularly as they influence jurisprudence. Legal challenges to the sorts of vulnerabilities that restrain law enforcement from doing its job may be more vulnerable in court than they are in the halls of our City Council.
