The sue-the-cops racket is weaking police, a drain on Chicago’s finances, and making martyrs of violent criminals
Suing the City of Chicago for alleged police misconduct has become both a lucrative racket and drain on city finances. On Monday, a Chicago jury awarded $120 million in a wrongful conviction lawsuit to two plaintiffs, both of whom spent 16 years in prison. This amounts to paying each man approximately $4 million for each year behind bars. Just last August, another Chicago jury awarded $50 million to a man who had spent 10 years in prison before then State’s Attorney Kim Foxx agreed to the dismissal of charges against him. That settlement was equivalent to a whopping $5 million per year of custody.
All three of those men were represented by a Chicago law firm that, in 2022, secured $42 million in settlements out of a total of $117 million Chicago paid out to litigants. Since 2000, Chicago has paid out $700 million in lawsuits to criminals, most of whom are guilty, for alleged police misconduct and lawyers representing the city got $138 million.
Meanwhile, on the same day a federal court awarded $120 million to two men for 16 years imprisonment, the City Council Committee on Finance approved a proposed settlement for $280K to an injured activist involved in an assault of cops that injured 18 officers during a May 202 protest in Grant Park. The settlement to protester Miracle Boyd is likely to be approved by the full City Council. In addition to these settlements, the Mayor’s Office is supporting the awarding of another $1.25 million to the estate of a man who Chicago Police fatally shot only after he first fired on officers several times, wounding one.
Chicago is getting fleeced.
During Kim Foxx' eight years in office, more and more Chicago law firms started specializing not only in representing perpetrators accused of committing violent crimes, but also in suing the Chicago Police Department (CPD). Alleging "civil rights" violations by police, these firms frequently win mammoth, taxpayer-funded settlements that city leaders seem all too willing to award. It is no surprise that lawyers specializing in suing police were the largest segment of donors to Clayton Harris, III, Cook County Board President and Democratic Party boss Toni Preckwinkle’s hand-picked successor to Kim Foxx.
During her tenure, Foxx routinely demonstrated that her office had become an advocacy shop for violent criminals rather than victims when she brokered an undisclosed side room deal with a secret so-called “Lawyers Committee,” which was comprised of a group of private lawyers, several of whom specialize in suing the police. These lawyers collaborated with a so-called “Working Group” of more private lawyers who Foxx hired and paid as “Special Assistant State’s Attorneys” to overturn murder convictions, after which the same “Lawyers Committee” members would file multi-millions dollar lawsuits against CPD.
These stunning examples are reflective of a systematic approach to secure the release of convicts who then sue Chicago for large settlements. Foxx’s so-called ‘Conviction Integrity Unit’ caused the release of violent criminals not because of the emergence of exculpatory evidence, but rather the allegation of policing irregularities.
Foxx then agreed to the awarding of “Certificates of Innocence” to many of the released inmates, which her office was forced to acknowledge were not even based on evidence of innocence. The issuance of “Certificates of Innocence” greased the skids for successful lawsuits against the city. Many of the released murderers committed the crimes yet still secured multi-million-dollar settlements and verdicts. The facts of some of these cases are mind-boggling.
For example: Gabriel Solache and Arturo DeLeon Reyes sued several Chicago Police officers after murder charges were dropped against both in 2017. Two decades prior to their release, both men were convicted for their role in the grisly fatal stabbings of a young Hispanic couple and kidnapping of their two children. Solache, Reyes and the third perpetrator of the demonic offenses, Adrianna Mejia, kidnapped the children after savagely murdering their parents so that Mejia, who had feigned pregnancy, could pass the infant child off as her own.
Though Mejia remains in prison, and has never wavered in her testimony that Solache and Reyes committed the heinous crimes with her, Foxx dropped the case against both men. Upon Foxx dropping charges, then-First Assistant State’s attorney, Eric Sussman, publicly stated:
“There is no doubt in my mind, or the mind of anyone who has worked on this case, that Mr. Solache and Mr. Reyes are guilty of these grimes. It is a tragic day for justice in Cook County.”
Doubly appalling, after vigorously opposing Solache and Reyes’ petitions for certificates of innocence for several years, Foxx, in a sudden reversal in November 2022, quietly withdrew her office’s opposition to the certificates, thus paving the way for Solache and Reyes’ civil lawyers to introduce them as evidence against the police in their still pending federal lawsuits.
The Solache-Reyes case is not merely an aberration but rather is just one example of many wrongful conviction lawsuits that have been brought by individuals who obviously committed the underlying murder: A compelling fact that Foxx’s office routinely overlooked in dismissing charges and agreeing to certificates of innocence.
Prior to leaving office, Foxx provided further evidence her office has become an advocate for criminals, not victims, in her defense of Assistant State’s Attorney Michelle Mbekeani, then head of the state’s attorney’s Conviction Review Unit (CRU). Mbekeani operated a state licensed business linking inmates with wrongful conviction claims with private attorneys. This obvious conflict of interest, as well as lying when questioned by a judge about it, led to Mbekeani being barred from representing clients before the court.
The election of Judge Eileen O’Neill Burke, a respected jurist, over Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle’s endorsed candidate for States Attorney sent shockwaves through the ecosystem of lawyers, professors, and activists who make their fortunes off Preckwinkle’s criminal-friendly government. Judge Burke has brought an end to Foxx’s “Working Group” and the practice of the State’s Attorney freely issuing “Certificates of Innocence” to convicted criminals who are anything but innocent of their crimes.
However, with Preckwinkle effectively controlling Burke’s budget as well as the funding for the Sheriff’s Office and Chief Judge of the Circuit Court, Burke is certain to confront significant obstacles in her efforts to restore balance to the State’s Attorney’s Office. Meanwhile, with the passage of the SAFE-T Act as well as the CPD Consent Decree, the number of lawsuits is likely to skyrocket. The sweeping mandates and regulations that the police must follow will make it easier to sue police officers while making it harder to prosecute criminals, effectively destroying proactive policing and making the city less safe.
Several factors have been put in place that will ensure the Criminal Industrial Complex (CIC) and its members remain in business. The SAFE-T Act did not just eliminate cash bail and increase the number of serious and habitual criminals being released after arrest, but the law also provides a plethora of new mandates imposed on police. These mandates are ripe for new baseless claims. Likewise, the Chicago Police Department’s consent decree has 504 paragraphs of recommendations that will create even more opportunities to file lawsuits.
The Consent Decree Monitor, whose law firm has billed the city $19 million, or 35 percent above what was originally estimated, reports on CPD’s compliance. Little surprise that it reports poor compliance as the Monitor, whose recommendation will weigh heavily on the court’s decision to end the Decree and which has no interest in ending the cash cow. Consent Decree's claim of poor CPD compliance went largely unnoticed, forcing Mayor Brandon Johnson to add funding to restore 162 Consent Decree consultants. To give a perspective on consultants involved with the Consent Decree, today: there are more consultants than the number of officers assigned to the CTA.
An analysis of Chicago’s Consent Decree by Charles Fain Lehman of the Manhattan Institute observed that the Consent Decree has not had an appreciable effect on police conduct or public perception of the department. There is at least some evidence that the Consent Decree may have exacerbated Chicago’s horrific crime problem. While prior research suggests that they can sometimes have an effect, that outcome in Chicago is far from certain.
A fundamental problem with the Consent Decree is that it measures success by the number of police shootings, the number of complaints, and public confidence in the police, while completely ignoring the impact it is having on crime. Also ignored is the escalation of violence against the police, who are put at increasingly greater risks as they fear being punished for defending themselves while criminals are emboldened by reformers who increasingly treat them as victims.
Police Superintendent Larry Snelling stated that since 2020 a shocking 330 police officers have been shot at and 38 were shot, injured, or killed. The average number of police shot since 2020 is nearly five times what it was in 2019 and in most years prior. By contrast, police shootings, which was the basis for the Consent Decree, has plummeted. That decline occurred years before the Consent Decree was created. That the Consent Decree Monitor ignores this is disturbing as police restraint undermines the rationale for the Consent Decree in the first place.
The CIC uses the term “racial disparity” quite effectively to legitimize and expand its economic enterprise. It is particularly determined to continue their narrative of racial bias in the criminal justice system and with police-involved shootings. They compare those incarcerated to the general population statistics, then cast blame at police without factoring in 911 calls or crimes reported. Simply put: Police respond to the public.
It is time to realize that criminal justice reform, in particular police reform, has become a meal ticket for a network of academics, community activists, attorneys, and politicians. Individuals and groups who profit from the release of dangerous criminals from prison, they have signaled no intention of retreating from millions earned off the suffering of victims of crime and the law-abiding. That hundreds of millions of dollars are being diverted that could be used for community investment, that violent criminals who were convicted are being released and often made millionaires, and that proactive constitutional policing is being effectively destroyed making the city less safe, is if little concern to the profiteers.
