Chicago primed to pay out $15 million to more victims of police misconduct

Chicago taxpayers are on the hook for another $15 million to settle police misconduct lawsuits, including cases linked to two of the department’s most notorious members, Jon Burge and Ronald Watts.

The City Council’s Finance Committee will vote Monday on those payouts, stemming from five lawsuits filed in state and federal courts since 2019.

The biggest settlement — $11.6 million — would go to Anthony Jakes, who falsely confessed to being an accomplice in a 1991 murder when he was just 15 after being beaten by members of Cmdr. Burge’s infamous “midnight crew.”

Jakes spent 20 years in prison before being released in 2012.

Michael Liggins, wrongfully arrested and charged with murder in 2014, would get $2.5 million. He spent years in Cook County Jail before being acquitted at trial.

Another case settled for $500,000 targets Sgt. Watts and his corrupt team of tactical officers, who arrested Alvin Waddy in 2007 at the Ida B. Wells housing project on bogus drug charges. After pleading guilty and being incarcerated, Waddy was granted a certificate of innocence in 2019.

The proposed payouts add to an avalanche of costly settlements tied to allegations of police abuse. As the city struggles to close a $223 million budget gap and erase a nearly $1 billion shortfall in 2025, Finance Committee Chair Pat Dowell said there’s no end in sight.

“I don’t know how we put a plug in it, other than to clear out the pipeline of bad cases and hope that we have a consent decree that regulates officer behavior,” Dowell (3rd) said, referring to the federal court order mandating sweeping police reforms.

“There are a lot of remaining cases. All of the Watts cases. All of the [Det. Reynaldo] Guevara cases,” she added. “The one thing I’m pleased about is that [corporation] counsel has put in place a risk management division and that they’re carefully weighing these cases and settlement requests.”

Meanwhile, new cases continue to pile up. Earlier this week, a federal jury awarded a historic $50 million in damages to Marcel Brown, who was wrongfully convicted in a 2008 murder.

Jakes, the man in line for the largest settlement before the Finance Committee, alleged in a federal lawsuit that detectives working under Burge beat and threatened him into confessing that he acted as a lookout during the murder of 16-year-old Jerrod Irving in 1991.

Jakes’ confession was the lone piece of evidence that sent him to prison for two decades when he was just a teenager.

After Jakes was released in 2012, the Illinois Torture and Relief Commission found credible evidence that detectives Kenneth Boudreau and Michael Kill tortured Jakes into confessing. A Cook County special prosecutor later dropped all the charges.

Burge was ultimately sentenced to four and a half years in federal prison in 2011 for lying in a deposition about police torture and abuse. He wasn’t directly implicated in Jakes’ case or named in the suit, which was filed months after Burge died.

Liggins, the man primed to earn a $2.5 million settlement, was arrested in the 2008 slaying of Berthel Tucker after he was falsely identified as one of the suspects in a botched robbery at a West Side grocery store.

Liggins wasn’t arrested until 2014 and the case fell apart at trial. By the time he was acquitted in 2019, he had spent more than five years in jail.

Allegations in Waddy’s $500,000 lawsuit naming Watts and his team mirrors other complaints lodged against the corrupt crew, which has been accused of extorting money from drug dealers and falsely arresting those who wouldn’t cooperate. As a result, prosecutors have tossed out hundreds of cases linked to the unit.

Like Burge, Watts and an underling named in Waddy’s suit were sentenced to federal prison. Watts was handed a 22-month sentence in 2013 for stealing from a homeless man who posed as a drug dealer as part of an FBI sting.

His accomplice, Officer Kallatt Mohammed, got 18 months.

So far this year, judgments and settlements in lawsuits targeting city agencies have totaled $73 million, according to records maintained by the Law Department.