The city of Chicago is expected to pay $500,000 to settle a police brutality case involving a woman who suffered a miscarriage after being repeatedly shocked with a Taser by a patrol officer with a troubling history, city records show.
The amount appears on the agenda for an upcoming City Council Finance Committee meeting. The settlement requires approval from the entire council, which is scheduled to meet next week.
A spokesman for the city Law Department declined to comment on the settlement before the matter is presented to the Finance Committee on Monday.
The deal would be yet another payout for a lawsuit involving Patrick Kelly, a 36-year-old Chicago police patrol officer who has had at least 27 investigations into his on- and off-duty conduct during his career.
The payout would bring the total for Kelly-related lawsuits to nearly $1.2 million so far in settlements and jury awards, including a $100,000 payout in a case in which a man accused Kelly of making a false arrest and holding a gun to his head. Two cases in addition to the Taser lawsuit are pending.
As of mid-March, the city has paid $2.4 million to private attorneys to defend lawsuits involving Kelly, who is still on active duty.
Jeffrey Granich, the lawyer for the woman in the case, Elaina Turner, and her fiance, Ulysses Green, said he is happy his clients got a measure of justice and hopes city leadership pays attention to the case.
“I hope this case, No. 1, makes the city aware of just how much problem officers like this hurt the department and hurt the city and hurt the taxpayers,” Granich said.
Records obtained by the Tribune show Kelly has been found mentally unfit for duty twice during his turbulent career, arrested two times and accused of beating a girlfriend. Also, his childhood friend Michael LaPorta was shot near the back of the head with Kelly’s service weapon in 2010, a case that was initially ruled an attempted suicide before being re-opened recently by both the Chicago Police Department and the Independent Police Review Authority.
Turner and Green, however, knew nothing of Kelly’s past when they crossed paths with him in July 2013.
Kelly had been on patrol when he responded to a call to assist other officers in towing cars from behind the couple’s Back of the Yards home. Green and Kelly exchanged angry words, with the officer promising to come back and take every car the family owned, the couple said in an interview.
Turner, who was about six weeks pregnant at the time, said she then pretended she was recording the incident on her cellphone and stepped closer to her van. But she dropped her phone and, as she went to pick it up, she said she heard Kelly yell, “Taser! Taser! Taser!”
The first Taser shot hit her in the abdomen, though the electrical current was minimized because only one of the cartridge’s two prongs hit her, records show. She felt a small prick, however, and froze. Then Kelly deployed the Taser’s second cartridge, which hit her in the arm and sent a painful jolt through her body, Turner recalled.
Kelly walked over, pressed the Taser to her skin and shocked her again. Turner fell to the ground, she recalled.
“It’s excruciating pain,” Turner told the Tribune earlier this year. “It feels as if someone sticks needles in you and then sets them on fire.”
She miscarried several days later.
Green was charged with aggravated assault on a police officer.
At the couple’s criminal trial, Kelly testified that he deployed his Taser because Turner tried to open the passenger door of the van against his orders and then fled. But the tow truck driver did not corroborate Kelly’s account, testifying that he never saw Turner touch the van door. He also said she was not running away from Kelly when she was stunned with the Taser, as police contend, but standing in the middle of the street facing Kelly when it happened.
A Cook County judge acquitted Green and Turner.
Green filed a complaint with IPRA within days of the Taser incident. Turner followed shortly after. Records show IPRA did nothing with the couple’s sworn statements for nearly two years, until their attorney asked for the case file shortly before their criminal trial. IPRA investigators then interviewed Kelly and his partner, exonerating Kelly in June 2016.
IPRA reopened that investigation last summer, stating that it wanted to review Kelly’s mental fitness evaluations and depositions taken in the civil case. The case remains open, officials said.
The agency also reopened the LaPorta case, but it’s unclear how aggressively it is pursuing its re-examination. The Police Department announced it would take a second look at the case last year but still has not interviewed LaPorta.
IPRA, which initially ruled that Kelly did not shoot LaPorta, officially reopened the case in March. Its investigators also have not yet spoken to LaPorta.
Granich said he believes IPRA shares culpability in its failure to discipline officers.
“IPRA is complicit in costing the city money, and they are not doing their job,” he said. “When they protect these bad officers they cost everybody.”
Twitter @JeffCoen
The last I heard was that Chi town was broke, so watch out residents you are about to get another reaming in the bung hole. Make your pigs take out their own insurance against lawsuits. Too many claims and they would be unable to be hired. Goes for the rest of the country also.
brace yourselves tax payers
title should read “Tax payers expected to pay 500,000 due to the negligence of your police department that you didnt vote on “.. (not that it would matter)