Chicago squandering taxpayer money by settling bogus lawsuits

[Bronzeage]

I guess they do not care because net taxpayers are not their target demographic.
Chicago settles another lawsuit over fatal shooting by police
Cedick Chatman was a thug who beat up and carjacked somebody. When confronted by police he took of running and allegedly turned toward the cops. The shooting was deemed justified.
There is no reason why the family of this thug should be enriched.

Chicago is in general very generous with payouts to families of thugs who get shot by police. Just last week the family of armed thug Darius Pinex who dragged a police officer with his car got paid even though the first trial ended in defeat for the family.
Well, it's easy to be generous with other people's money. Especially when it's mostly the money of people who don't vote for you.

On the other hand, it's much cheaper than training and paying a police force that doesn't think their sidearm is the only response to any situation. That is what these kind of civil suits are about. It's not enough that the policeman's actions may have been justified in the moment. The real question is what brought circumstances to that moment.

For example, a policeman is in pursuit of a fleeing suspect. He sees a door close, and with his pistol raised, kicks the door in, sees a person pointing a gun at him. The policeman fires and kills the person. It turns out, the suspect had not gone through that door. The person who pointed the gun was the resident of the apartment.

The shooting was justified, but the officer made an error in judgment which made the shooting unavoidable.

 

[RavenSky]

Yes, that is exactly what you are doing. You know this, so your continued use of the word for only black people makes your intent crystal clear for everyone to see

I do not use the word only for black thugs. But those are the only thugs we discuss at length because of them receiving support. For example, I do not recall Rahm paying families of white thugs millions. Therefore, I do not start a thread about it.

A northwest suburb of Chicago has agreed to pay $875000 to a [white] woman who accused a police officer of using excessive force after a DUI arrest.

Oh... right... she's a woman. She doesn't count to you.

But your insistence that it is only "thugs" (who happen to be black) who are receiving these settlements from Chicago simply reconfirms your basic racism.

There has been nearly a half a billion dollars paid out in settlements for police misconduct by Chicago since 2004. Are you suggesting that the 1,611 people who have filed police misconduct claims from 2009 - 2013 are all "thugs"?

That the majority of people on the receiving end of police misconduct are poor and black is undisputed. But that is a condemnation of the police department, not their victims.

Chicago pays $5.5M in reparations to 57 Burge torture victims

Cash-strapped Chicago doled out $5.5 million in reparations on Monday to 57 victims of the Jon Burge police torture era after a painstaking claims process that will do nothing to heal the wounds of more recent police shootings.

 Jon Graham Burge (born December 20, 1947) is a convicted felon and former Chicago Police Department detective and commander who gained notoriety for torturing more than 200 criminal suspects between 1972 and 1991 in order to force confessions.

Burge and his men allegedly tortured upward of 100 people, many of them African-American South Side men, in efforts to extract confessions from them between early 1972 and late 1991.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/ct-city-council-rauner-cupich-met-20150506-story.html

I suppose you think all of the people Jon Burge tortured into confessions were "thugs"

Servin fired shots from his car into a group of Boyd’s friends as they stood with their backs to him in a park on the city’s West Side in March 2012. Servin, while off duty, had argued with the group over noise before firing over his shoulder, striking Boyd, 22, in the back of the head, authorities said.

Boyd’s family was awarded $4.5 million in a wrongful death suit against the city — years before Servin was arrested.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/dante-servin-quits_us_573b7f22e4b0ef86171c6575

Yes, she was black. And a woman. Two strikes against her in your book, but was she a "thug"? She was standing in a group of people when Servin (off-duty at the time) opened fire on the group, hitting her in the back of the head with a bullet. Was she being a "thug", Derec?

If you were really concerned about how much money the city of Chicago is paying out for these types of cases, maybe you should start posting about the police departments themselves, what they should do to put an end to their long history of violence against citizens (yes, particularly black citizens)

Chicago's municipal finances are so precarious, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has shuttered schools, police stations and mental health clinics to save money.

But there's one area that's seen spending skyrocket: Police misconduct claims.

Over the past decade, the City of Chicago has spent more than $500 million on police-related settlements, judgments, legal fees and other costs – a staggering sum that raises new questions about the adequacy of training and oversight in the Chicago Police Department, according to a months-long review by the Better Government Association.

http://www.bettergov.org/news/beyond-burge

Settlement generally come out of city budgets, not police budgets, and in Chicago these payouts compound the city’s financial distress, leaving less money for public services and forcing cuts. It is important to note that the settlement figures that are publicly available only account for the harm the city has admitted to, and does not include the legal fees and court costs, which could drive the totals even higher. The more than half a billion dollars Chicago has paid in the last 12 years could have funded 5 new state of the art high schools, 33 new libraries or countless mental health facilities and community development programs.

http://www.thenation.com/article/ch...nd-its-impoverishing-the-victims-communities/

You are correct that the taxpayers of Chicago should be outraged by these settlements, but you (as usual) are outraged at the wrong people. You, apparently, would rather see the tortures of Jon Burge continue against (mostly) black people.

You made a big deal of pretending that you are using the word "thug" to mean "a subtype of criminal" yet you don't use the word for someone like Jon Burge.

You are not fooling anyone.

 

[SimpleDon]

I can definitely use it as evidence for a lack of evidence for any crime by the police. If there is not even probable cause to charge any officers there is likely not enough evidence to find in favor of the family in a "wrongful death" suit. In any case it makes it worthwhile to defend these cases and not fold.

I can explain your obvious confusion.

The evidentiary requirement for a civil suit is lower than it is for a criminal prosecution. A civil suit has to be proven by the preponderance of the evidence. In a criminal trial evidence has to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a more rigorous requirement.

In other words your assertion, "If there is not even probable cause to charge any officers there is likely not enough evidence to find in favor of the family in a "wrongful death" suit" is wrong.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

Well, I guess our president is racist for using the term "thug":

http://nypost.com/2015/04/28/obama-calls-baltimore-rioters-criminals-and-thugs/

Still, the president lashed into the rioters who torched buildings and looted businesses in Baltimore a day earlier, calling them ​“criminals ​and thugs” who were destroying their own communities.

​“That is not a protest. It is not a statement. It’s people, a handful of people, taking advantage of a situation for their own purposes — and they need to be treated as criminals,” Obama said from the White House.

Listen to what The Doctor of Common Sense has to say about it:

Obama called actual thugs, "thugs". As in the gangs that used the death of someone to go and loot stores.

Other people want to call black people thugs. Even ones that are out protesting peacefully.

 

[laughing dog]

Clearly the City of Chicago thinks that it is cheaper to settle these cases out of court than to risk a jury trial. I wonder why that is?

 

[Derec]

Obama called actual thugs, "thugs". As in the gangs that used the death of someone to go and loot stores.

As I do, and most other people.

Other people want to call black people thugs. Even ones that are out protesting peacefully.

No. At least it's not a widespread phenomenon. 99% of the time, actual thugs are called thugs, not black people in general.

- - - Updated - - -

I can explain your obvious confusion.

I think you are the one who is confused.

The evidentiary requirement for a civil suit is lower than it is for a criminal prosecution. A civil suit has to be proven by the preponderance of the evidence. In a criminal trial evidence has to establish guilt beyond a reasonable doubt, a more rigorous requirement.

That is the standard required to obtain a conviction, not to initiate prosecution.

In other words your assertion, "If there is not even probable cause to charge any officers there is likely not enough evidence to find in favor of the family in a "wrongful death" suit" is wrong.

Probable cause is a much lower standard than beyond a reasonable doubt.

- - - Updated - - -

Oh... right... she's a woman. She doesn't count to you.

Nice ad hominem.

I never denied that there were cases of unjustified shootings or where innocent people are killed or injured. But these two cases I mentioned in the OP were justified and the deceased were violent criminals. Their families do not deserve riches.