A first-of-its-kind $90 million deal to settle almost 200 lawsuits tied to a corrupt Chicago police sergeant unanimously advanced Monday in the City Council, setting it up to likely pass later this month.
Aldermen had long feared the price tag for the 176 remaining reversed conviction cases connected to Sgt. Ronald Watts. But they quickly assented — and let out a breath of relief — when they finally faced Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposal to resolve the cases.
The so-called global settlement won full-throated praise from council members who advanced it without dissent in a Finance Committee vote, including yes votes from a host of aldermen often sharply opposed to the mayor’s deals to settle police misconduct cases.
“This is way less than I think we were all planning for,” said Ald. Raymond Lopez, one of Johnson’s staunchest critics. “Knowing that we’re able to put some of these dark chapters behind us, I think will help us be able to focus on some of the other issues.”
Top city attorney Mary Richardson-Lowry organized the sprawling deal that includes legal costs and payouts for all plaintiffs as a cost-saving measure, she told the Tribune last week. She estimated the city would have been forced to pay $400 million or more if it had settled the cases one-by-one or taken the thorny lawsuits to court.
The former sergeant, who for years was in charge of a tactical crew that patrolled the Ida B. Wells public housing complex on the South Side, is alleged by 180 plaintiffs in 176 pending federal court cases to have made phony drug arrests that landed many in prison.
He and an underling, Officer Kallat Mohammed, went to prison in 2013 for the relatively low-level crime of shaking down a drug courier who turned out to be a federal informant. Their convictions launched an avalanche of lawsuits from people they had arrested and helped put behind bars.
The deal to resolve the remaining suits was a “staggeringly good outcome,” Ald. Bill Conway, 32nd, said during the Monday meeting.
“This was a large unknown future liability on the balance sheet of the city,” he said.
Ald. Matthew O’Shea, 19th, referred to the deal as “a gift.” Ald. Brendan Reilly, 42nd, also backed the plan.
“It’s hard to celebrate paying out $90 million to anybody. It’s a lot of money that could be spent on other things. But, here we are,” the Johnson critic said.
The deal must still be approved by the full City Council. A vote is expected later this month.
But the Watts fallout is now well on its way to becoming one of the most expensive police misconduct scandals in the history of the city and country. The city has already paid $11 million to settle nine Watts cases and $20 million to outside law firms to defend the cases, placing the total Watts costs at $121 million if the deal is approved.
The settlement would be paid in two installments next year and would expand the city’s $1.15 billion estimated 2026 budget gap.
Aldermen have already approved over $220 million to settle police-related lawsuits this year, an amount that smashes past records and is almost three times larger than what Johnson and the council budgeted for such deals.
Richardson-Lowry hinted her office might soon return to the global settlement strategy to resolve other batches of suits tied to corrupt police. She suggested last week that dozens of pending lawsuits involving disgraced Detective Reynaldo Guevara could be a fit for the novel approach.
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“I have a next group of cases in mind,” she told aldermen Monday. “What we learned in this process, we will carry that forward and apply it.”