Aldermen Monday advanced a $1.2 million settlement proposal for the mother of a 16-year-old boy who a Chicago police officer shot during a foot chase on the West Side.
The City Council Finance Committee approved the deal for Tambrasha Hudson, who sued the city in federal court over the fatal 2016 shooting of her son, Pierre Loury. The vote was 13-8, and the full City Council will consider it and other settlements Wednesday.
The wrongful death lawsuit alleged the department’s long-standing racist practices “result in the unjustified deaths of people of color.”
In calling Monday for aldermen to approve the deal, city lawyer Jeff Levine noted the judge in the case barred the city from discussing the fact Loury was on probation at the time of the shooting, or from showing evidence of Loury’s possible gang affiliation.
But Loury’s family would be able to show in court that the gun found near Loury after the officer shot him was empty, and that no fingerprints were recovered from the weapon.
Loury was riding in a car that police pulled over after a passenger in another car told officers someone had fired shots from the vehicle, Levine said. Loury ran from the car and an officer chased him.
The scene on April 25, 2016, where Pierre Loury was shot and killed by a Chicago police officer two weeks earlier. (Phil Velasquez / Chicago Tribune)
When Loury tried to climb a fence in an alley, a gun dropped from his waistband. Loury then fell from the fence atop the weapon, and the officer shot Loury after the teen turned toward him with the gun in his hand and pointed it at the officer, Levine said.
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The now-defunct Independent Police Review Authority ruled the shooting justified in an August 2017 report, shortly before the agency became the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
Aldermen on Monday also approved a $300,000 settlement for a woman who was an underage girl when a Chicago police officer on at least five occasions paid her for sex in 2015.
The woman’s lawsuit alleged that because of the officer’s behavior on the job, including complaints against him that demonstrated a lack of respect for women, the city should have known he was unfit for the job of police officer.
The former officer, William Whitley, pleaded guilty in 2018 to sex trafficking underage girls, and was sentenced to 25 years in prison.
And aldermen also approved a $400,000 settlement to the family of a man who said officers barged into his apartment and beat him up while responding to a robbery complaint.
jebyrne@chicagotribune.com
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