The family of Dexter Reed, a black man killed by police after he opened fire on officers when they stopped his car, will not get $1.25 million from Chicago city taxpayers under a settlement backed by Mayor Brandon Johnson, after a narrow majority of the Chicago City Council's Finance Committee rejected the deal.
On Friday, April 11, the Finance Committee voted 15-12 against the settlement, meaning it will not advance to the City Council for a vote from the city's full collection of aldermen.
The deal has been controversial since it was first mentioned late last year.
Supporters of the settlement, including city lawyers, said the deal was needed to save the city potentially millions of dollars compared to the costs of defending against the lawsuit from Reed's family. The city's lawyers had estimated that cost could exceed $5 million, should Reed's family continue to press their claims in court.
Opponents of the settlement, however, said any amount voluntarily surrendered by the city to Reed's family would signal to police and criminals alike that the city doesn't value its police officers and any violent encounter with police - even if they are the fault of the criminal - could lead to a large and quick payday for criminals and their families.
Some aldermen against the settlement have described the deal as "absurd" and "an absolute embarrassment."
The lawsuit from Reed's mother, Nicole Banks, and the attempted settlement came last April, within weeks of Reed's death and long before either police or their civilian oversight agency could complete any kind of thorough and complete investigation into the encounter between Reed and the Chicago Police officers involved in Reed's death.
Banks is represented by attorneys Andrew M. Stroth, of Action Injury Law Group; Steven A. Hart and Bradley Kupiec, of Hart McLaughlin & Eldridge; and Sheila A. Bedi and Kara C. Crutcher, of the Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic, of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law, all of Chicago.
Reed died in a traffic stop on March 21, 2024.
According to published accounts, a Chicago Police tactical unit pulled Reed's vehicle over in a portion of Chicago's Humboldt Park neighborhood known by police and the public alike for extensive problems with gang activity and gun violence.
According to accounts and video evidence, police ordered Reed to lower his window. Reed initially complied. However, video of the incident showed he rolled his car window back up while talking with police, despite repeated command from officers to keep his window down. In response to officers' commands, Reed repeatedly said, "OK, I'm trying," but continued to roll his window up.
Reed then reportedly opened fire on officers from within the vehicle, striking one officer in the hand. Officers then returned fire from multiple directions, killing Reed. According to reports, an emptied ammunition magazine was found inside Reed's vehicle.
Almost immediately after the incident, former head of Chicago's Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) and Mayor Johnson moved quickly to fault police for Reed's death, despite knowing evidence indicated Reed disobeyed officers' commands and fired first.
Reed's family's lawsuit rested heavily on statements Kersten made in a letter to Chicago's police superintendent about Reed's death. In that letter, Kersten said her initial review of video of the incident raised concerns over the officers' justification for the traffic stop and officers' actions up to and including their decision to collectively fire at and kill Reed that day after Reed opened fire on them from inside his vehicle.
That letter was not issued publicly. Rather, the letter was made public under a Freedom of Information Act request filed by a reporter with WTTW News.
Following the shooting, Kersten also repeatedly made statements questioning officers and their tactics in various media interviews, despite her responsibility to ultimately lead the investigation into the incident.
Kersten's handling of the Reed case also served as a central point of contention within a lawsuit brought against the city and COPA by a whistleblower, who claims Kersten fired him from his post as a deputy COPA administrator in retaliation for bringing attention to alleged politically motivated and slanted anti-cop investigations under Kersten's leadership.
That lawsuit, from plaintiff Matthew Haynam, came in the wake of COPA's acrimonious preliminary handling of the investigation into Reed's death.
Haynam accused Kersten of improperly intervening in the investigation of Reed's death and making public comments about the incident she knew were "unsupported by the actual evidence adduced in the investigatory file," including comments asserting officers had "fabricated" a reason for initiating the traffic stop.
Kersten then "publicly demanded" Chicago Police "immediately relieve the officers involved in the Reed traffic stop of their police powers."
No officers have yet been formally accused of any wrongdoing in connection with Reed's death.
Kersten resigned her post as head of COPA in February. Published reports indicated she faced a no-confidence vote from the COPA panel.
Haynam's lawsuit was voluntarily dismissed on March 25, according to court records.
In the meantime, the Chicago City Council continued to consider the potential settlement with Reed's family.
In their lawsuit, Reed's family have attempted to claim police were the actual aggressors.
The lawsuit asserted officers, who were members of a special Chicago Police Department tactical unit operating in plain clothes in an unmarked vehicle in the high crime Humboldt Park neighborhood, pulled Reed over for no reason, and then "approaching him aggressively ... brandished their weapons in a threatening manner, screamed curse words at (Reed), and attempted to unlawfully enter his vehicle."
The lawsuit did not concede that Reed fired first, even though Kersten has repeatedly stated she believes that is what the evidence indicates.
Rather, the lawsuit claimed officers "used wildly disproportionate force against (Reed) - repeatedly shooting at him even when he clearly presented no threat."
The lawsuit further claimed that Reed suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, caused, in part, by living in a high crime neighborhood subject to "hyper policing" and other alleged abuses by Chicago Police officers.
The lawsuit claimed, without evidence, that Reed's PTSD caused him to react poorly to officers' commands, for instance, rolling his car window back up when commanded to roll down the other windows, while repeatedly stating "Okay, okay I'm trying" in response to officers' further commands.
The lawsuit asserted police officers should have known "when stopping people in a neighborhood historically and culturally known for its heightened levels of police harassment and violent traffic stops, there is a strong likelihood that the individual lives with PTSD symptoms such as hypervigilance."
The lawsuit accused officers of violating federal law and Reed's Fourth Amendment rights, and of excessive force.
The lawsuit further leveled accusations of racism against the officers and Chicago Police in general, claiming the traffic stop was "unlawful" and is part of a "longstanding practice" by CPD of allegedly using legal "pretexts" to pull over black drivers on Chicago's south and west sides, particularly in high crime neighborhoods.
They asserted the officers only stopped Reed "because he was a young, Black man driving a vehicle on the westside of Chicago."
At the time the lawsuit was filed, law enforcement advocates had predicted the speed with which the suit was lodged in federal court indicated Reed's family and their lawyers sought to ride a wave of public opinion and outrage stoked by Mayor Johnson and others to a quick settlement, regardless of the actual facts of the case.
The settlement was first announced in federal court in late November 2024. Terms of the settlement have remained confidential in court.
However, according to published reports, the deal also allegedly includes provisions under which the city would agree to prohibit Chicago Police from requiring officers to make a certain number of traffic stops or use any sort of traffic stop quota to determine bonuses or other compensation for officers.
The federal judge handling the case agreed to dismiss the lawsuit, pending the City Council's approval of the deal. Should the Council reject the deal, the judge reserved the authority to reinstate the lawsuit.
Chicago Ald. Anthony Napolitano, for instance, in a radio interview in February said the settlement sends the message to police officers that "it's no longer about stand the line. It's get far behind the line, get away from the line, don't do your job" and just respond to calls after crimes have been committed.
"That's what we're turning the system into now," Napolitano said. "The offender is the victim and the police are the aggressors, they're the demon, they're the bad person."
The settlement, however, was reintroduced and brought to the Finance Committee for renewed consideration on April 11.
Amid that debate, according to published reports, Ald. Walter Burnett, an ally of Mayor Johnson, said he supported the deal because he believed officers were in the wrong for having "walked up" on Reed's car in plain clothes in a neighborhood where "there's a lot of shooting and killing and gang banging."
"I couldn't imagine what was going on in the young man's head," Burnett said, adding: "I don't know how I would have reacted."
Ald. Ray Lopez, however, responded angrily to Burnett's statements, saying the remarks left him "speechless."
"What the hell is going on in this room?" Lopez said. "To sit here and say that we are going to give license to individuals to shoot officers when they are pulled over...
"You all should be ashamed of yourself for what you all are inspiring and allowing. You want to settle because it's cheaper? You are sending a message to every officer on the street that their lives don't matter anymore."