CHICAGO —A woman who was dragged from her car by Chicago police at the Brickyard Mall is a step closer to receiving part of a $1.675 million taxpayer-funded settlement.
By a vote of 13-7, the City Council Finance Committee on Thursday approved the payment to Mia Wright and others who were with her. The full council will consider the deal next week.
A debate among aldermen over the proposed settlement turned into a broader discussion that touched on Black Chicagoans’ rights and their treatment by police.
Wright and family members said they were trying to visit the Brickyard in late May 2020. But they said they arrived to discover the Northwest Side mall closed because of civil unrest that occurred across the city in the aftermath of the killing of George Floyd, a Black man who died under the knee of white Minneapolis police Officer Derek Chauvin.
In the Wright case, police officers suddenly surrounded the car, broke the windows and pulled Wright out of the vehicle by her hair, she said. While Wright was prone on the ground, an officer placed his knee on her neck, she said. Wright was arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, though the charge was later dropped.
A relative who was with Wright captured the incident on video. Eight police officers were disciplined for the incident, according to city lawyer Caroline Fronczak. Five plaintiffs will share the settlement.
Officers said they thought some members of Wright’s group were attempting to break into a store at the mall to steal goods, Fronczak said, but the officers also acknowledged nobody in the group matched the descriptions of the suspected looters.
Alderman Raymond Lopez opposed the Wright settlement, saying officers were dealing with chaos citywide in the face of widespread looting. Paying Wright and her relatives would open the door to many other lawsuits from people “who were trying to loot, pillage and destroy the city of Chicago” during the Floyd protests, he said.
And Alderman Nick Sposato wondered why Wright, who he said lived in the West Side North Lawndale neighborhood, drove to the Northwest Side mall to shop on a day when Chicago was experiencing extensive, well-publicized public disturbances following the Floyd murder.
Sposato’s comments prompted Alderman Jason Ervin to ask: “What’s wrong with somebody who lives at Pulaski and Cermak coming to the Brickyard to shop?”
“People do have the right to move about the city or move about the nation as they choose,” Ervin said.
Bring a Target store to the West Side “and you won’t see us up at the Brickyard,” he added.
And Alderman Leslie Hairston noted the city “has a problem with racial profiling.” It’s perfectly legal for Black Chicagoans to shop at the store of their choice, regardless of how far it is from their homes, Hairston pointed out.
Sposato “implied they were there for nefarious reasons, and they should not have been there because they didn’t live there,” she said.
The Finance Committee on Thursday also gave the go-ahead to a $1.4 million settlement for Shatrelle McComb. She sued the city after her 13-month-old son Dillan Harris was killed in 2015 when a car driven by a man fleeing police in a high-speed chase jumped a curb in Woodlawn and struck the boy’s stroller.
McComb alleged in her federal lawsuit that officers “willfully and wantonly” chased the car driven by Antoine Watkins at speeds over 70 mph on a Saturday afternoon when many pedestrians were out on neighborhood sidewalks.
Watkins was convicted of reckless homicide in Dillan’s death, and served more than four years behind bars, according to city attorney Mary Ruether.
And aldermen passed a $1.2 million settlement for Jomner Orozco Carreto and Carlos Ramirez, two men who said an off-duty Chicago police officer shot at them while they were parked on Irving Park Road in the Albany Park neighborhood in December 2020.
The officer, Kevin Bunge, said he heard gunshots after the car pulled up behind his parked car on Irving Park, before he got out of his car and fired shots into their vehicle. One of the men was struck in the hand.
No gun was recovered from the men’s car, and they said they had pulled over simply to look up directions to a party. Bunge was charged in the case.
(Chicago Tribune’s Megan Crepeau contributed.)
