The city of Chicago will pay $22.5 million to a mentally ill woman who was attacked after being released by police into a dangerous neighborhood. MyFoxChicago.com reports the City Council agreed to settle the police misconduct case of 27-year-old Christina Eilman for the sum Tuesday. Eilman, who is bipolar, was arrested in 2006 after having a breakdown and causing a disturbance at Midway Airport. Though her parents called numerous times to try and explain her condition, police officers released Eilman into a section of the South Side that a federal judge compared to a lion's den. MyFoxChicago.com reports Eilman was attacked, raped and then fell seven stories from a high-rise. She suffered a permanent brain injury, and now requires constant care. The city proposed a $22.5 million settlement to her family, which the City Council Finance Committee approved unanimously. Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/us/2013/01/16/chicago-settles-mentally-ill-woman-police-misconduct-case-for-record-22-million

Chicago taxpayers will pay $33 million dollars in the settlement of two police misconduct cases.
If approved by, the full city council it is believed to be the single largest payments of its kind in Chicago’s history.
Today, the city council finance committee approved the settlements of the two cases.
In one case, a woman was left to survive in the projects on her own after Chicago police dropped her there in 2006. Now in her late 20′s, Christina Eilman will get $22.5 million dollars. Police dropped the bipolar woman from California at a housing project in May of that year. She was sexually assaulted at knifepoint before falling seven stories. Today, she is permanently disabled.
In the other case, and a man sent to prison for 26 years for a murder he did not commit. 59-year-old Alton Logan stands to receive $10 million dollars after police covered up evidence in a 1982 murder that put him behind bars for 26 years. Andrew Wilson later confessed to the crime .but until Wilson’s death, former police commander Jon Burge’s men blamed Logan.
The full city council is set to vote on the settlement on Thursday. The lawyer for Eilman does not want to speak until the vote comes through.

Chicago settles mentally ill woman's police misconduct

The city of Chicago will pay $22.5 million to a mentally ill woman who was attacked after being released by police into a dangerous neighborhood.
MyFoxChicago.com reports the City Council agreed to settle the police misconduct case of 27-year-old Christina Eilman for the sum Tuesday.
Eilman, who is bipolar, was arrested in 2006 after having a breakdown and causing a disturbance at Midway Airport. Though her parents called numerous times to try and explain her condition, police officers released Eilman into a section of the South Side that a federal judge compared to a lion's den.
MyFoxChicago.com reports Eilman was attacked, raped and then fell seven stories from a high-rise. She suffered a permanent brain injury, and now requires constant care.
The city proposed a $22.5 million settlement to her family, which the City Council Finance Committee approved unanimously.

former police officer charged in North Myrtle Beach

MYRTLE BEACH -- An Horry County school teacher and former police officer is facing assault charges following an incident in a Wal-Mart parking lot, according to authorities.
Kevin Lee Duke, 48, of Little River was booked into the North Myrtle Beach Jail at 8:53 a.m. Dec. 23 and released on $2,500 bail the same day, charged with second-degree assault and battery and third-degree assault and battery, according to jail records.
Duke had worked with Horry County Schools since Dec. 12, which was five days before the winter break, after he was hired to teach at St. James High School, said Teal Harding, Horry County Schools spokeswoman. Duke has been placed on leave with pay pending an investigation.

Duke had worked with Horry County police since May 1991 until he retired as a lieutenant in November 2011, said Lisa Bourcier, Horry County spokeswoman. He returned to work as a patrol officer on Nov. 16, 2011 and then left on May 20.
The charges stem from an incident about 6 p.m. Dec. 21, when North Myrtle Beach police were called to the Wal-Mart parking lot at 550 North U.S. 17 in the city limits for an assault, according to a police report. Officers learned that the victims were taken to Seacoast Medical Center by EMS, so they went to that location.
A 51-year-old man and his 47-year-old wife, whose hometown was redacted from the report, told police that they were in the parking lot waiting for a parking space in Row 8 when the incident occurred, according to the report. The woman told police that she got out of their car to retrieve a shopping cart and her husband was driving their vehicle and waited for a parking spot to open.
While there, the woman said a man driving a silver BMW was behind their vehicle and the driver revved its engine, according to the report. The woman said the BMW driver quickly pulled around their vehicle blew his horn and flashed his lights at her husband in their vehicle.
The woman said when the parking space was free, her husband pulled their vehicle into it and the BMW driver pulled up beside her, according to the report. The woman said the driver, who was identified as Duke, cursed at her and her husband before he jumped out of his vehicle.
The woman said Duke attacked her husband, punching him in the head, face and body several times as she tried to pull him away and yelled for him to stop, according to the report. The woman said Duke turned and started to punch her, but her husband pulled her away and Duke began to punch her husband again.
The woman got Duke’s license plate number and called 911, according to the report. The woman said Duke then got back in his vehicle and drove away.
Police said the tag was registered to Duke for a GMC Canyon.
Soon after the incident, Duke called North Myrtle Beach police to report he had been assaulted in the parking lot of the store, but he refused to return to the scene or meet with police, according to the report. Officers got surveillance video that showed Duke as the aggressor in the incident.
“Mr. Duke jumped out of his vehicle unprovoked and initiated the assault against both” victims, the officer wrote in the report.
The male victim suffered three broken bones in his head, a black eye and cuts to his eye that required stitches, according to the report. The female victim had marks on her cheek, ear and arm.

Read more here: http://www.myrtlebeachonline.com/2013/01/16/3276741/horry-county-teacher-former-police.html#storylink=cpy

Deptford police officer charged with murder denied pay while suspended

The Deptford police officer charged with murder has been suspended from the municipal police force without pay, the township mayor confirmed late Tuesday.
James A. Stuart, 29, of Deptford, was initially suspended with pay after the Jan. 5 shooting in which David Compton, 27, of Woodbury was shot in the head at Stuart’s Stanford Avenue home.
Stuart, who called 911 at 5 a.m. the day Compton was shot, was initially charged with two counts of aggravated assault. The charges were upgraded to first-degree murder Friday when Compton was taken off life support and died early Friday morning.
“It has something to do with the charges being changed,” said Deptford Mayor Paul Medany, who said he was made aware of the pay status changes late Tuesday.
John Eastlack, Stuart’s attorney, filed a temporary restraining order Friday to keep the Gloucester County police communications center from releasing the audio recording of the 911 call, which the South Jersey Times has filed a records request to obtain.
Under the Open Public Records Act, the county would be required to respond to the request by today.
However, on Tuesday Superior Court Judge Georgia Curio signed the temporary restraining order. On Friday, Curio is scheduled to hear Eastlack’s request for an order to protect the audio from disclosure under OPRA.

Retired officer, son charged with murder

State police, Rio Rancho police and Albuquerque police arrested 56-year-old Jack McDowell and 36-year-old John McDowell at a home in the 100 block of Mica Drive in Rio Rancho on Tuesday morning. Both were taken into custody without incident.

Jack McDowell is a retired New Mexico State Police officer. Because he was a police officer, authorities said they took tactical precautions during the arrest.

Everyone who lives in the Mica Drive neighborhood said they knew the McDowells.

Residents said they knew John McDowell had a history with police, so they assumed he was at the center of the commotion they heard Tuesday morning.

The arrests capped an 18-month investigation into the death of 35-year-old James Chavez.

"This is one of those cases that has kinda haunted us," Rio Rancho Police Sgt. Nick Onken said.

Investigators spent much of the day going in and out of the McDowell home looking for evidence.

"This has been a very long and tumultuous investigation with leads and losses of those leads over the past 18 months," Onken said.

The case was launched 18 months ago when rescue officials got a 911 about Chavez' slaying. Soon after that, the father and son were on police radar.

Two South Bend police officers suspended, one may be fired after gas station prank

SOUTH BEND – A South Bend police officer disciplined for punching an inmate at the St. Joseph County jail is in trouble again. This time, the interim chief is asking the Public Safety Board to fire Patrolman Theo Robert for interfering with an internal investigation.
It stems from a prank two other officers played on a local gas station clerk last summer on Miami Street.
WSBT sat down with the clerk a few months later, in October, to get his side of the story but chose not to report it until now because we wanted to wait for the truth to come out.
“I looked up to these guys,” 7-Eleven clerk Jonny Ferguson said in an interview last fall.
He said one big reason he respects police officers is he always wanted to be one.
“They’re protecting me and everything and I know when I’m there. I’m safe because of them,” he added.
Ferguson said he never minded when midnight shift officers stopped by the gas station to use the restroom or grab a cup of coffee while he worked the register, but one night last summer patrolmen Eric Mentz and Aaron Knepper took advantage of their friendship and his ADHD learning disability.
He also said the officers offered him money and a meal if he’d take the “cinnamon challenge” and eat a teaspoon of cinnamon without throwing up.
“The first one was like $32 and a free meal at Applebees,” he recounted.
When he couldn’t complete that, they challenged him to eat 10 saltine crackers in a minute, offering more money and another free meal.
“I puked for like a good four hours,” Ferguson added.
Knepper even recorded it on his cell phone then posted it to the internet but took it down when Ferguson expressed concern that he might lose his job.
At the time, Ferguson’s sister said she was angry.
“It makes me feel horrible. I may be his little sister, but I’m still his sister and I love him, but Jonathan would break his back for you and he doesn’t even know you. So just because he may have a disability he’s not retarded,” Amber Coppler told WSBT.
Interim Police Chief Chuck Hurley said an internal investigation determined those officers acted inappropriately, but he doesn’t think they took advantage of Ferguson.
“I think at that point in time, they should have said, ‘Hey, we’re police officers, we’re on duty, we have no business being involved in this,’” said Hurley.
Ferguson said he’s embarrassed but still sees the good in police.
“I still want to dedicate myself to being a cop. I know that at least I won't be one of those type of cops,” he said.
After an internal investigation, Hurley suspended Mentz for one day and Knepper for two for pulling the prank. In his disciplinary notice, Knepper wrote, “I would like to apologize for my actions – I never intended to act unprofessionally or attract any unwanted media attention on the department.”
Patrolman Robert is accused of making two trips to the gas station a few weeks after the incident, alongside a phone call to the manager identifying himself as a police officer and demanding the surveillance video be released to a local TV station, even though he had nothing to do with the prank itself.
Hurley recommended Robert’s termination because of his history on the department. He served a 30-day suspension after a July 2010 incident when he punched an inmate at the St. Joseph County jail.
The 7-11 incident has resulted in accusations that Robert violated the department’s code of ethics, used his position as a police officer to get information, lied to the department’s internal affairs officer and publicly criticized the department.
He has the opportunity to contest Hurley’s request to the Board of Public Safety. 

THE NAACP VALLEJO BRANCH

"THE NAACP VALLEJO BRANCH HAS CANCELED OUR ANNUAL MARTIN LUTHER KING PARADE IN VALLEJO AT A TIME AT A TIME WHEN VALLEJO FAMILES ARE CRYING OUT FOR HELP AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY CITING A QUIRK IN THEIR SCHEDULE , WE WILL NOT LET OUR HISTORY BE CANCELED OR DISREGARDED BECAUSE WE ARE PEOPLE TOO , OUR STRUGGLES ARE NOT FOR NOTHING,

PLEASE JOIN US FOR A MARCH AGAINST POLICE BRUTALITY , MURDER, RACIAL PROFILING AND INTIMIDATION TACTICS USED BY THE POLICE DEPARTMENTS"

http://www.facebook.com/JusticeForMarioRomero

Lawsuit alleges police brutality, use of racial slur

A lawsuit filed in U.S. District Court last Thursday on behalf of a Cottage Grove resident accuses members of the Cottage Grove Police Department of excessive force, false imprisonment, battery and other rights violations.

Representatives of Matthew Susumu Waggoner filed suit alleging that officers beat Waggoner and that one officer used a racial slur during Waggoner’s subsequent time in the Cottage Grove Jail following an incident that occurred on Dec. 15, 2011.

The suit requests a jury trial and names the City of Cottage Grove and officers Tami Howell, Jarrod Butler, Doug Skaggs, David Burgin, Police Chief Mike Grover and two unnamed officers as defendants.

The lawsuit’s introduction describes its purpose as a “civil action for damages stemming from the unlawful arrest of Plaintiff without warrant, reasonable suspicion, probable cause, or exigent circumstances, and the excessive use of force in arresting and lodging Plaintiff Matthew Susumu Waggoner in jail based in part on Plaintiff’s Japanese ancestry.”

The suit states that on Dec. 15, 2011 at about 4:10 p.m., officers Howell, Burgin and Butler responded to a possible burglary in progress at a home on Adams Street in Cottage Grove. There, they spotted Waggoner walking away from them toward 10th Street. The suit states that it was already dark outside at that time and the plaintiff had been visiting a friend.

Anaheim to Develop Proposal for Greater Oversight of Police

The debate in Anaheim about police conduct has become so contentious that at Tuesday night’s City Council meeting Police Chief John Welter publicly accused a former council candidate of spreading “bullshit lies” during the public comments portion of the meeting.
The accusation came just after the City Council unanimously directed City Manager Bob Wingenroth to develop a specific proposal for a police oversight body that would include civilians.

A clearly angry Welter confronted Duane Roberts, a frequent critic of the Police Department on OrangeJuice Blog, in the crowded council chambers lobby and told Roberts to speak with the chief before maligning him at council meetings.
“Do I get a chance to refute all the bullshit lies you say at council? No,” Welter said.
That the police chief would publicly berate a resident and insist that the chief be allowed to vet the criticism before it goes public raised concerns among some about a possible chilling effect on residents who witnessed the confrontation.
West Anaheim resident Art Castillo, who was present during the exchange, called Welter’s tirade “intimidation” toward residents who want to make public their grievances about the police department.
Welter is “not listening to the people who are the victims,” Castillo said.
During public comments, Roberts challenged Welter’s claim in an Al-Jazeera documentary that he didn’t know about a military-style police unit that had been dispatched to patrol the city after a downtown riot in the wake of a string of fatal police shootings. Rioters damaged 20 downtown businesses.
In video aired by Al Jazeera, cadres of officers in military fatigues are seen brandishing assault rifles while hitched to sport utility vehicles and pickup trucks. Critics had said the scene looked more like a military occupation of a foreign country than an American police patrol.
Roberts had said during public comments that he saw an officer on a motorcycle who looked like Welter. Roberts speculated that he struck a nerve with the chief by indicating that Welter may have been overseeing what he acknowledged to Al-Jazeera was a regrettable and excessive display of force.
“Now you see why people don’t file complaints about police officers,” Roberts said.
Welter quickly departed after a Voice of OC reporter began taking notes during the confrontation. He could not be reached for comment later in the evening.
Mayor Tom Tait said that it’s “tough to comment” on an incident he didn’t witness. Wingenroth said that he would “look into it.”
Police Oversight
The council’s direction to Wingenroth to assemble a police oversight proposal — first proposed by Tait last month — is a response to weeks of unrest in the city last July that was sparked by a series of fatal police shootings.
“Accountability, transparency, independent oversight makes any organization better,” Tait said.
The council considered four police review models. They included an individual auditor or ombudsman with the power to conduct an investigation; an auditor who would have only the power to review internal affairs examinations; a civilian review board to review investigations; and an “investigative” model that would have an independent agency or board composed of civilian investigators.
Ultimately, the council directed Wingenroth to develop a proposal he thought was best and would include civilians in the process. Wingenroth said after the meeting that he hasn’t chosen a model yet but would consider council comments in his decision.
There are questions as to the effectiveness of civilian review boards.
While some cities across the state have civilian oversight bodies, public access to their findings and deliberations was significantly curtailed by the 2006 California Supreme Court decision in the Copley Press v. Superior Court case.
The court ruled against the San Diego Union-Tribune's request for access to transcripts and other documents relating to a San Diego Civil Service Commission hearing on the termination of a San Diego County sheriff's deputy. Open-government advocates said the decision effectively shut down civilian oversight in California.
Welter and Kerry Condon, president of the Anaheim Police Association, expressed opposition to a potential civilian oversight board.
Welter argued that the police department already has at least four layers of both internal and external oversight. He said he fears a civilian oversight board would inhibit officers from taking necessary action in dangerous situations.
There were eight homicides, 58 gun assaults and 48 non-gun assaults by gang members in 2012, according to Deputy Police Chief Raul Quezada.
Relatives of police shooting victims and other activists have contended that police officers shoot with impunity.
“It’s part of the job. We face people who are undesirable, and they want to kill us,” Welter said. “If the [district attorney] finds that an officer murdered someone, assassinated someone, like some of these people at the podium are alleging, I will be the first to ask them to prosecute.”
After a police shooting, the district attorney’s office conducts a criminal investigation, Welter said. Meanwhile, the police department conducts a review of the situation by its internal affairs department and Major Incident Review Team, which reviews training, policies and equipment, Welter said.
And while critics argue that the DA is too close to the police department to conduct an unbiased review, Welter argued that such concerns are not valid. He cited the DA’s prosecution of an Anaheim officer who had committed a sexual assault as evidence.
Welter described at least one of the police department’s oversight entities — the Los Angeles Office of Independent Review — as a civilian oversight body with experts in excessive force and civil rights law.
The city has for four years contracted, at Welter’s request, with the organization to analyze internal reviews of use-of-force incidents and make recommendations for improvement. The goal is to eliminate the conditions that lead to police shootings, Welter said.
Issuing more polite commands, like “please don’t move,” is among those recommendations so far, Welter said.
Also, Welter said that to involve the community with the Police Department he has been working with a 22-member chief’s advisory board of represntatives from activists groups like Los Amigos of Orange County and from faith-based organizations, nonprofits, among others.
Condon said that civilian review boards come to police departments that have been plagued with corruption and that Anaheim is “nowhere near” needing one. He noted that the DA, which he said is an independent oversight body, had cleared every police officer involved in a shooting.
“There has not been a bad shooting here in Anaheim ever,” Condon said.
Theresa Smith, mother of Caesar Cruz, who was shot and killed by police in 2009, reacted with joy after the council’s decision. She said that although the board might not be transparent because of the Copley decision, an unbiased review is important to restoring trust in the police department.
“They voted unanimously to look into it, and that’s great,” Smith said.

Chicago Closer to Settling Police Misconduct Suits for $32M

A Chicago City Council committee has preliminarily approved settlements in two police misconduct cases that would cost the city nearly $33 million, including $22.5 million for a California woman that apparently would be the largest payout to a single such plaintiff in the city’s history.
The full City Council is expected to sign off on the settlements.
The bigger of the two would go to the family of Christina Eilman, who will require care for the rest of her life for severe brain injuries suffered in a 2006 fall from a 7th-floor window at a Chicago housing project where she had just been raped.
The second settlement would pay $10.25 million to Alton Logan, one victim of the city’s notorious police torture scandal involving officers under former Lt. John Burge. Logan spent 26 years in prison for a murder he didn’t commit, and his award would be the biggest handed out in any case to stem from the investigation into the Burge unit, which framed black murder suspects and tortured many into confessing.
The aldermen voted unanimously to approve the settlements after Alderman Edward Burke said he was “embarrassed and ashamed” that the city had put Eilman’s family through a such a long legal fight, and another alderman suggested the city should have paid far more to Logan, who spent more than a quarter-century behind bars before he was released in 2008.
The alderman asked few questions before voting on just the latest Chicago police misconduct cases in recent years. Among other crimes, officers have been convicted of robbing suspected drug dealers of hundreds of thousands of dollars and beating a man who was handcuffed to a wheelchair. In November, a federal jury awarded $850,000 to a female bartender who was beaten by a drunken off-duty police officer, concluding police adhere to a code of silence in protecting rogue officers.
In often graphic detail, city corporation counsel Steve Patton outlined police actions or inaction that justified the size of the settlements.
Eilman, he said, was trying to fly back to California in May 2006 after visiting Chicago but wasn’t allowed to board her flight at Midway International Airport because she was acting strangely and violently. Police took her to the airport’s train stop, but she began disrobing, danced suggestively and verbally attacked people around her, including a blind man.
Police took her to a bus stop, but the behavior continued, so they arrested her. She continued acting strangely while in custody, babbling and even smearing menstrual blood on the holding cell’s walls. Her parents repeatedly phoned police from California to tell them not to release the 21-year-old college student because she was bipolar and clearly having a breakdown. Still, Eilman was released to fend for herself near the last standing high-rise of the Robert Taylor Homes, a notorious South Side public housing complex that since has been demolished.
Patton said Eilman ended up in a vacant apartment on the high-rise’s seventh floor, where a man raped her at knifepoint.
“She was thrown or jumped out of a seventh-story window,” Patton said. Authorities still don’t know exactly what happened because the fall caused massive brain injuries, leaving her with the mental capacity of a child, according to court documents.
Eilman’s case was to go to federal trial next week. Patton suggested a jury could have awarded her family far more money than the settlement amount.
Burke, who chairs the finance committee, said he was embarrassed by the officers’ behavior and ashamed he and other members didn’t order the city to settle with the family sooner. Cleary angry, he read from a federal appellate court opinion allowing Eilman’s lawsuit to proceed last year.
Police didn’t so much as walk her to a train station, warn her about the dangers of the neighborhood or “even return Eilman’s cellphone, which she might have used to summon aid,” he read. “They might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo.”
Logan’s lawsuit is one of several stemming from one of the darkest chapters of the Chicago Police Department’s history.
Logan was arrested in 1982 in the slaying of an off-duty Cook County corrections officer, who was shot to death at a McDonald’s while working as a security guard.
Logan and another man were convicted, even though there was no physical evidence linking Logan to the crime. Logan was freed in 2008, months after two attorneys representing the other man came forward with a confession from their client that attorneys did not reveal until he died because they were bound to honor the attorney-client privilege.
According to Patton, there were many problems with the investigation, including there being no evidence Logan even knew his co-defendant. While there was no evidence Logan was tortured by Burge’s detectives, another man gave authorities information implicating Logan after being tortured. Furthermore, Patton said Burge has admitted he believed Logan was innocent. Burge has been convicted of lying under oath by testifying in another case that he never witnessed or participated in the torture of suspects.
Alderman Ray Suarez suggested the city was getting off easy with a settlement that, after attorneys’ fees, will pay Logan less than $8.75 million.
“He spent 26 years in jail (and) I think $8 million is really not enough,” Suarez said.
But Logan himself said the money will “bring a measure of happiness because it will allow me to live in a comfortable manner.” Besides, he said at a news conference at his attorney’s office Tuesday afternoon, his eyes welling with tears, “Nothing, no amount of money will ever make up for the time I lost…. I lost everything.”

3 Schaumburg Cops Arrested In Federal Drug Probe

SCHAUMBURG, Ill. (CBS) – Three Schaumburg police officers have been arrested, following a federal drug investigation.
The officers were placed on administrative leave, pending the results of the criminal investigation. They’ve been accused of stealing money and drugs from narcotics dealers, and then selling the drugs themselves.
The officers have not been identified, but sources told CBS 2′s Pamela Jones they are tactical officers, who are members of a special investigation unit. They were being held at the DuPage County Courthouse in Wheaton.
The DuPage County State’s Attorney’s office said the three officers were scheduled to appear for a bond hearing Thursday morning at 8 a.m.
Sources said federal investigators have been searching lockers and an inventory room at the Schaumburg police station.
Wednesday night, armed officers descended on the Algonquin home of one of three Schaumburg police officers who was arrested. Police taped off the property and searched for evidence, then later allowed a woman and two children to enter the home.
It was all quiet at the Streamwood home of another of the accused officers Wednesday night, but neighbors said hours earlier the street was lined with unmarked police cars.
In a statement, Schaumburg Police Chief Brian Howerton said, “The Village and the Schaumburg Police Department have been in contact with the DuPage County State’s Attorney’s Office and it has pledged its ongoing assistance to investigators going forward.”
The village also launched an internal investigation of the officers’ actions.