Chicago taxpayers will spend $500,000 to compensate a woman who suffered a miscarriage after being Tasered three times by Chicago Police, including an officer with an alleged history of violence.
The settlement with Elaina Turner and Ulysses Green, the father of the unborn child, continues a parade of costly legal settlements stemming from allegations of police abuse.
It’s expected to be approved Monday by the City Council’s Finance Committee.
The decision to settle the four-year-old case comes as no surprise. One of the officers named in Turner’s federal lawsuit has an alleged history of violence that a federal judge accused the city of failing to promptly disclose to Turner’s attorney Jeffrey Granich.
Last year, Granich filed a motion alleging that Officer Patrick Kelly was involved in a fatal shooting in April 2014. The suspect, Hector Hernandez, was shot 13 times, records show.
But despite multiple assurances from Independent Police Review Authority lawyers that it had previously turned over to Granich all records related to Kelly, Granich said he learned of that shooting when he attempted to depose Kelly.
As a result, Granich demanded that a federal judge order the city to pay attorney fees and hand down other “punitive sanctions” against the city and IPRA for not revealing that shooting.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Susan Cox subsequently accused the city of “inexcusable” behavior.
The shooting Granich said Kelly was involved in was eventually ruled justified by IPRA. Records show police first encountered Hernandez on the front porch of a house in the 2500 block of West 50th Street, where he was holding a two-year-old child and a backpack he claimed held a 9mm pistol.
The child was wrestled away from Hernandez, but Hernandez later retreated into the house, punctured his throat with a small knife and then pointed a larger knife – with a 10-12″ blade – at officers as he stepped toward them. That’s when he was Tasered and shot, the IPRA report said.
Kelly is also the subject of another federal lawsuit that alleges that after visiting multiple bars one night in 2010, Michael D. LaPorta joined Kelly at Kelly’s home where Kelly’s service weapon allegedly discharged and fired a bullet into the back of LaPorta’s head, leaving him disabled.
