$3.25M settlement proposed for family of bipolar woman run over by Chicago police vehicle

Chicago taxpayers will spend $3.25 million to compensate the family of a bipolar woman who died two months after being mowed down by a Chicago police officer driving a 4,000-pound police SUV.

The settlement proposed for the family of Martina Standley, 32, is the largest of four on the agenda for Wednesday’s meeting of the City Council’s Finance Committee.

It culminates a tragic chain of events that started Nov. 13, 2019, in the 2000 block of East 71st Street in South Shore.

Standley, suffering from what the family’s lawsuit called a “mental health crisis,” walked up to the stationary police SUV with Chicago Police Officer Brian Greene behind the wheel. Greene drove over her 10 seconds after she touched the SUV’s spotlight.

Standley’s skull hit the pavement with such force that, eyewitnesses claimed, it sounded like a gunshot, according to the family’s attorney, Andrew M. Stroth.

In the frenzied scene that followed, Standley was “lying in the street bleeding from her head, and it took several minutes to get medical treatment,” Stroth said. She spent a week in the hospital and another month in rehab attempting to recover from traumatic brain injury. She died about two months later of “lethal arrhythmia and suspected stroke,” he said.

What Greene “knew or didn’t know” about Standley’s mental state before she approached the officer’s SUV is irrelevant, Stroth said Monday.

“You have an officer from the Chicago Police Department driving a 4,000-pound vehicle, and he ran over an unarmed Black woman without any cause or provocation. Her life was never the same again. She couldn’t work. She couldn’t play basketball. She couldn’t hang out or socialize with her family or friends, and then later as a result of the initial incident, she passed away as a direct result of being run over by the police,” Stroth said Monday.

Provided

The family’s lawsuit accused Greene of violating departmental rules for interacting with people with obvious mental health issues and use of force.

Both issues were highlighted in the scathing federal investigation that followed the police shooting of Laquan McDonald that culminated in a federal consent decree outlining the terms of the continuing federal court oversight of the police department.

Body-worn camera footage of the incident was released during discovery and after a separate court battle waged by community activist William Calloway. It lays out this version of events:

The police SUV was parked in the 2000 block of East 71st Street, then pulled forward, striking Standley, who had touched a searchlight attached to the vehicle.

The officer behind the wheel left the vehicle and walked over to Standley’s motionless body and said: “Girl, ain’t nobody hit you like that.” He then proclaimed: “Oh, s---. F---.”

“You OK? Can you breathe? Can you talk?” the officer asked, poking an unconscious Standley in the stomach, her right leg wedged beneath the police vehicle’s tire. A pool of blood formed under Standley’s head as she began to regain consciousness.

When another officer arrived, the officer who had been driving the SUV told them: “She came banging on the window like ‘Boom boom boom.’ I thought I was in reverse. I tried to turn the wheel. It wasn’t nothing like no running from nobody or nothing like that.”

The police vehicle remained on Standley’s leg for over four minutes before the officer asked a sergeant if he should move the vehicle. She was pinned under the vehicle for at least nine minutes.

Calloway, who played a pivotal role in securing the court order that forced then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to release the Laquan McDonald shooting video, could not be reached for comment on the settlement.

Last year, Callaway, a South Shore native, noted the relationship between neighborhood residents and the police has long been frayed, pointing to the fatal police shooting of Harith Augustus in July 2018, just steps from where Standley was struck.

“I knew that it was misconduct, and my heart went out to Martina seeing her laid out on the ground,” Calloway said of the video.

Greene remains on the force. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has completed its investigation and forwarded its disciplinary recommendations to Police Supt. Larry Snelling.