CHICAGO — The city of Chicago has reached a tentative settlement in a wrongful death lawsuit filed over the 2013 police shooting death of a 17-year-old carjacking suspect that was caught on video.
Brian Coffman, an attorney for the family of Cedrick Chatman, said in a telephone interview Friday that a trial that was set to start later this month has been canceled. Coffman said he was prohibited from commenting on the terms of the tentative agreement, which still needs to be approved by Chicago’s City
Council.
Bill McCaffrey, a spokesman for the city’s law department, declined to comment on the agreement. The city typically does not comment publicly on the terms of such settlements until city attorneys brief the City Council’s finance committee.
Video footage that was captured from a nearby high school security camera showed Chatman running away at full speed from Officers Kevin Fry and Lou Toth, who were responding to a call of a carjacking in progress, when he was fatally wounded.
Fry, who fired four shots at the unarmed teen, said in a deposition that he fired because he thought Chatman was holding a weapon. The officer, who said he feared for his and his partner’s lives, said he also saw Chatman turn his body slightly toward Toth before opening fire.
Chatman was holding a black iPhone box as he ran away. U.S. District Judge Robert Gettleman removed Toth as a defendant in the lawsuit soon after the video’s release, saying the officer did not have time to stop his partner from firing.
The video became public in January, less than the three months after the city was forced to release the 2014 police dashcam video of Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times.
The release of the McDonald video, which came on the same day that Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder, set off weeks of protest in Chicago and led to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch launching a civil rights investigation of the city’s police department.
The city has paid out more than $500 million to settle lawsuits over allegations of police misconduct in the last decade. The Chatman and McDonald shootings are among the cases activists have held up as examples of police using unnecessary levels of force with African-American suspects. Both teens were black, and the officers who shot them are white.
As it did with the McDonald video, the city fought in court to keep footage of the Chatman shooting from the public before it was eventually released.
In the aftermath of public anger over the Chatman and McDonald cases and other high-profile incidents caught on video, Mayor Rahm Emanuel vowed that the city will release videos and other investigative material related to allegations of major police conduct between 60 and 90 days of an incident.
Last week, the city agency tasked with investigating allegations of major misconduct against Chicago police officers released videos, audio recordings and other material from 101 incidents involving officers that are currently under investigation.
Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondent Aamer Madhani on Twitter: @AamerISmad
