CHICAGO — A Black family is suing the Chicago police department, saying officers broke down their door and pointed guns at two small children while searching the place and then tried to cover up that they had no evidence to justify the raid.
The lawsuit asserts that the officers tried to cover up their mistake by claiming in their reports that they heard and saw the suspect they were chasing run into the apartment and then out the back — statements that were proven false by the bodycam footage, which the family’s attorney, Al Hofeld Jr., obtained through an open records request.
Chicago has paid hundreds of millions of dollars out on police misconduct cases. In 2016, an Associated Press analysis found that the city had paid $662 million for judgments, settlements and outside legal fees. And although the city’s legal department on Wednesday could not immediately provide statistics about the cost since then, news reports reveal that the total has climbed by tens of millions of dollars per year.
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