CITY HALL — Aldermen took turns grilling Corporation Counsel Steve Patton on Monday before unanimously voting to approve his request for a $4.95 million settlement to the family of a man who died after being repeatedly tased in police custody in 2012.
Philip Coleman, 38, died from a "rare allergic reaction" to a sedative he was given hours after being arrested outside his parents' West Pullman home, Patton said, echoing autopsy results reported by Cook County medical examiners.
Coleman, a University of Chicago graduate with no prior criminal record, was arrested after he suffered a "mental breakdown" and tried to attack his parents, authorities said.
Coleman's father, Percy Coleman, filed a lawsuit pinning part of the blame for his son's death on the officers who tased him up to 19 times in the hours leading up to the pronouncement.
On Monday, Patton asked the City Council Finance Committee to approve a measure to award Coleman's family $4.95 million and preempt a trial whose outcome would "likely reward [them] significant damages," he said.
Ed Fox, the attorney representing the family, said he was "pleased" to see the settlement approved but added that no amount of money would permanently put it to rest.
"Sure, from a legal standpoint, [$4.95 million] is a fair amount," Fox said. "But from the point of the family, probably not. Because nothing could bring back their son."
The city's chances in a potential trial looked especially bleak after December 2015, Patton said, when Mayor Rahm Emanuel released a video showing Colemen being tased and dragged from his cell hours before he died.
“I do not see how the manner in which Mr. Coleman was physically treated could possibly be acceptable," Emanuel said in a statement accompanying the video's release, which happened without the approval or notification of the Coleman family. “Something is wrong here — either the actions of the officers who dragged Mr. Coleman, or the policies of the department."
Ald. Carrie Austin (34th), who said she knew Philip Coleman and counts his family among her constituents, said she'd vote to approve the settlement, but that she thought the family deserved more.
"This man was an excellent role model — he was involved in mentoring programs, teaching young people how to be good young men," Austin said. "For him to just be snuck out here...4.9 ain't enough for me."
She took special exception to one of the officers named in Percy Coleman's lawsuit, who allegedly told the father "We don't do hospitals, we do jail" after he begged them to take his son for medical treatment instead of arresting him.
"Maybe [Colemen] would be alive today, if these officers had had a heart," Austin said.
Chicago Police chief of internal affairs Eddie Welch, also facing aldermen's questions, said that officers' refusal went directly against a "very clear policy" on how to handle people undergoing mental episodes.
None of the 13 officers named in the lawsuit have been prosecuted, however, which the Coleman family is eagerly "waiting to see," Fox said.
Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) was one of several aldermen to question police protocol, asking why the council was continually asked to shell out settlement money adding up to hundreds of millions of dollars.
"It seems to me that we're constantly paying out these cash settlements because of a lack of training and a lack of resources," Beale told Welch. "It seems like nothing is being done to stop it. How can we start moving in the right direction?"
Patton and Welch both pointed to boosts in "crisis intervention training" for officers and efforts to equip more of them with tasers, both measures touted by city officials after an officer fatally shot 55-year-old Bettie Jones and 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier in Austin on Dec. 26.
But Ald. Ed Burke (14th), the chair of the finance committee, said the department's problems go deeper. He pointed to a similar settlement issued to the family of Christina Eilman, a 21-year-old California college student who was raped and fell from a seventh-story window after she was arrested and released by Chicago officers in 2006.
"This is not just about training ... there has to be some kind of precaution to make sure that the mentally ill don't fall victim to the same police bureaucracy," Burke said. "[Eilman] should have been a clarion call, but instead here we are again, 10 years later."
An investigation of Coleman's death by the Independent Police Review Authority is still ongoing but will wrap up "soon," spokeswoman Mia Sissac said.
The finance committee also approved a $1.5 million settlement Monday for the family of Justin Cook, a 29-year-old asthmatic man who died in police custody in 2014 after officers refused to let him use his inhaler.
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