CITY HALL — The City Council approved $6.5 million in settlements Wednesday in the two latest payoffs blamed on the Police Department.
According to testimony in the Finance Committee earlier this week, 38-year-old Philip Coleman, a University of Chicago graduate with no previous criminal record, died after being shocked with Tasers by police officers in 2012. Cause of death was "a rare allergic reaction" to a sedative he was given hours after being arrested outside his parents' West Pullman home, according to Corporation Counsel Steve Patton.
"The police bureaucracy failed the Coleman family and now the taxpayers are going to pay for it," said Ald. Edward Burke (14th), chairman of the Finance Committee, in shepherding the settlement through the City Council Wednesday.
At the time, authorities reported Coleman had suffered a "mental breakdown" and attacked his parents.
Key to the case, Patton added, was a video released of Coleman in police custody and an alleged quote from a police officer stating: "We don't do hospitals, we do jail."
"No amount of money can bring back this family's loved one," Burke said of the $4.95 million settlement. "Something has got to change. It just has happened too many times. We've authorized too many of these. But, unfortunately, here we go again."
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday he had met with Percy Coleman, father of Philip Coleman, this week, but added, "We met as two fathers" and the details of the conversation would remain private.
The Council also approved a $1.5 million settlement for the family of Justin Cook, who died in police custody, Burke said, in a 2014 incident in which witnesses said he was deprived of his asthma inhaler by police officers in an arrest.
While Burke said the officers had testified they'd given Cook breaths off the inhaler, he called it "inhumane conduct ... beyond explaining."
