Fatal police shooting of Dexter Reed triggers $1.25M settlement, including reining in traffic stops
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Chicago taxpayers are being asked to pay $1.25 million to compensate the family of Dexter Reed, who was shot to death by police officers last year after Reed shot and wounded one of them during a traffic stop.
The settlement stems from an “unlawful and unconstitutional traffic stop” by a Chicago Police Department with a “history of these pretextual stops,” according to Andrew Stroth, an attorney for the Reed family.
The $1.25 million settlement includes “non-monetary relief for a family committed to reform,” said Stroth, who declined to spell out the specific reforms.
“This case is about an unlawful and violent escalatory traffic stop in a city that has a pattern and practice of these types of discriminatory, pretextual stops,” Stroth told the Sun-Times Monday.
In a pretexual stop, officers use some minor offense, like a traffic violation, as a pretense to look for more serious things, like guns or drugs.
The Chicago Police Department used “several different stories” to explain why Reed was stopped, Stroth said.
“First, they said no seatbelt. Then they said tinted windows. It was all pretextual,” he said.
“The city has spent tens of millions of dollars defending cases [like this]. Because this is a pattern-and-practice case about traffic stops and about the policies and procedures of the Chicago Police Department, the cost of defense is several millions of dollars. ”
Reed, 26, was shot March 21, 2024, in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand Avenue in the Harrison Police District, a jurisdiction among the most violent in Chicago.
Four officers fired 96 shots in 41 seconds at Reed — and struck him 13 times. The officers opened fire after Reed fired first, striking one of five tactical officers in his hand. All of the officers were dressed in plainclothes and were piled into a single SUV.
In the days and hours leading up to Reed’s death, those same five officers conducted 50 traffic stops on Chicago’s West Side. None of those 50 stops generated a single ticket. When the lawsuit was first announced in April, Reed’s mother, Nicole Banks, said the officers had “executed him.”
According to a report by Impact for Equity, a reform organization, the Harrison District, whose station is at Kedzie and Harrison avenues, had the largest number of traffic stops of all the city’s 22 police districts — more than 10% of all the stops in Chicago in 2023.
A monitor of the 5-year-old federal consent decree that calls for reforms in the police department recommended traffic stops be added to the list of police activities that should be reexamined, but that has yet to happen. And the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability, which reformers said should create rules for traffic stops, has not weighed in on the subject.
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Shoot a cop, get paid!
Corruption in action. Politically connected ambulance chasing lawyer files suit, city uses taxpayer money to pay off family and lawyer, lawyer supports the Democratic Party. Lawsuit settlement fraud is just one of the myriad ways taxpayers are taken advantage of by the corrupt machine.
Teaching everyone that shooting police will set up their family is just the icing on the cake.
Personal injury lawyers are the bottom feeders of society, they make their living off the misery of others. They take money from people who really need it to enrich themselves.
So you don’t think someone who has been injured or had their rights violated deserves to be compensated?
I'm sorry that is all you got from my comment, let me clarify it for you since the point was perfectly clear.
The people who are injured or have their rights violated deserve compensation, personal injury lawyers take advantage of them by skimming off 40% or more of the payout to the "victims" thus they take money from those who desperately need it to enrich themselves, they are the reason we have lawyer jokes in the first place.
It’s true that 40% is not unusual for a case that goes to trial and verdict. If cases are resolved earlier, the percentage is typically less.
How much do you think the attorneys should be paid? 30%? 10% A flat fee? Should they do the work for free? Keep in mind a few things.
First, without that lawyer, the plaintiff probably gets zero. In these cases, the lawyers for the plaintiffs usually don’t get paid until there is a settlement, so they could be working for months or years without pay on the case. Then, it’s not just the mouth in the courtroom who gets paid. Any other lawyers working the case, paralegals, clerks, and secretaries need to get paid for doing research, writing and filing motions. Experts also need to be paid. Procuring evidence can also be expensive.
On the other side, government and big business defendants typically have virtually unlimited resources to defend themselves, including legal teams that outnumber whatever the plaintiff can muster. They get paid, too. I think I’d be hating on government or corporate defense lawyers before I hated on those representing injured parties.
I have heard this prejudice for forever - as if the plaintiff was injured by his own lawyer. I don’t believe people who say this are genuinely feeling sympathy for the plaintiff. I believe they are just jealous of the settlement. It always sounds like someone won the lottery and the lawyers stole some of their winnings. Neither is a fair characterization.
Money rarely feels like justice, but it’s often all we have in civil cases. And there would have been no money at all but for the lawyer.
Speaking of taking advantage of people, what about the defendants? If police can just shit on people’s rights every day and there is no accountability, aren’t they the ones taking advantage of people?
So, the people who say we all need guns to protect ourselves from the tyranny of government, are now mad that a citizen used a firearm to defend himself when government police violated his rights.
How did they violate his rights?..
lol.
That's your actual response? Parroting?
I quoted the article and that’s your complaint?
Yes, cops ignoring the Constitution is hilarious. /s
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The 4th Amendment to the Constitution declares that the people have a right to be secure from unreasonable searches and seizures by the government. Unlawful stops by police violate that right.
Still didn't answer the question. Why do you keep dodging it?
And there was a justified reason for the stop. 3 below has a link to the article from April last year that lays it all out.
Your "unconstitutional" claim is pure bullshit.
I’ve answered. You don’t like the answer. That’s a you problem.
What's hilarious is constructing a strawman of anyone claiming the right own a gun allows you to shoot a police officer for pulling you over.
But paying a family a million taxpayer dollars for shooting a policeman for (allegedly improperly pulling them over) is impossible to justify to any reasonable person, so your motive is obvious.[✘]
No you didn't. You danced around it and even tried feeding everybody bullshit.
Dexter was pulled over for a seatbelt violation (BTW pulling somebody over for not wearing a seatbelt is NOT a violation of ANYBODY'S rights). Dexter then kept trying to roll his window up on police and pulled a gun and shot at police.
Even CNN acknowledges THIS fact.
There was nothing "predatory" or "unlawful" about why he was pulled over.
It is when you’re lying about it.
You obviously didn't read the link. It states why he was pulled over. And it's 100% legal.
Additionally, not all traffic stops have to generate a ticket.
No one said they all have to generate a ticket. The problem is that 50 stops generated zero tickets. That’s a strong indicator that the stops were not justified. Even one ticket would have been evidence that the stops were based on reasonable suspicion - though that small number might be pretty feeble evidence.
Once again. Not all stops have to generate a ticket.
Only to those who don't understand that not all stops have to generate a ticket.
We have had SCOTUS cases that deal with patterns of behavior like this. When the statistics are this overwhelmingly one-sided - 50 stops, zero tickets - the high court and others have repeatedly found that to be strong evidence of discrimination or other rights violations.
Cops are simply not allowed to stop people without a good reason. The people have a right to not be stopped absent a reasonable suspicion that they have engaged in, are in engaging in, or are about to engage in criminal activity. This reasonable suspicion has to be articulated in a court of law.
Very often, cops lie. You might not like hearing that, but they do. Continually stopping people, but never handing out tickets is strong evidence that cops are lying about why they stopped someone.
So what.
AH, so you think it was all discrimination. Despite the actual facts THAT is what you are running with?
For once you're correct. And this was a valid reason. Despite the facts you don't want to see that.
What WASN'T a valid reason was pulling a firearm and shooting at police. I know that may be hard for you to acknowledge. It was THAT action that resulted in Reed was unalived.
Now there is a long list of things that could of happened that would have changed the outcome of this incident:
It's a grift where the lawyers and democrats in government collude to rip off taxpayers.
It's impossible to claim with a straight face the shooting of the police officer was justified.
Then why do so many people - with a straight face - insist they need a gun to defend themselves against a government that violates their rights? There, as here, the line drawn is not defense of one’s life. It’s a defense of rights. So, it’s ok for some people, it seems, but not for others.
Can you point me to one of these people you keep referencing who've advocated for the right to shoot police for pulling them over? Police have been pulling people over for reasons, pretextual or not, since the invention of the police car. I've yet to see anyone claim the right to shoot them for it. Where are they making these claims?
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[✘] If Dexter and his were white this be considered death by cop; and leftists would be extolling gun violence and the need to remove all guns from public.
But since they were black it has become a violation of his constitutional rights; and the city just gives away tax payer money as a settlement.
Democrats do love their criminals- especially when there is a potential for those criminals (or in this case the family and lawyer) to give them campaign contribution kick backs.
Read 4.1.1 and then retract your lie.
No, because i didn't say that.
So it was all nonsense then. No "2nd amendment keyboard warriors" as you call them, have ever claimed they need a gun to shoot police simply for pulling them over in the defense of their supposed constitutional rights and thus your claims of hypocrisy are completely without merit.
It’s wild how people who supported Trump for pardoning every person who assaulted a cop on January 6, 2021 want to come here today and pretend they give a shit about cops.
It's wild how people who only care about police injured on Jan 6th pretend to give a shit about cops. The only "clean" police shooting among progressive NTers in history seems to be the shooting of an unarmed white girl by a black cop.
He pulled them over. Of course it's reasonable to shoot a cop for that!
Is that so? Show where that has been happening? I’ll help you. It hasn’t been happening.
I actually would not, and do not endorse that. I have pointed out the hypocrisy in so many 2nd Amendment internet keyboard warriors.
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Your lie is not supported by evidence, so it's not reality.
Shooting at a cop that pulled you over for a seatbelt violation is not covered under 2A.
And the deflection.
If my accusation of hypocrisy hit close to home for you, I’m not surprised you might dismiss it as a deflection - or label it with some other misapplied word. But it’s just a very uncomfortable truth.
What accusation of hypocrisy? All I see is a deflection.
Yes. Very often, people only see what they’re willing to see.
Touche
And some call it as it actually is.
You have to understand, everything boils down to Orange man bad. A piece of shit scumbag shoots at a police officer, and trump is bad is the only reasonable response.
What's funny about it this time is that at the time this happened, Trump wasn't in any position of power. They're crying about him just to be crying about him.
Yet they wonder why no one takes them seriously. They need everyone to buy into their trump hysteria or their tantrums will increase in quantity and intensity
I'm not buying into their hysteria. When you look at it, very little is founded in any fact. Their response to this reflect it. Trump has nothing to do with this kid being pulled over or this kid shooting at police. I've even had one person tell me it was because of "discrimination" of some kind.
Even when given the news reports, they screech even louder.