Chicago approves $90 million payout to settle police misconduct cases tied to ex-sergeant

CHICAGO — The Chicago City Council unanimously approved a $90 million settlement to resolve 176 federal civil-rights lawsuits tied to allegations that Sgt. Ronald Watts and the unit he led for nearly a decade until 2012 planted drugs on suspects, falsified police reports and falsely charged residents of the Ida B. Wells Homes and others for drug crimes unless they paid officers off.

The accord covers about 180 people who were wrongfully convicted and spent roughly 200 years behind bars.

Watts resigned from the police department in 2012 and pleaded guilty that year to stealing from a federal informant posing as a homeless man and drug dealer as part of an undercover FBI sting. He was sentenced to 22 months in prison in 2021.

Over the years, residents of the Ida B. Wells Homes on Chicago's South Side began coming forward with claims they had been wrongly arrested by the unit Watts led.

This settlement, officials said, would likely avoid hundreds of millions of dollars in potential future liability if lawsuits proceeded, and city attorneys noted that the cases had already cost Chicago millions.

The deal arrives as Chicago faces a budget shortfall of more than $1 billion for 2026, according to the Chicago Financial Future Task Force, which Mayor Brandon Johnson convened to study the city's finances. The transit system and the school district are especially burdened.

Theresa Kleinhaus, an attorney representing the plaintiffs, told the Associated Press that Watts and his team of officers terrorized the Black community in the Ida B. Wells housing project for over a decade. She added that the settlement provides some measure of justice for what the plaintiffs endured.

Ahmed Kosoko, Watts’s attorney, said he had no comment on the settlement but asserted that Watts neither arrested, accused, nor testified against the plaintiffs. His involvement, where it existed at all, was limited to administrative tasks typical of a field sergeant — conducted after the fact and entirely unrelated to the legality or substance of the underlying arrests.

Ald. Jason Ervin said ahead of the vote, This closes a nasty and ugly chapter that many young men on the South Side endured.

Ald. Nicholas Sposato called the settlement the deal of a century during Thursday's meeting.

The agreement ends a costly and controversial chapter in the Chicago Police Department and is expected to reduce ongoing legal exposure for the city as it grapples with broader policing reform.