Council OKs $16M settlement with family of Bettie Jones
Acknowledging that there was “no defense the city could invoke,” the City Council on Thursday authorized a $16 million settlement to the family of Bettie Jones, who was shot and killed by Chicago Police Officer Robert Rialmo on Dec. 26, 2015, the same night Rialmo shot and killed bat-wielding teenager Quintonio LeGrier.
“Regrettably, Bettie Jones was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time,” Finance Committee Chairman Edward Burke (14th) told his colleagues prior to the final vote.
Noting that the Jones family originally demanded $60 million and settled for about one-fourth of that amount, Burke said: “It’s good that the family can now get some closure and go on with their lives.”
Ald. Jason Ervin (28th), who represents the West Side ward where the shooting took place, said Jones was “a mother, a grandmother who was simply trying to help” on the night that she and LeGrier were gunned down.
Ervin said the shooting will “forever be cemented in my brain.” He expressed relief that Chicago police officers and 911 center dispatchers are finally getting the crisis intervention training “they need and deserve.”
Two 911 center dispatchers were suspended without pay for hanging up on LeGrier and failing to dispatch police in response to the young man’s pleas for help in late December 2015.
When Chicago police finally did respond, they shot and killed LeGrier and accidentally killed his neighbor, Jones.
At committee meeting earlier this week, Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel told aldermen the decision to settle with the Jones family, first announced in June on the eve of a trial, was made after city attorneys failed in their repeated efforts to sever the case from LeGrier’s.
“The shooting death of Bettie Jones, an innocent bystander who was trying to help a neighbor and police, was clearly a tragedy. In evaluating the case for potential settlement, the legal team had to account for the profound sympathy that any jury would likely have for the Jones family and the impact on the combined potential verdict in the Jones and LeGrier cases,” Siskel said.
“We had to confront the very real possibility that the jury’s attention would have focused on compensating Jones’ family for their terrible loss, regardless of whether they believed the shooting was legally justified.”