SCREENSHOT FROM BODY camera worn by CPD shows the moments before Dexter Reed was shot by Chicago Police, who fired upon him 96 times in 41 seconds.
The family of Dexter Reed will receive just $1.25 million for the fatal shooting of the Black man police gunned down during a traffic stop in March 2024.
The settlement came amid concerns that the agreement was reached too quickly, less than a year after police fired 96 shots at Reed in Humboldt Park. The settlement must be approved by the Finance Committee and the City Council. Fifteen Black aldermen serve on the Finance Committee, including Third Ward Alderman Pat Dowell, who serves as chairman.
Most Black aldermen have not commented publicly on the proposed settlement. In December, Alderman Chris Taliaferro (29th) told ABC 7 Chicago, “It’s unusual for a case to come before the court and settle so quickly.”
In a recent Chicago Sun-Times article, Alderman Anthony Napolitano (41st) called the settlement “an absolute embarrassment. We no longer have a legal department. We have a negotiation department. … They don’t do any litigating anymore.
“Where is our line in the sand? We shouldn’t be settling at all. These officers were fired upon. One of them was hit. Your training kicks in that you’re supposed to pull out your weapon and shoot that target until it’s over. You can’t Monday-morning-quarterback that. It’s next to impossible unless you’re gonna put robots on the street.”
Alderman Matt O’Shea (19th) agreed that the settlement was reached too quickly. Still, in a Block Club Chicago article, he expressed concerns about it sending a wrong message to police officers trying to patrol the streets.
“The message is ‘Stand down, Chicago Police Department. … Don’t bother getting out of your car. Don’t bother enforcing the law. Don’t bother serving and protecting communities, particularly communities with high crime rates,’” O’Shea said.
Andrew Stroth, an attorney for the Reed family, said the settlement stems from an “unlawful and unconstitutional traffic stop” by a Chicago Police Department with a “history of these pretextual stops.”
Stroth said the $1.25 million settlement includes “non-monetary relief for a family committed to reform,” but Stroth declined to outline the specific reforms.
Reed told news outlet Block Club Chicago, “The Chicago Police Department used “several different stories” to explain why Reed was stopped.
“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.”
On March 21, 2024, in the 3800 block of West Ferdinand Avenue in Humboldt Park, five officers were present, but one officer was injured, leaving four officers to fire 96 shots in 41 seconds at Reed. He was struck 13 times.
Reed fired first, hitting one officer.
Police said Reed was wearing a seatbelt, but COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten publicly questioned whether the officers lied about the stop. Kersten questioned how the officers could see from a distance whether Reed was wearing a seatbelt through his SUV’s tinted windows.
Kersten was also concerned by the numerous gunshots officers fired at Reed. She said there were “serious questions about the proportionality of their use of deadly force.”
Kersten stressed that all four officers continued to fire at Reed “after he exited his vehicle and was unarmed.” She pointed out the officer who pumped three bullets into Reed’s body as he lay unconscious on the ground.
COPA released body cam videos of the shootings. Reed’s family filed a wrongful death lawsuit. Reed’s mother, Nicole Banks, said the officers “executed” her son.
The Chicago police officers who fired 96 shots that killed Dexter Reed had a total of 41 complaints on their records, many of which included traffic stops that civilians believe were unwarranted, according to several recent reports.
Before Reed’s fatal shooting, the same five officers conducted 50 traffic stops on Chicago’s West Side. None of those 50 stops generated a single citation.
The shooting occurred in the Harrison District, which had the most significant number of traffic stops of all the city’s 22 police districts — more than 10 percent of all the stops in Chicago in 2023, according to a report by Impact for Equity, a reform organization.
