Evanston Pays $1.25 Million To Man Accused Of Stealing Own Car

EVANSTON, IL — The Evanston City Council Monday approved a $1.25 million payment to a former Northwestern University student prosecuted by the city after a fellow student suspected he was stealing his own car and followed him until police arrived and violently arrested him.

With limited comment, aldermen approved a resolution to settle a lawsuit against the city and four of its police officers involving allegations of battery, conspiracy and malicious prosecution, avoiding any admission of wrongdoing and a jury trial that had been set to begin last week. The agreement was adopted unanimously as part of the City Council's consent agenda.

Lawrence Crosby was a 25-year-old doctoral student on his way to the university's Evanston campus on Oct. 10, 2015, when he was mistaken for a car thief checking on a repairs to the the molding on the window of his car, according to police reports and court records.

Dashboard camera footage of the incident shows Crosby exit the car with his hands in the air as a group of officers surround him at gunpoint, tackling him within 10 seconds. According to police, officers "assisted him to the ground" and "utilized two knee strikes" and "empty-handed strikes."

Officers quickly confirmed what Crosby was telling them. It was his car. Police said Crosby later explained he wanted to make sure the incident was captured by a camera in his own car, telling officers he "wanted an unbiased, impartial record, so it would not just be your word against mine." At the time, Crosby would later write, he was considering other unarmed black people who had been fatally shot by officers.

"I was minding my own business and driving my own car, my accuser was aware of her racial preconceptions, and the police should have known better," he said. "And still I ended up face down for a crime I didn’t commit, fearing for my life." One officer was caught on tape saying he told Crosby he "should feel lucky" the officer did not shoot him.

Following his arrest, Evanston city attorneys sought to prosecute him under local ordinances for "disobeying" and "resisting" police.

"If you're going to put us on trial, we're going to put you on trial," said one of the officers, who conspired to maliciously prosecute Crosby to cover up their own misconduct, the lawsuit alleged. Officer Sean O'Brien later signed a misdemeanor complaint claiming Crosby "disobeyed a verbal command" and "intentionally tensed his muscles and pulled his hands away from multiple officers, in an attempt to defeat arrest."

A judge did not buy it. Crosby was found not guilty in a misdemeanor trial on March 9, 2016. The following week, although the video of the incident was already in the public domain, the City Council reviewed it in secret. Aldermen directed staff to make policy changes and procedures were updated by June 2016, according to city documents.

Crosby's lawsuit was filed October 2016. At the first hearing of the case in December 2016, then-Assistant City Attorney Henry Ford asked Crosby's attorney to issue a settlement demand.

The city's handling of the arrest video became an issue in Evanston's mayor's race, and the city publicly released a compilation available audio and video recordings of the incident in January 2017. But the department added introductory statement justifying the officers' conduct and reiterating the allegations against Crosby the city had failed to prove to a judge.

The decision likely added about $1 million to the cost of the settlement, as Crosby's attorney had been due to present evidence of damage to his reputation caused by the city's continuing insistence it did nothing wrong. Ford asked Crosby's attorney again in January to make a formal settlement demand but never heard back, according to city staff.

Although the $1.25 million settlement was directly addressed by only a single member of the City Council before or after its approval, several people spoke about the matter during public comment, including an elected official.

Misty Wittenberg urged aldermen to insist the city admit wrongdoing as part of the settlement (it did not) and questioned the advice of the city's law department. She said taxpayers were paying the salaries of four full-time staff attorneys and outside counsel to effectively fund people working against the public interest. The cost to settle Crosby's suit "increased to what it is now because we repeatedly smeared him and we used city platforms to do that," she said.

"We perpetuated charges against him that he'd been acquitted of 10 months before, and I just want to ask: who's advising these decisions that keep adding zeros to settlements?"

Wittenberg said members of the City Council was supposed to represent the public interest and "protecting the city from having to admit when it's wrong to members of the public is not in the public interest."

Albert Gibbs declared it was a poor demonstration of Evanston's "diversity-inclusive" ideals "when you had to pay a young man $1.25 million for opening the door to his own car."

Gibbs said Evanston police revealed their ruthlessness, acting like "thugs" and "gangsters" because "someone white called and said 'I think there is a crime going on.'" He said he could speak about mistreatment by at the hands of some Evanston police from personal experience and recommended regular psychological testing of officers.

"Who's zoomin' who, here?" he asked. "Shame."

Evanston City Clerk Devon Reid spoke during the public comment period after Mayor Steve Hagerty denied a point of personal privilege to allow him to address the lawsuit from the dais. Reid, himself arrested while collecting signatures to run for office by an officer who mistook him for a solicitor, said he appreciated efforts to reform police procedures during traffic stops. He said he hoped for further improvements under Chief Demitrous Cook, who was sworn into office earlier this month.

"The public has an interest in the city's acknowledgement of when we do wrong," Reid said. "And it's beyond the financial costs, it's essential for public trust overall and essential for the safety of our officers and essential for making sure this does not occur again."

But another concern was the Northwestern student who told police she "I didn't mean to, like, racially profile" after she called 911 on Crosby, honked her horn at him and followed him through Evanston. Officers explained she did the right thing at the time. She asked them to let Crosby known she was "sorry," according to the video.

"The swift criminalization and suspicion of the black body, and of young black men, is unfortunately ingrained deeply into the bedrock of our culture," Reid said. "And we must, as individuals and as this institution, check racial bias, afford our neighbors the benefit of the doubt and be willing to investigate further."

Most concerning, Reid said, was the further defamation of Crosby after his was found not guilty of any local ordinance. Even after learning Crosby had been falsely reported to have stolen his own car, police still arrested him. Instead of dropping the charges, city attorneys went ahead with the charges, knowing they would be dropped in court, Reid said. He asked that aldermen review the process of pressing criminal charges in the law department, including the use of the local ordinance of "disobedience to police."

After the resolution to settle the case was approved, Ald. Braithwaite, 2nd Ward, said he would have additional comment after the suit was officially terminated. (The case was dismissed Jan. 16 as jury selection was set to get underway and Crosby's attorney's had provided signed copies of the settlement aldermen approved at the Jan. 28 meeting.) He has not responded to a request for further comment, if he does it will be included here.

Ald. Cicely Fleming, 9th Ward, was called away due to an emergency and was not present to comment at the meeting. Any comment received will be added here.

Ald. Don Wilson, 4th Ward, was the only alderman to comment on the settlement. He said the agreement should be a reminder that a lot of work remains to be done, and said excuses and rationalizations were not acceptable.

"The harder part of all of this is to think about what underlies all of the events that transpired, not just that night, but thereafter," Wilson said. "I am sorry that this happened to Mr. Crosby but I'm also very sorry that we live in a world where the circumstances and the policies and the decisions that are made lead to these results."

Wilson said the case should force people to "dig deeper and acknowledge prejudice."

"I know that I'm never going to know how it feels to walk in the shoes of a black man, and I am never going to know how it feels to be in any of these circumstances. It's also not my place to speak for another person's experience." He said. "But going forward, we're accountable for the future and we have to look to the future and really, really dig deep and effectuate real change and long-term change."

The city and the officers "have denied and continue to deny the claims asserted by [Crosby,]" according to the settlement, which was paid out of the city's insurance fund. The law department had yet to release records requested by Patch that would show how much public money was spent fighting the lawsuit and any discipline imposed on the officers involved. City attorneys have not responded to a request for comment on the handling of the Crosby case or any resulting changes to law department practices.

"I'm confident that the law department communicated what needed to be communicated to us and made efforts to handle the litigation process appropriately," Wilson said.

Ex-Evanston city attorney W. Grant Farrar resigned last February to take a job with a HR consulting firm. The city's current corporation counsel, Michelle Masoncup, was his deputy during the period of Crosby's prosecution and lawsuit. In recent years, the city's law department has presided over millions of dollars in questionable legal fees and settlement payments to end other claims. A federal lawsuit naming one of the same officers cited in Crosby's suit was dismissed after the plaintiff said she was forced to move back to her home state in 2017 following a hurricane.

While the police department has said it scrapped its previous policy of forcing all motorists suspected of involvement in a felony to lie prone on the ground, issued body-worn cameras to most officers and re-evaluated its practice of charging people under certain local ordinances, and the City Council is reviewing changes to its citizen complaint procedures, the law department has not made any public statements about any changes to its policies or procedures.

Read more: Evanston Reaches Settlement In Lawrence Crosby Suit