Chicago approves $90M payout over disgraced ex-sergeant who framed hundreds for drug crimes
Source: AP
By CHRISTINE FERNANDO
Updated 7:42 PM CDT, September 25, 2025
CHICAGO (AP) — The Chicago City Council on Thursday unanimously approved a $90 million settlement for nearly 200 civil rights violations involving a notorious former police sergeant who framed people for drug crimes they didn’t commit in one of the biggest police misconduct scandals in the city’s history.
The groundbreaking deal closes out 176 lawsuits involving 180 wrongfully convicted people who spent close to 200 years combined behind bars, marking an end to one of the Chicago Police Department’s darkest chapters.
Disgraced former police Sgt. Ronald Watts and the unit he led for nearly a decade until 2012 was accused of planting drugs on suspects, falsifying police reports and falsely accusing housing project residents and others of drug crimes unless they paid the officers off.
“Watts and his team of officers terrorized the Black community in the Ida B. Wells housing project for over a decade,” Theresa Kleinhaus, an attorney representing the individuals involved in the settlement, said in a statement to The Associated Press. “This settlement gives our clients some measure of justice for what they went through.”
Read more: https://apnews.com/article/chicago-police-corruption-ronald-watts-3a6ea473c28f9716e818c0c4dc5b2536
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