The City of Bloomington’s settlement agreement with two DoorDash drivers who alleged police misconduct in a lawsuit was for a peculiar amount of money.
WGLT previously reported the city gave $25,000 to each of the two plaintiffs, but we rounded up.
The agreement more precisely awards the men $24,999.99 apiece. That’s a penny shy of the amount City Manager Jeff Jurgens would have to get permission to spend.
City code authorizes the city manager to settle most claims under $25,000 unilaterally. At $24,999.99 Jurgens did not have to let the city council weigh in.
“It is a lot of money,” Jurgens said. “I’m not going to deny that. But when you look at how much we were going to have to spend on attorney fees, it’s a fraction of what that number was going to be.”
Had the city not settled, taxpayers would have been paying for its attorneys, plus the attorney for Paul Williams, the former assistant police chief also named in the lawsuit who has since retired, Jurgens said.
“Under the claims that were filed, if we would have had to have any liability or pay anything to the two plaintiffs, we also would have had to pay the attorney fees for the Chicago attorney,” he said, referring to Jared Kosoglad, the plaintiffs' lawyer who has since issued a public call for an independent investigation into Williams’ and the city’s conduct surrounding the June 14 incident.
Williams is shown on police body cameras ordering the arrests of the two 21-year-olds and telling officers to seize their cell phones, saying the men had harassed him. According to officer accounts in the police report, their phones were returned before the men were released with disorderly conduct citations that were later tossed out.
Jurgens told WGLT the city intends to review Bloomington's policies and procedures in situations like this one, where an alleged victim is also a senior officer in the police department. Body cam footage shows Williams pacing near the alleged suspects as uniformed officers questioned them.
“This was a wise settlement,” Jurgens said. “Which is partly why I want to make sure we learn from this and that we continue to make sure that we have the right processes and the right policies in place — and we never make a mistake like this again.”
Jurgens said it “took a long time” to reach an agreement, adding it was ultimately in the best interest of the taxpayers to avoid an even lengthier process. Asked if they felt shut out of the settlement agreement by Jurgens negotiating within a cent of his independent authority, none of Bloomington’s nine city council members have directly responded.
“This was a five-count federal complaint alleging constitutional violations,” Jurgens said. “It sought compensatory damages, punitive damages, as well as attorney fees. Our hope would have been to settle this for less. We weren’t able to get there with the plaintiffs. But again, even at under $50,000, it’s a fraction of what our attorney fees would have been.”
Jurgens said there could be an occasion to fight allegations “on the merit.”
“...but in this case, we thought it was legitimate to try and work out a resolution with the two plaintiffs,” he said.
