“Update on the Bill for Pinstripe Patronage: $82.5 Million” @ Peoples Law Office

Posted on July 15, 2012

July 12, 2012: “For more than 40 years, the City of Chicago has paid top dollar to private lawyers to represent the City and its police officers in the most notorious civil rights cases of assassination, torture, brutality, and wrongful arrest and convictions by Chicago police. This practice began in the early 1970s with the payment of hundreds of thousands of dollars to defend the squad of officers who assassinated Black Panther leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark, and continued in the late 1980s and early 1990’s with the expenditure of more than a million dollars to defend the City and Jon Burge in several police torture cases, including the seminal case brought by Andrew Wilson. However this “pinstripe patronage,” a term that was coined by the late Judge R. Eugene Pincham, pales in comparison to what the City has paid to outside lawyers to represent their “bad guys” since August of 2003.

In a study of payment records in police cases since August of 2003 that were obtained from the City pursuant to Freedom of Information Act requests, the People’s Law Office has calculated that the City has paid $82,532,589 in fees and costs to 24 private law firms in 659 police misconduct cases during that time period. (Table 1)………………………………………………”

Read more at Peoples Law Office.

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