Arrested man turns down $25,000 from city, gets $100,000 from jury

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Updated: August 4, 2011 4:20PM

A federal jury awarded a South Side man $100,000 Monday in a lawsuit against the city alleging he was beaten by Chicago Police officers who planted drugs on him.

Al Williams was 35 when members of the now-disbanded Special Operations Section arrested him on May 31, 2007, near 79th and Dobson in the Grand Crossing neighborhood, his attorneys said.

The officers had jokingly referred to Williams as “Mr. Cataract” because he is blind in one eye, the lawsuit said. The officers allegedly struck Williams in the head with a blunt object. He was charged with cocaine possession and resisting arrest. He spent about 40 days in jail before he was released on bail. He later went to trial on the criminal charges and won.

“Juries have believed him twice now,” said one of Williams’ attorneys, Brendan Shiller, adding that the city rejected a $25,000 settlement offer and opted to go to trial.

The officers denied they had roughed up Williams or planted drugs on him. Williams had dropped the drugs on the ground after he crashed his bicycle into a utility pole, the officers said.

The officers said they stopped him because he had a history of drug arrests. Williams, a furniture mover, has been convicted of three crimes, including a drug charge in 2003 that resulted in probation, records show. The jury wasn’t allowed to hear about his criminal record.

The jury found against Officers Zachary Rubald and Scott Leck, who had been members of the Special Operations Section that was broken up in 2007 by then-Interim Supt. Dana Starks after other officers in the unit were accused of robbing drug dealers.

Williams’ attorneys had filed a transcript of a “60 Minutes” interview into the court record, but Judge Joan Lefkow did not allow the jury to see it.

In the interview, Keith Herrera, one of the SOS officers suspected of wrongdoing, was asked if it was a common practice in the unit to write fake police reports. He replied: “Creative writing was a certain term that bosses used to make sure that the job got done.”