Sources Say Louima OKs $9M Settlement
N E W Y O R K, July 11 -- A $9 million settlement has been reached in a civil rights lawsuit filed by a Haitian immigrant tortured in a police station bathroom, The Associated Press has learned.
Lawyers for the city, police and Abner Louima, citing a gag order, refused to discuss the tentative settlement. But they confirmed that the parties were scheduled to meet with a federal magistrate in Brooklyn this afternoon to possibly finalize the deal.
Sources who spoke on condition of anonymity say the deal would be around $9 million, with part paid by the city and part by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association. A settlement of that size would be the largest ever for a single police brutality claim in city history.
Louima sued for $155 million in 1998, claiming officers at Brooklyn's 70th Precinct conspired to create a "blue wall of silence and lies to obstruct justice." The civil rights suit charged police and PBA officials with condoning an "environment in which the most violent police officers believed they would be insulated" from prosecution.
In three criminal trials, he testified about an ordeal stemming from his arrest in a street brawl outside a Brooklyn nightclub on Aug. 9, 1997. Charges against Louima were later dropped.
Louima was handcuffed and taken to the precinct. Once there, Officer Justin Volpe — mistakenly believing Louima had punched him — sought revenge by sodomizing Louima with a broken broomstick and threatening to kill him if he reported it.
Volpe pleaded guilty and is serving 30 years. A jury found another officer, Charles Schwarz, guilty of pinning Louima down during the assault; four other officers were convicted of lying to authorities about what happened.
An earlier settlement agreement was abandoned soon after it was reached in March. Under that deal, Louima would have received a $9 million payment from the city and the Police Benevolent Association, but would have dropped his demand for reforms in the way the New York Police Department deals with officers accused of abuse.
