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Mayor says he can't talk about disabled girl's lawsuit against police


Mayor says he can't talk about disabled girl's lawsuit against police

A day after a federal court likened the Chicago Police Department’s handling of a mentally ill woman to throwing her in a lions den, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he wants to talk about the issue but can’t until Christina Eilman's lawsuit is closed.

The federal appellate court on Thursday rejected an appeal by the city that led to a two-year delay in the case. The lawsuit was filed nearly six years ago, in the months after the then-21-year-old former UCLA student was gravely and permanently injured in an assault that occurred after police arrested her at Midway Airport and released her 7 miles away in one of the city’s most crime-ridden neighborhoods.

Emanuel’s office has been forced to pay an increasing amount of attention to the financial cost of police misconduct lawsuits, mostly for cases that originated under the administration of former Mayor Richard Daley. Emanuel said he can’t fully address the issue with regard to the Eilman case because of the pending litigation.

"There's a review to that, and I can't comment on it given it is both -- any comment on that process right now, while that's at trial. At the end of that, I want to speak to the general question” raised in a reporter’s questions Friday.

In stark language that legal experts said was constitutionally sound but possibly offensive, the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled Eilman's family can proceed with a lawsuit claiming Police Department negligence placed her in danger that led to her sexual assault and catastrophic injury.

The three-judge panel ended more than 18 months of silence on the issue and rejected the city's attempt to stop the case. The lawsuit has had so many delays, the reputed gang member convicted of attacking Eilman before she plummeted from a seventh-floor window was paroled from prison Wednesday.

The city's appeal had asked the court to dismiss the case against 10 police officers, arguing the police had no responsibility to take care of Eilman, who had been arrested after creating a disturbance at Midway Airport in May 2006.

Rather than dwell on the question of police responsibility for providing medical care, the judges said there was evidence of a clearer constitutional violation, that officers had taken Eilman from a relatively safe place — Midway Airport — and ultimately left her in a dangerous place seven miles away, at 51st Street and Wentworth Avenue.

In reciting the narrative of what happened that night, Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook suggested the police showed little regard for the danger they were putting Eilman in when they released her.

"She was lost, unable to appreciate her danger, and dressed in a manner to attract attention," Easterbrook wrote, noting she was wearing a cutoff top and short shorts. He added "she is white and well off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and thus a potential target for crime."

After she wandered away from the police station, Eilman was lured into the last standing high-rise of the Robert Taylor Homes, where she was assaulted before plummeting from a seventh-floor window. She suffered massive trauma, including a severe brain injury, shattered pelvis and numerous broken bones. She now lives with her parents near Sacramento and requires around-the-clock care.

Legal experts said the ruling is consistent with well-established federal law.

"Contrary to what most people think, the police don't have a constitutional duty to protect people from harm. But they do have a duty to not put people in harm's way, in other words not to make things worse, and that's what the court found here," said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, who has led both litigation against the Police Department as well as research into the department's oversight practices.

"It's a jury call. But there is a constitutional duty, and that's been established for a long time."

David Franklin, a constitutional law scholar at DePaul University College of Law, agreed that the court's ruling pointed out an often misconstrued point about the Constitution.

"Where the police crossed the line from merely not providing help to actively doing harm was by dropping her off near the Robert Taylor Homes wearing skimpy clothes and without her cellphone," Franklin said. "Even though it was a private individual who physically injured her, the police can be held constitutionally liable for leaving her much worse off than they found her."

Franklin also noted that some may find the court's language troubling.

In the opinion, Easterbrook also referenced an earlier 7th Circuit opinion noting that throwing someone into a "snake pit" would violate their rights.

"As for the court's potentially offensive analogy between Taylor Homes and a 'lions' den' or a 'snake pit,' well, I suppose that's why federal judges have life tenure."