Chicago family gets $2.5M settlement after wrongful CPD raid in 2017: 'You scared my kids'

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A Chicago family putting a painful chapter behind them. They are getting a $2.5 million settlement from the city after their home was mistakenly raided by Chicago police in 2017.

Family members said they've been suffering ever since.

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The settlement agreed to by the city brings to an end a nearly eight-year saga that began when seven Chicago police officers executed a search warrant on the wrong address. The case led to a statewide law named after one of the children present during the raid, requiring officers receive trauma-informed training. That child is now 17 and spoke out on Friday.

The Mendez family home was pictured through the view of body-worn cameras on November 7, 2017 during a wrongful raid on their apartment. On Friday, Peter and Gilbert Mendez were surrounded by their attorneys.

"It gives me piece of mind knowing that, you know, there is change going on," Peter said. "Stuff is going to change, so it doesn't happen to other kids or families."

On Wednesday, the Chicago City Council gave their final approval to a $2.5 million settlement agreed to by the city's attorney's earlier this year. Midway through trial, a deal was made between city lawyers and the Mendez family to drop the civil lawsuit filed years earlier.

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In the lawsuit, the family claimed officers pointed guns at them and continued to detain the young children's father even after it became apparent officers had executed a search warrant based on bad information.

"When it came to trial they made us look like liars and we're lying and we're just here to try and get something and we weren't," Gilbert said.

While only four of the seven police officers present activated their body worn cameras that day, none show the officers pointing guns at the family. That accusation was dismissed by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

The Mendez case, among many others, eventually led CPD to change it's policies regarding the execution of residential search warrants, the number of which have dropped significantly since then.

"You scared my kids," the mother can be heard saying in the body-camera video.

The officers involved never served the suspensions agreed to by former Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown

Even while city has now agreed to pay out a multi-million dollar settlement, attorneys for the Mendez family say the city still denies any liability.