Jury reaches $5.7M verdict in 2018 Back of the Yards raid excessive force case against children case

CHICAGO (WLS) -- A jury has reached a $5.7 million verdict Wednesday in a case of alleged excessive force against children in a 2018 Back of the Yards Chicago police raid.

This is a breaking news update. The following is from a previous report.

Three weeks after it began, this case is now in the hands of a jury, which will have to decide whether the SWAT officers involved in executing a search warrant nearly eight years ago did, as alleged, use excessive force against the Tate children and whether the city of Chicago fostered this type of behavior within the police department by failing to hold officers accountable for their actions.

It has been a long journey for the jury hearing this case. It was Feb. 3 when the trial officially got under way. Since then, jurors have heard from nearly everyone who was inside this Back of the Yards apartment on August 9, 2018. That's the day CPD's SWAT team executed a warrant on the Tate family home, looking for a suspect that neither lived there nor was known to the family.

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"This case is about young children in their own home with their family, doing nothing wrong, with guns pointed at them in a military operation by police in their own city," said Al Hofeld, the Tates' attorney, during closing arguments on Tuesday morning.

Hofeld hammered home the message he has been trying to make for three weeks now: That nine officers broke into the Tate home, without notice, unnecessarily pointing guns at four young children, traumatizing them, their mother and grandmother. He insisted that this was just one more example of what the U.S. Justice Department in 2017 found was CPD's "pattern or practice of using force, including deadly force, that is unreasonable, in violation of the Fourth Amendment," attributing the practice to the city of Chicago failing to provide proper training to their officers and failing to hold them accountable.

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But while the Justice Department's findings are not in dispute, this particular case is not clear-cut. There is no footage from body-worn cameras, as they were not required at the time. Counsel for the officers and the city dispute most of what the Tate family alleges, from the way in which SWAT team members entered the home to the officers' behavior during the execution of the warrant.

"Not a single one of them pointed a rifle at any of the plaintiffs... Not a single of them unlawfully detained the plaintiffs," said Lawrence Kowalczyk, the officers' attorney, adding the officers had years of training in use of force and that, "Those men are the best of the best."

That is something, the officers' attorney said, was on full display during what was the execution of what was a dual warrant: One for the Tate's apartment and one next door, which is ultimately where SWAT team members located their target.

The jury is expected to deliberate until 5 p.m. Tuesday and return Wednesday, when it is expected they will return a verdict.