From [HERE] The family of a mentally ill Black woman who died during an encounter with white Cleveland police officers in November 2014 has settled its lawsuit with the city for $2.25 million, according to a news release from the family's attorneys.
Tanisha Anderson, 37, died on the pavement outside of a police cruiser with her hands cuffed behind her back. The settlement ends more than two years of litigation.
Anderson family attorney David Malik said in an interview that while negotiations during mediation with a federal judge failed, the city and family negotiated separately and reached an agreement last week.
The settlement is one of the largest the city has ever agreed to pay in a case involving allegations of police misconduct. Officers Scott Aldridge and Bryan Myers remain under criminal investigation for Anderson's death. A Cuyahoga County Probate Court judge must approve the settlement before it is final.
On 13 November, a cold night in Cleveland, her younger sister Jennifer said Tanisha was having one of her "bad days". Anderson suffered from schizophrenia and bipolar disorder and was suffering from a breakdown. Wearing only in a nightgown, with no shoes on, Tanisha was disoriented and kept trying to leave the house. Joell Anderson was the one who made the first 911 call. He wanted her taken to the hospital for a mental health evaluation.
Two sets of police officers arrived instead of an ambulance. Anderson seemed calmer for a time, but then the family called again. The second set of cops, they claim, were ruder and more brusque. They were Detective Scott Aldridge, a seven-year veteran of the force, and his partner Brian Meyers. They told the family to stay in the house and walked Anderson to their patrol car.
She died after Aldridge and Myers cuffed her hands behind her back and placed her in the back of a police car following a struggle. On the night Anderson died, the Cleveland police department released a statement claiming the officers had handcuffed her because she was resisting them. They said that once in the car, she began kicking them.
"A short time later," the statement continued, "the woman stopped struggling and appeared to go limp."
That version of the story does not appear to account for the prone position, nor for the multiple abrasions and contusions the coroner found on Tanisha's body, nor for her fractured sternum.
The family says in its civil lawsuit against the city and the officers that they watched and listened from the house as Tanisha, who was afraid of confined spaces, cried out for her mother and brother. They heard her recite the Lord's Prayer.
Then after Anderson got out of the car, the family explained, the senior of the two officers, Detective Aldridge, "slammed her to the sidewalk and pushed her face into the pavement. He placed his knee onto her back, placed his weight on her and placed Tanisha in handcuffs."
The family says that Aldridge's partner, Brian Meyers, helped him hold her down.
After she stopped moving, the family claims, the police did not call an ambulance for some time and left Anderson’s half-naked body exposed to the public (with her nightgown hiked up around her hips), didn’t provide her with medical care and told her family that she was “sleeping.”
In its reply to the lawsuit, the city concedes only that emergency medical services were not called until 45 minutes after the officers arrived, and that Anderson was handcuffed when the paramedics got there.
The Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner's Office ruled Anderson's death a homicide-"sudden death in association with physical restraint in a prone position in association with ischemic heart disease and bipolar disorder with agitation". She asphyxiated while being restrained in a prone position. Obesity and other health factors also contributed to her death, the office said.
An expert hired by the Anderson family said in a report released in July that Aldridge and Myers acted "contrary to generally accepted police practices" and that their actions were "unreasonable and excessive for the circumstances."
The expert, former Deputy Los Angeles Police Chief Lou Reiter, said both officers also failed to provide adequate medical care to Anderson.
Aldridge and Myers have been the subject of an ongoing criminal investigation. One of the two officers was involved in a 2012 police chase of a Black couple through the streets of Cleveland that ended fatally in a hail of 137 bullets into the couple's car. The cops claim they couple fired a gun at police but no gun was ever found or seen. Must have been the muffler.
The case is now in the hands of the Ohio Attorney General's Office. The family has expressed frustration that the criminal investigation has dragged on for more than two years.
"These officers should be criminally prosecuted and fired from their jobs. We will continue the fight for justice," Malik said in the release.
Attached to the news release was a letter that Cassandra Johnson, Anderson's mother, sent to Mayor Frank Jackson demanding five things.
- A general police order in Anderson's name on subject control and positional asphyxiation.
- Use the Anderson case when training officers.
- Fire Aldridge and Myers.
- Install a plaque for Anderson that says: "May all police and other first responders stay vigilant toward the mentally ill persons they encounter. May we always have safe outcomes. Remember Tanisha Anderson, November 12, 2014."
- Continue reforms required under a settlement the city reached with the U.S. Justice Department over police use of force.
Family attorney Al Gerhardstein said in the release that the city announced in 1998 that it would train officers to take measures to prevent those in custody from asphyxiating, and that the training never took place.
The city did not agree to any of the demands in the settlement.
The city's settlement is just the latest in a series of large payouts the city has agreed to over police use of force.
In April, the city agreed to pay $6 million to the family of Tamir Rice, a 12-year-old shot and killed by a police officer the same month Anderson died.
The city also agreed last month to pay $2.25 million to the loved ones of Dan Ficker, a Parma man killed by a Cleveland officer outside his apartment in 2011.