The Evanston City Council agreed to settle a 2023 lawsuit brought by a man who accused police department officers of using excessive force.
After the case worked its way through federal courts for two years, the city agreed last month to pay the plaintiff, Alexander Gray, $50,000 to settle the case — without the city admitting any liability, according to a resolution of the City Council.
U.S. District Judge Steven Seeger ruled back in March that Gray’s claim that Evanston police officers used excessive force would not advance to a trial, siding with the city because a public safety threat was perceived by officers.
Judge Seeger did, however, side with Gray in his claim that the police department violated his Fourth Amendment right when officers searched Gray and his belongings. Gray’s attorneys formally moved to dismiss the case on Oct. 15.
According to police records, officers were called to search Evanston beaches on March 31, 2021 after a person called 911 to report a man with a gun in his hand walking on a trail near the beach. The caller described the man as white, between 5 and 6 feet tall, and wearing a dark coat and jeans.
Four officers approached Gray, a Black man, and a fifth officer observed the four officers train their weapons at Gray. The officers did not find a gun, and instead found headphones in his hand. Officers cuffed Gray and searched through his belongings while doing so.
A responding officer spoke to the caller at approximately 3:20 p.m. The caller said she was walking northbound on the 500 block of Sheridan Square when she saw Gray ahead of her, facing the other direction, holding what she believed to be a gun.
“It should be noted that (the caller) became unsure of whether she actually saw a gun when told that Grey had been found with a pair of black headphones in his right hand,” the responding officer wrote in his March 2021 report.
Nearly two years later on March 28, 2023, Gray’s lawyers filed a federal complaint to the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois accusing the city of violating Gray’s constitutional rights to due process and depriving him of his right to unreasonable searches, his 14th and 4th amendment rights, respectively.
“The City of Evanston has failed to instruct and train its police officers that an anonymous tip that a person is carrying a firearm does not permit a police officer to point a firearm at a person, order that person to lay on the ground, and comply with the police orders under penalty of death while the officers search that person,” the complaint states.
In March 2024, lawyers representing the city of Evanston filed for a summary judgement, essentially asking Judge Seeger to make a decision on the case before it got to a full trial. The case trailed on for a year longer, until Judge Seeger made a ruling this March.
“The (EPD) officers did not use excessive force when they pointed their weapons at Gray,” Judge Seeger wrote in his decision to dismiss the excessive force claim. “They had a reasonable basis to believe that Gray was holding a gun in a park, in violation of a local ordinance. There was no underlying constitutional violation.”
Seeger sided with Gray’s claim of the unreasonable search, which from body worn camera footage from Evanston Police shows officers searched Gray’s pockets twice, per the judge’s review of the video recording.
“The first search took place while Gray was laying on the ground, handcuffed,” Judge Seeger noted, referencing court records. “The officers removed a cell phone, a set of keys, a black glove or two, and a surgical face mask. The second search took place when Gray got back on his feet, and the officers unzipped his jacket…. By the look of things, the officers poked around, but did not remove anything during the second search.”
Seeger wrote that while EPD officers were within their rights to investigate Gray, “Stopping a person is one thing. Frisking that person is another.”
Judge Seeger wrote that a frisk is a “limited pat down of the suspect’s outer clothing to search for weapons,” adding, “A frisk must ‘be confined in scope to an intrusion reasonably designed to discover guns, knives, clubs, or other hidden instruments for the assault of the police officer,'” he wrote, quoting precedent.
“Once an officer concludes that the object is not a weapon, that officer ‘cannot go beyond a protective pat-down to manipulate an object concealed in a pocket unless ‘the incriminating character of the object [is] immediately apparent,'” the judge wrote.
“If the officers felt a hard lump or object in Gray’s pocket during the protective pat-down, they may have had a reasonable suspicion to believe that object was a handgun… And with reasonable suspicion of a weapon, the officers would be free to search that pocket.”
“But if the officers had determined that Gray was unarmed during the initial pat-down, then Gray enjoyed a clearly established right to be free from any search of his pockets beyond the protective pat-down.”
Judge Seeger determined that a jury could be convinced that the second search of Gray’s pockets was unreasonable, given that the contents were his keys, phone, a surgical mask and a glove or two — not easily mistaken for a handgun.
On the other hand, a jury could be convinced that the second search was warranted, given that “a phone is a small, hard object,” he wrote.
“Maybe the officers reasonably believed that one of the objects in Gray’s pocket felt like a weapon. Maybe they didn’t. That’s a question of fact. A jury will need to decide whether the officers had a reasonable belief about the presence of a weapon,” he wrote.
Gray’s consent to the search could also further complicate the case, Judge Seeger wrote.
“One possible reading is that Gray gave the officers consent to look inside the jacket, but not poke around. Another possible reading is that Gray gave the officers consent to open his jacket and look inside his pockets. Both interpretations are reasonable, so a jury needs to pick which one is right.”
In May, attorneys for Gray and the City of Evanston jointly filed a status report to the court requesting they begin discussions on settling the case.
Joel Flaxman, an attorney representing Gray, declined to further comment on the case when contacted by phone. A spokesperson for the city of Evanston did not immediately respond to questions on the case.
