Black student awarded $1.25m settlement after Chicago police tackle him for ‘stealing his own car’

Officials in a Chicago suburb say they have reached a deal to pay $1.25m to settle a lawsuit stemming from a 2015 incident in which a police officer tackled a black doctorate student for stealing a car that turned out to be his own.

Wally Bobkiewicz, the city manager for Evanston, said that the suburb had entered into the agreement with Lawrence Crosby, who was a 25-year-old student seeking his PhD in engineering at Northwestern University when he was tackled in 2015.

He has since received his degree.

The $1.25m figure was announced by Dr Crosby’s attorney Timothy Touhy, who gave the number to the Chicago Tribune.

Mr Bobkiewicz did not comment on the settlement amount.

Police tacked Dr Crosby in 2015 after arriving in response to a call from a woman who saw him attempting to fix the moulding on his car, but thought he was stealing the vehicle, according to Mr Touhy.

The woman followed Dr Crosby when he drove away and to the science building on his school’s campus, and then relayed his location to police.

Police camera footage shows Dr Crosby exiting his vehicle both hands in the air before being tackled when he did not immediately respond to orders to get on the ground.

The case of Dr Crosby is the latest high profile incident involving aggressive police action and black men in the Chicago area and the United States more broadly.

Just last week, a Chicago police officer was sentenced to seven years in prison for the murder of black man Laquan McDonald, whose killing was caught on video and sparked outrage in the city that included criticism of Mayor Rahm Emanuel after it was discovered it took over a year for the footage to be released publicly.

The Associated Press contributed to this report