Chicago city lawyers are recommending a $225,000 settlement for Lorenzo Williams after the Civilian Office of Police Accountability found that an officer used excessive force during a 2024 arrest in the Cabrini-Green neighborhood. Body-worn camera footage showed officers restraining Williams on the pavement while a gun was pointed at his head. The proposed payment is scheduled to go before the City Council Finance Committee on Monday, with a final vote possible at the September 23 council meeting.
The confrontation began just before 7 p.m. on July 30, 2024, when Officer Michael Donnelly and Officer Joseph Vecchio were dispatched to the 800 block of Cambridge Avenue, according to WTTW News. Officers had identified Williams as a convicted felon prohibited from possessing a weapon after spotting what they believed was a gun tucked into his jeans. As officers attempted a stop and search, Williams ran forward into the street before falling to the ground, the outlet reports.
The body-camera footage described in the report shows Williams pinned to the pavement as Donnelly hit the left side of his head three times with his department-issued radio. Donnelly also pointed his firearm at Williams' head at close range and threatened to shoot him, yelling, “I'll f------ shoot you!” Vecchio held Williams' head down by his hair. The footage did not show Williams attempting to use a gun against the officers, according to the report.
COPA Found Excessive Force, Cleared a Second Officer
COPA concluded that Donnelly used excessive force while trying to detain Williams and that his conduct discredited the Chicago Police Department and exposed the city to civil liability. The agency found no evidence supporting the claim that Williams was attempting to assault officers. It also found that Donnelly violated department policy by verbally abusing Williams and bystanders and by confronting members of the crowd after Williams had been placed in a police vehicle.
COPA found that Vecchio did not violate CPD policy during the physical encounter. Former Superintendent Larry Snelling and COPA agreed that Donnelly should be suspended for 89 days, a discipline decision reached in April 2026, according to documents cited by the outlet. City attorneys recommended settling Williams' lawsuit less than three months after he filed it, an unusually quick timetable for a police-misconduct claim.
An Officer's Long, Costly History
Donnelly was a member of the Near North 18th District tactical team until 2025, and his record extends well beyond the Williams case. He was involved in a 2017 botched raid in which officers held 5- and 9-year-old children at gunpoint at the wrong address, a case that led COPA in December 2022 to recommend a five-day suspension for breaching the door without knocking, according to CBS News Chicago. That case was one of three federal lawsuits alleging misconduct by Donnelly that together cost Chicago taxpayers $7 million.
Donnelly was also involved in the February 2019 wrong-door raid of Anjanette Young's home, in which officers forced Young to stand unclothed and handcuffed for nearly 10 minutes — footage that went viral and prompted the City Council to approve a $2.9 million settlement in December 2021 and sparked citywide changes to how search warrants are executed. Hoodline previously reported that Young later secured a seat on police oversight board. Donnelly is currently named in at least seven pending lawsuits filed by Chicago drivers alleging improper stops and searches, and he is no longer listed in the city's database of active employees.
Vecchio Faces Termination and a Felony Charge
Vecchio's own record has deteriorated sharply since the Williams incident. He was stripped of his police powers and recommended for termination by COPA over false statements he made, and he was arrested in August on a felony charge of aggravated domestic battery, the outlet reports. Four officers assigned to the 18th District tactical team — Donnelly, Vecchio, Mario Fuentes, and Nicu Tohatan — had already been stripped of their police powers following misconduct investigations into pretextual stops and excessive force.
City attorneys are now negotiating a global settlement to resolve 17 separate civil lawsuits naming Donnelly, Vecchio, and six other members of the tactical team, all alleging improper stops and searches by the unit. At least four additional lawsuits making similar allegations remain pending in federal court outside those settlement talks. COPA has said more than 90 percent of the complaints it investigated involving the unit were sparked by officers' decisions to stop Black residents.
A Documented Pattern Beyond Cabrini-Green
The Williams stop occurred near Cambridge Avenue and Chestnut Street in Cabrini-Green, but COPA identified it as part of a wider pattern. In October 2025, the agency reported 50 undocumented and unprofessional stops of Black residents in 2024 across Lincoln Park, West Town, Old Town, River North, Streeterville, the Gold Coast, and parts of Logan Square — upscale neighborhoods where officers consistently failed to generate required investigatory stop reports.
How Chicago tracks stops and settlements
Chicago Police Department policy says an investigatory stop must be supported by reasonable articulable suspicion and documented in a Stop Report; Illinois law also requires officers to document such stops. CPD says its public database contains anonymized Investigatory Stop Report records, including files for 2024 and 2025, according to its investigatory-stop policy page and ISR data page. Those materials establish how stops are recorded and where the public data can be found, but do not by themselves provide a neighborhood-specific count for the 18th District's 2024 stops. CPD also says its Fourth Amendment Stop Review Unit examines stop reports, the basis for stops and pat-downs, stop receipts and supervisory reviews for compliance with policy. Separately, the city's litigation-reporting framework treats a settled case as concluded when the City Council has approved the settlement, when council approval is required, according to the Department of Law's CPD litigation report. That means the proposed Williams payment would not become a concluded reportable settlement under that framework until the required approval occurs.
The proposed $225,000 payout for Williams lands amid extraordinary fiscal strain on the city. In the first six months of 2026 alone, Chicago spent more than $225 million resolving over 200 police misconduct lawsuits, far exceeding its $82.5 million annual settlement budget and forcing officials to authorize $283.3 million in additional borrowing, according to WTTW News. That followed a 2025 in which taxpayers paid $252 million to resolve 136 police misconduct lawsuits, with nearly 60 percent of those funds going to people wrongfully imprisoned for decades. Hoodline has reported separately on the city's mounting wrongful conviction legal fees.
The Chicago Police Department overspent its City Council-approved operational budget by $162.5 million in 2025 alone, contributing to $600 million in cumulative overruns since 2021, with police spending accounting for roughly a third of the city's corporate fund budget. It remains unclear how the City Council Finance Committee will ultimately address the growing backlog of police misconduct liabilities, or how the global settlement talks covering the 17 tactical-team lawsuits will resolve.
