6135: Louima may accept $ 7 million (fwd)

[Bob Corbett <corbetre@webster.edu>]

From: nozier@tradewind.net

December 4 2000_NY DAILY NEWS (EXPRESS NEWS)
Louima may accept $ 7 million._

Police brutality victim Abner Louima may settle his $155 million lawsuit
against the city for a reported $ 7.1 million. The Daily News reported
last week that Louima was nearing a multi-million dollar settlement of
his civil lawsuit against the city, the police union and the cops who
tortured him in a Brooklyn police station New York 1 television this
weekend reported the $7.1 million figure, which has not been confirmed
by any of the parties involved.Lawyers for the city and Louima _who
include Johnnie Cochran and Barry Scheck_apparently reached a deal
behind closed doors at Brooklyn Federal Court. One snag in the talks,
sources said, was insistence by the Patrolmen's Benevolent Association,
the police union, that the exact amount of the settlement be kept
secret.
Louima was also seeking reforms in the NYPD that would deter brutality
and smash "blue wall" of silence. He would agree to drop all
out_standing civil claims,sources said. By settling the PBA and the city
are apparently hoping to avoid a trial that would likely bring another
round of negative publicity over the attack. Former officer Justin Volpe
is serving a 30-year old prison sentence for sodomizing Louima, a
Haitian immigrant , with a  stick in August 1977.