Much has been made about a first-of-its-kind “global” settlement Chicago has reached to close 176 lawsuits tied to corrupt former police sergeant Ronald Watts.
Watts operated out of the now-demolished Ida B. Wells Homes, shaking people down for money and information, and arresting them when they didn’t pay up.
The $90 million deal the City Council adopted last week has been praised for saving money and ending a dark chapter in Chicago’s history of police misconduct.
With the massive police misconduct settlement now official, new details are emerging about some of the people at the center of the lawsuits roughly two decades after they were wrongfully convicted because of Watts.
Deon Willis and Eson Claybron are two of those people.
“It gives back a little that I lost,” Willis said of the settlement.
The 184 plaintiffs, including Willis and Claybron, have collectively spent more than 180 years in custody. All of their convictions have been vacated, and many of the plaintiffs have been granted certificates of innocence.
The pair, who sat down for interviews with WBEZ when the settlement was approved, grew up in the Ida B. Wells Homes on the South Side. Living in that public housing complex, they knew to look both ways before leaving their house to check for Watts or his team.
“You gotta peep out the window, peep out the door, look this way, to look that way, just to see if you’re gonna see his cars coming,” Willis said. “Detective cars, back to back to back to back.”
Despite the extra precaution and knowing that Watts had a reputation for framing their neighbors, they both got set up by Watts themselves.
Claybron remembers it like it was yesterday, even though it’s been 20 years.
“It was three months after my birthday. I just turned 17. It was February. It was Valentine’s Day, I think. I [didn’t] go to school that day. I was kicking it with a couple friends,” Claybron said. “When he seen me, he grabbed me… He pulled me to the back door. He told me, ‘What I got for him?’”
Claybron realized Watts was telling him to cough up some cash or some information on drug dealers in the building.
When he didn’t have anything to offer, he says Watts planted drugs on him — cocaine and heroin — and charged him with two felonies that led to probation.
Claybron remembers Watts saying, “That’s what you get when you don’t listen to Watts.”
Willis’ story is similar, but he was arrested by Watts twice — in 2002 and again 2008 — after he wouldn’t pay Watts $5,000 or give him intel on illegal activity.
He was convicted of heroin possession but says he didn’t have any drugs on him. He spent two years in prison and time on house arrest as the cases played out.
He missed his daughter’s birth as a result.
“I probably walked a hole in the floors in that house at that time,” Willis said. “I was furious. But like my baby mama said, ‘Keep your composure… You can see her when she comes home.’ But for them to take that away from me for something I didn’t do, it’s mind-boggling.”
Watts was eventually convicted and served time for shaking down an FBI informant.
Willis and Claybron have had their charges vacated, with certificates of innocence as well. Claybron keeps his certificate locked in a safe, ready to show potential employers who ask for it.
Willis says for years no one wanted to hire him, and he couldn’t support his two kids. And he still copes with the fact that for so long, no one believed him.
“It was like I was shut out [of] the world because of what he did to me,” Willis said. “Every day I fight to stay sane and not insane. Working and things like that, it helps me, but it’s still a fight.”
Claybron lives in Minnesota, where he moved 16 years ago because he says Watts was harassing him and his family, which is still here.
“It just was crazy for me — missing family reunions, events. I missed it a whole lot of time in my life because I was scared to go back to Chicago, because I’m scared he’s gonna come grab me or something and put me in jail,” Claybron said.
As for the settlements, neither Claybron nor Willis would say the exact amount they’re receiving. The payments range from $150,000 for people who were sentenced to probation to up to more than $3 million for a man who spent a decade in prison on a Watts case.
Willis says it doesn’t solve all of the problems Watts and the city created, but it helps, and he’s grateful to the City Council for approving it.
Claybron said it’s not about the money at all, but about publicly acknowledging a wrong that was done to him.
Eventually, he wants to return to the city he grew up in.
“I miss Chicago,” Claybron said. “[Watts] was the only reason I left. So yeah, that’s my plan. I’m coming back home.”