The family of Kenneth Chamberlain Sr., a Black marine vet shot by police in his home in 2011, has recently reached a $5 million settlement in their federal lawsuit against the city of White Plains, New York.
The city’s Common Council approved the multi-million-dollar agreement on Monday, Aug. 7.
The 68-year-old’s Nov. 19, 2011 death was set in motion by his accidentally pressing medical alert badge in his sleep and police responding to the distress signal.
When the cops arrived at his unit in his public housing complex at 5:22 a.m., the man told him that he was not in any crisis. He then asked them to leave, but the officers would not. Instead, one officer called him the N-word, took his door off its hinges, and forced their way into his home.
An investigation determined Chamberlain was shot twice, with one hit to the chest by Officer Anthony Carelli.
Some portion of the incident was captured by a camera attached to a Taser. Chamberlain was standing in his underwear as the officers move in. He was hit with a taser than quickly shot with beans bags with two live rounds immediately following.
Officer Stephen Hart who was on the scene and was heard during a phone recording with the medical company saying “We gotta talk, n***er,” filed in his incident report that Chamberlain “went down” after the bean bags were fired.
“That means they had an opportunity to subdue him,” said Randolph McLaughlin, the family’s attorney at the time. “An EMS worker tells us there was no pause between the bean bags and the gun. It was bean bag, bean bag, gun.”
Officials justified the killing of Chamberlain by pointing out that he was swinging a knife after the police forcibly entered his apartment.
The Common Council released a statement last month about its decision to come to a resolution with the family.
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