Iowa City, Ia (AP) — An insurance company for the City of Cedar Rapids will pay $8 million to a Black motorist who was paralyzed after a police officer shot him during a 2016 traffic stop.
The payout will settle a long-running lawsuit brought by Jerime Mitchell over a shooting that had exposed tensions between Black residents and authorities in Iowa’s second-largest city.
Cedar Rapids had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in legal fees defending against the lawsuit and arguing that Officer Lucas Jones acted lawfully in shooting Mitchell in 2016.
The resolution avoids a trial that had been scheduled to begin Tuesday, as the nation awaits a verdict in the trial of a Minneapolis police officer charged with killing George Floyd.
