Last week, the Scottsdale City Council agreed to pay $4.25 million to the family of John Loxas, who was unarmed when Scottsdale Police Officer James Peters shot him in the head in February 2012, killing him instantly.
Loxas was the sixth man killed by Peters, who has since retired from the police department with an "accidental disability," and currently collects a monthly pension check of around $4,500.
See also:
-Scottsdale Agrees to Pay $4.25 Million Loxas Family
-Scottsdale Police Department Has Quite a Shooting Problem, ACLU Alleges
-James Peters, Scottsdale Cop With Six Kills, Approved for Retirement
Throw in the legal fees the city's already spent on the case, and that's a lot of money being tossed around.
City of Scottsdale documents show attorneys for Loxas' family had sought a settlement of $7.75 million, before both sides agreed to $4.45 million -- a figure that still has to be approved by the federal court handling the lawsuit filed on behalf of Loxas' family.
Police responded to Loxas' place on Valentine's Day 2012, after neighbors reported that he'd pointed a gun at them. Loxas answered the door when police arrived, holding his 7-month-old grandson in his arms.
Peters, who was one of several officers there, shot a rifle round into Loxas' forehead, killing him.
Loxas had weapons inside the house, including one police say was in reach, but he didn't actually have a weapon on him, and no other officer fired a shot.
That was the sixth fatal shooting Peters was involved in.
Loxas' daughter Alexandria said Peters had used her father as "target practice," and when ACLU of Arizona legal director Dan Pochoda called Peters a "bad cop," he corrected himself -- "It goes beyond the word 'bad,'" he said.
A few months after Peters' last shooting, he applied for that "accidental disability" retirement, which he was approved for. City officials couldn't tell us what that disability was due to privacy laws, but the timing was certainly convenient.
Our question for this morning: should a cop still get paid to retire while the city has to pay out more than $4 million for the man he killed? For further consideration, the City also agreed to a smaller settlement in 2009 to the family of another person shot by Peters, although it wasn't millions of dollars.
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