The family of 13-year-old Tamia Chappman, who was killed in 2019 in East Cleveland during a Cleveland Police pursuit, has settled its lawsuit with Cleveland for $4.8 million.
Officers were pursuing an alleged carjacker when that suspect struck and killed Chappman as she was walking from her school to the library. The driver of the stolen car, then 15-year-old D’Shaun McNear, was sentenced to 15 years in prison.
“I miss my daughter. We won’t ever get her back,” said Sherrie Chappman, Tamia’s mother during a press conference in Cleveland Monday. “I don’t want nobody else’s kids or elderly person [getting] hurt — doing these chases. I hope they stop.”
The lead officer in the pursuit, Christian Stipkovich, reported to police dispatch reaching speeds as high as 75 miles per hour on a street with a 35-mile-per-hour speed limit.
An investigation by the Office of Professional Standards used surveillance cameras along the route of the pursuit and an independent investigation conducted by East Side departments to determine the vehicles reached speeds of up to 90 miles per hour shortly before the crash.
“In this case, if the evidence is clear about anything, it’s clear the speed exceeded safe limits,” then-administrator of OPS Roger Smith said about the pursuit.
The city has not acknowledged any wrongdoing or policy violations in the chase and described the decision to settle the case with Chappman's family as "an extremely difficult one."
"The City had to consider all relevant factors prior to this outcome, including a potential trial and additional costs," said spokesperson Tyler Sinclair. "We want to be clear that there are no winners or losers in a case as tragic as this one and — while it is easy to point fingers one way or another — the fact remains that if the armed carjacker never committed that crime then Tamia would still be here with us today."
The OPS investigation recommended discipline for several Cleveland officers, including the driver of the lead car, Stipkovich, the supervisor overseeing the pursuit, Sgt. Michael Chapman, who was responsible for shutting it down if it became unsafe, and Lt. Gregory Farmer, who conducted the internal follow-up investigation despite being directly involved in oversight during the pursuit.
“The City of Cleveland didn’t follow its own policy, didn’t follow its own procedure, didn’t have common sense during the chase nor any decency when they were involved in it,” said the Chappman family’s lead attorney Stanley Jackson. “The supervisors didn’t do what they were supposed to do and the city of Cleveland didn’t hold any of them accountable.”
The police department, led by then-Chief Calvin Williams, and the Department of Public Safety, led by then-Director Karrie Howard, cleared nearly all the officers of wrongdoing. Only Dustin Miller and his partner, Felica Doss, received discipline. Miller was driving a patrol vehicle that joined the pursuit in progress without permission from a supervisor.
In a report on the investigation of the crash, the monitor overseeing the federal consent decree criticized the department for assigning Farmer to conduct the internal investigation.
“It is illogical to expect a police supervisor, personally involved in a fatal pursuit, to conduct an objective investigation and assessment of the incident,” the monitor wrote in a report released in December 2021.
