Ferguson attorney: Brown family settlement $1.5 million

ST. LOUIS (AP) — The $1.5 million awarded this week to the parents of Michael Brown is the latest of several large settlements involving black suspects who were killed by police, but it's far from the largest.

A federal judge in St. Louis on Tuesday approved the settlement in a wrongful-death lawsuit filed by Michael Brown Sr. and Lezley McSpadden. Their 18-year-old son was unarmed on Aug. 9, 2014, when he was fatally shot by white officer Darren Wilson during a street confrontation in Ferguson, Mo.

The shooting launched months of protests and led to a U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found racial bias in Ferguson's police and court system. But a St. Louis County grand jury and the Justice Department declined to prosecute Wilson, who resigned in November 2014.

Brown's parents sued the city, former Police Chief Tom Jackson and Wilson in 2015, citing a police culture hostile to black residents and claiming Wilson used excessive force. Ferguson, Jackson and Wilson denied the allegations.

The case is among many in which huge settlements have been reached out of court, including many in which officers, like Wilson, were cleared of criminal wrongdoing.

U.S. District Judge E. Richard Webber did not release the amount of the settlement, citing unspecified safety concerns. But Ferguson City Attorney Apollo Carey said in an email today in response to an open-records request from The Associated Press that the city's insurance company paid out $1.5 million.