Aldermen on the city’s Finance Committee approved $15.5 million in taxpayer-funded legal settlements Wednesday to two families whose loved ones died after lawyers said police and Fire Department workers violated city policy.

An $8 million settlement to the family of Leonardo Guerrero, who died in 2022 in a Chicago Fire Department ambulance, passed with some minor opposition from aldermen. The Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office found that restraints that paramedics used in the ambulance — in addition to the effects of cocaine, alcohol and heart disease — contributed to his death and ruled it a homicide.

And they advanced a separate $7.5 million settlement to the family of Yvonne Lee-Wilson and Adelbert Wilson, who were killed by a driver being pursued by police in late February 2022

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