When business and high emotions come into conflict in politics, emotions often win.

We seem headed that way in a proposed $1.5 million city settlement of a wrongful death lawsuit by the family of Lindani Myeni, an unarmed suspect shot and killed by police in a 2021 nighttime burglary call at a Nuuanu rental home.

Chief Joe Logan and the police union became incensed that the city was settling instead of fighting the lawsuit after an investigation by city Prosecutor Steve Alm cleared officers of wrongdoing.

At a City Council meeting Wednesday at Kapolei Hale, dozens of uniformed police attended to protest, while Logan and Alm testified against the deal and Mayor Rick Blangiardi chimed in with similar sentiments by telephone.

“There are times to settle and there are times to go to court,” said Logan. “Win or lose, we stand behind our police department.”

Said Robert Cavaco, president State of Hawaii Organization of Police Officers, “Providing a large payout to the family of man who seriously injured our officers will be viewed as offensive and degrading by your officers.”

The Council, which had preliminarily approved the settlement 8-1 in committee, postponed final action for further study.

Myeni, a 29-year-old South African, was a former professional rugby player who was found in his autopsy to suffer from Stage 3 chronic traumatic encephalopathy, a brain injury common in contact sports.

He displayed strange behavior that day, culminating with following a visiting couple to the Nuuanu home, entering uninvited and making bizarre statements.

He left without taking anything or harming anyone and offered apologies. When police arrived, things escalated rapidly as three officers, without identifying themselves, approached Myeni with guns drawn, flashlights in his face and demands that he get on the ground.

Instead, he attacked and was getting the better of the officers as they tried unsuccessfully to subdue him with Tasers and a nonlethal gunshot. Myeni was severely beating one of the officers, causing injuries that still disable him, when the other two fired the fatal gunshots.

Alm said Myeni should have known they were police, but he was heard on officers’ bodycams well into the altercation asking who they were. Officers didn’t say they were police until after the fatal shots.

Once under brutal attack, officers had little choice but to shoot Myeni after nonlethal means failed, and Alm was right to clear them of criminal wrongdoing.

But civil lawsuits, such as the one filed by attorney James Bickerton seeking $5 million or more on behalf of Myeni’s family, are different proceedings with different standards of proof.

The city lacks a clean case because of the officers’ failure to identify themselves. Who knows if it would have made a difference, but it gives plaintiffs a viable complaint.

The city Corporation Counsel’s office engaged in three years of review and mediation, including staging a mock trial, and concluded the $1.5 million settlement was a reasonable hedge again a jury awarding the family much more.

The emotional pleas by police for support are compelling, and it won’t be surprising if politicians heed them over city attorneys’ cold calculations of legal risk in this complex tragedy, but it could prove costly to taxpayers.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.