Vol. 2, Issue 21: Open Data Projects Review
At Issue: Changes in Police Union Contract Sought
The city is coordinating with Justice Department investigators on changes being sought in contract negotiations with the Fraternal Order of Police to improve “discipline and accountability,” Corporation Counsel Steve Patton said last week during City Council budget hearings.
The proposed changes “follow very closely what was in the [Police Accountability] Task Force report,” Patton stated. In its April report, the mayor’s task force argued that existing collective bargaining agreements “create unnecessary barriers to identifying and addressing police misconduct” and called for eliminating provisions that:
Require affidavits from complainants and mandate that officers be informed of complainants’ names.
Give officers involved in shootings a 24-hour waiting period before being questioned by outside investigators, dictate interrogation procedures, and allow officers to amend statements that conflict with video evidence before they can be charged with making false statements.
Mandate the destruction of most disciplinary records after five years, bar investigations of older complaints, and prevent investigators from considering older complaints or those sustained but resulting in minor discipline.
“I’m just hoping that cooler heads prevail and we... stop protecting wrongdoing,” commented Ald. Anthony Beale (9th).
Also, during budget hearings last week, Superintendent Eddie Johnson stated that the department has hired consultants to develop a “fair, transparent, and objective methodology” to “ensure equity across the city” in the deployment of police officers. He also announced that he has convened an advisory panel on community policing.
The Chicago Sun-Times reported Sunday that while Mayor Emanuel has maintained that the philosophy of community policing permeates CPD, “community policing in Chicago has been withering in Chicago for years,” with funding steadily declining—and that the city’s federal grant applications have acknowledged that trend.
OPEN DATA PROJECTS: Out of a growing number of police accountability groups developing misconduct history databases, the Invisible Institute’s Citizens Police Data Project remains the most comprehensive, thanks to a long court battle that established such records as public information.
Other efforts highlighted by The Intercept last week include the New York Legal Aid Society’s Cop Accountability Project, which aggregates data from lawsuits and media reports but is available only to defense lawyers, and the Southern Coalition for Social Justice’s Open Data Policing NC, which compiles information from 25 million traffic stops in North Carolina since 2002.
Flex Your Rights, a civil liberties group focused on increasing constitutional literacy, is in the process of launching Open Police Complaints, a national database where individuals can upload their misconduct complaints.
Last week in Chicago, the Lucy Parsons Lab launched Open Oversight, which uses public and crowdsourced data to create a digital gallery of police officers to help the public file complaints. Currently, about a quarter of complaints in Chicago are dismissed because individuals cannot identify officers.
Screenshot from Open Oversight
The Invisible Institute recently created a Twitter bot that allows users to retrieve public information on the complaint histories of specific police officers. The organization is expanding the scope of its project with new data sources, including use-of-force records, tactical response reports, and a broader set of misconduct complaints recently released by CPD.
With additional contextual data regarding individual officers, The Intercept reports, “the ambition is to be able to follow problem officers through their careers, to see how patterns change as they move between units and commanders, and to explore the intricate networks of relationships that model the Chicago Police Department’s behavior.”
CONTINUING CASES: Jose Maysonet had his 1995 murder conviction vacated last Wednesday, marking the sixth overturned murder conviction based on investigations led by disgraced Chicago Detective Reynaldo Guevara. Maysonet maintained that he confessed only after being beaten by Guevara while chained to a wall; his confession was the sole evidence against him. The Cook County State’s Attorney moved to grant Maysonet a new trial following an investigation by its Conviction Integrity Unit.
Bernard Mims was released last Thursday—after spending twelve years in prison—when prosecutors dismissed his conviction for the October 2000 killing of an off-duty Cook County Jail officer. Mims’ attorney argued that he was bedridden from a recent shooting injury at the time of the killing. The only evidence linking Mims to the crime was the testimony of two eyewitnesses who identified him years later, according to attorney Kathleen Zellner.
Former Detective Dante Servin has filed for disability pay, claiming that he suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder as a result of his fatal shooting of Rekia Boyd in 2012. In a bizarre legal twist, Servin was found not guilty of involuntary manslaughter last year when Judge Dennis Porter ruled that he should have been charged with first-degree murder instead. Servin resigned earlier this year, just days before a hearing on a recommendation that he be fired for violating CPD’s use-of-force policy by firing into a crowd. To receive disability pay, Servin will have to demonstrate that he acted “in the performance of an act of duty.”
Dante Servin. Youtube
THE COST OF CRIMINALIZATION: Increases in funding for the criminal justice system in Illinois, driven by “mass incarceration and criminalization,” have totaled $83 billion over the past three decades, according to a report by Reinvest for Justice and the Northwest Side group Communities United.
Annual spending in Illinois is now approximately $4.5 billion higher than it was in 1983, the report states, arguing that these funds “could have instead been used to more effectively address the root causes of crime and meet critical community needs.”