Vol. 2, Issue 46: Chicago's Criminal Justice Playbook
The Issue: Emanuel Defends Retreat On Consent Decree
In comments following last Wednesday’s City Council meeting, Mayor Rahm Emanuel defended his decision not to seek a consent decree providing judicial oversight for police reform. It was the first time Emanuel addressed the issue since a coalition of community groups filed a class-action lawsuit seeking a consent decree.
“We’re on the road to reform, even without a consent decree,” Emanuel said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the city have indicated they are considering filing a motion to dismiss the lawsuit.
Emanuel was responding to testimony before a City Council committee last Tuesday, June 27, by Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who said the mayor “unquestionably” should negotiate a consent decree with the state attorney general and local reform advocates. The independent monitor proposed by Emanuel under a Memorandum of Understanding (MOA) with the U.S. Justice Department would have “no enforcement powers,” Ferguson said.
An MOA “would only work in a city where everyone believed in the good faith and best efforts of everybody else,” Ferguson said. “That is not the city that we live in right now.”
The fact that the mayor’s proposal was not developed in consultation with community groups, the inspector general, or police accountability agencies “puts a cloud over its legitimacy,” Ferguson said.
On Thursday, Police Board President Lori Lightfoot joined voices calling for a more rigorous approach, describing Emanuel’s proposal as “fundamentally flawed.” “I think it sets the Chicago Police Department up for failure,” she said.
Like Ferguson, Lightfoot has reviewed the 70-page draft MOA sent by Emanuel to the Justice Department, which the city has refused to make public. She said it includes no specific list of reforms to be achieved, no funding commitments, and no commitment to change police union contracts.
Without specific benchmarks, the proposed independent monitor would have nothing by which to measure compliance, she said. She added that the MOA is silent on community oversight.
“Negotiating and drafting documents in secret—I thought we were over that,” she said.
In recent weeks, calls for negotiating a consent decree have come from Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle and Commissioner Jesús García, as well as from the editorial boards of The Chicago Tribune and The Chicago Sun-Times.
The mayor cited Baltimore as an example of the Trump administration backing out of a consent decree to reform a police department. However, the city and police department of Baltimore successfully asked a judge to block the Justice Department from exiting a consent decree that was announced in January, said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and an attorney in the lawsuit filed by community groups.
“If you look at Baltimore, you have a deeply troubled department with a long history of abuse, but what you see there is leadership, where city leaders are driving the process”—and insisting on judicial oversight, Futterman said.
Meanwhile, city attorneys filed a motion seeking more time to respond to the lawsuit filed by various community groups, including Black Lives Matter, which seeks a federal court consent decree to oversee police reform.
Lawyers said “they would need until Aug. 21 to file a motion to dismiss the lawsuit—and until Oct. 4 to file responses to the complaint,” The Sun-Times reported.
Futterman said it appears the city is hiring multiple outside law firms in preparation for opposing the lawsuit. The next hearing in the case is scheduled for July 6.
Futterman argued that for years “the mayor knowingly turned a blind eye while the department engaged in civil rights violations and continued to deny it, until he was forced by public pressure and court rulings to acknowledge it—and now this mayor says, ‘Trust me, I got this.’”
“If the mayor is serious about change, he will enter into a binding agreement overseen by a federal judge, with the communities most impacted at the table,” Futterman said. “The ball is in his court. He can say we welcome the agreement and we stand ready to move forward. Or he can put all the city’s resources into fighting this.”
Other lawsuits may be in the works.
FOP CONTRACTS EXPIRE
With the Chicago Police Department’s contract with the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) expiring on June 30, the Coalition for Accountability in Police Contracts (CAPC) called on Mayor Rahm Emanuel to push for contract changes that would remove obstacles to accountability. The group stated that it would urge the City Council to reject any agreements that failed to bring about “real and lasting change.”
CAPC, a coalition of 16 community and civic organizations—including Black Youth Project 100 and the Better Government Association—previously issued a list of 14 proposed changes to police contracts aimed at eliminating “provisions enabling the code of silence.” The recent U.S. Department of Justice investigation and the mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force identified similar issues.
Emanuel’s office stated that it would meet with the coalition in the coming weeks, DNAinfo reported.
City Bureau, the Invisible Institute, and In These Times have collaborated on an FOP Contract Tracker to annotate the FOP contract in plain English. In In These Times, the groups identified five “roadblocks to reform” in the current contract.
The contract with FOP Lodge 7 expired on Friday, but negotiations remain on hold until settlements are reached with the Illinois Police Benevolent and Protective Association (PBPA) bargaining units representing sergeants, lieutenants, and captains. Supervisors’ contracts expired last year.
The supervisors’ contracts generally set the model for the FOP contract, and most of the provisions that concern CAPC are also present in the PBPA contracts, said Karen Sheley of the ACLU.
The slow pace of negotiations suggests that the Emanuel administration is not prioritizing reform of contract provisions, CAPC spokesperson Timna Axel told View from the Ground. “The mayor has never been first to lead on any police reform measure,” she said. “He’s always had to be pushed into action by public pressure, and we feel the same thing is playing out here.”
The contracts will be settled in arbitration if negotiators fail to reach an agreement or if union members or the City Council decline to ratify the proposed settlement. “We expect there won’t be an agreement without arbitration, and our goal is to have the strongest possible arguments put forward in arbitration to remove these really harmful provisions,” Axel said.
OFFICERS INDICTED IN MCDONALD COVER-UP
Three Chicago police officers were indicted last week, charged with adhering to a “code of silence” following the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
Special Prosecutor Patricia Brown Holmes announced the indictment of Detective David March and Officers Thomas Gaffney and Joseph Walsh, charging them with conspiracy, obstruction of justice, and official misconduct. Their arraignment is scheduled for July 10.
Walsh was the partner of Officer Jason Van Dyke, who now faces murder charges in the incident. Gaffney was one of the first officers to respond to a call about McDonald, and March conducted the initial investigation into the shooting. Walsh resigned, and March retired after an investigation by the city inspector general recommended their termination. Gaffney was placed on unpaid leave following the indictment.
Holmes charged that the three coordinated efforts with Van Dyke and others to file false reports and failed to interview witnesses to the shooting.
“This indictment makes clear that it is unacceptable to obey an unofficial code of silence,” Holmes said at a press conference. Experts noted that this marks the first time CPD officers have been indicted for lying to cover up misconduct by a fellow officer.
Asked about department leadership that had approved the finding that McDonald’s shooting was justified, Holmes stated that the investigation remains ongoing.
Gaffney and other officers on the scene “conducted themselves with admirable restraint” until Van Dyke arrived, “jumped out of his car and immediately emptied his pistol into the teenager,” Steve Chapman commented in The Chicago Tribune. “Van Dyke’s fellow officers did their jobs well in dealing with McDonald, but apparently then chose to close ranks around the guy who did his job badly.”
Meanwhile, in a surprise development, Jason Van Dyke took the stand in a June 28 hearing on pretrial motions in his case—“uttering his first public words of substance since he was charged 19 months ago”—stating that he believed he would be fired if he did not answer questions from detectives and supervisors investigating McDonald’s shooting.
Retired Detective David March and retired Deputy Chief David McNaughton—both of whom left the force after an inspector general report recommended their termination—testified under grants of immunity that, while they expected Van Dyke to answer questions, they did not tell him he would be disciplined if he refused to cooperate.
Judge Vincent Gaughan ruled that prosecutors could use Van Dyke’s statements to March but not his statements to McNaughton.
Earlier, Gaughan denied defense motions seeking dismissal of first-degree murder charges against Van Dyke. Defense attorneys had argued that state law protects officers who use deadly force against suspects fleeing a “violent crime.”
IN THE NEWS
An attorney for former Detective Reynaldo Guevara stated that his client will continue to refuse to testify against allegations that he beat two suspects into confessing to a double murder, despite offers of immunity from state and federal prosecutors.
Meanwhile, a second man who was exonerated of murder charges after spending more than two decades in prison has filed a lawsuit against Guevara and former prosecutors John Dillon and Matthew Coghlan, alleging that they concealed evidence and coerced witnesses. This marks the second lawsuit this year naming the three men. Coghlan is now a Cook County judge.
A man who was severely injured after falling when he was shocked by a police Taser will receive $9.5 million from the city to settle a federal lawsuit. Additionally, the family of an 11-year-old killed in a collision with a vehicle during a high-speed chase involving Chicago police will receive $1.3 million in a legal settlement with the city.
The family of 37-year-old Quintec Locke, who was killed in a police shooting Saturday night on the West Side, has called for the expedited release of body camera footage from the incident. Eric Russell of the Tree of Life Justice League told The Chicago Sun-Times that “there are some witnesses that contradict the narrative that police put out” regarding an “armed confrontation.”
The city plans to allocate $95 million for a new training facility in West Garfield Park for police and fire academies, The Sun-Times reported. Inadequate facilities were among the many shortcomings in Chicago Police Department (CPD) training identified by a U.S. Department of Justice investigation earlier this year. Meanwhile, highlighting new cultural awareness training, Mayor Rahm Emanuel held a press event last week as police recruits visited the DuSable Museum of African American History.