Vol. 2, Issue 55: Chicago's Criminal Justice Playbook
At Issue: Budget: COPA, Diversity, Overtime
Diversity in hiring, overtime abuse, police deployment, and full funding for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability were key issues raised during hearings on the Chicago Police Department’s 2018 budget. The city also announced increased spending on police reform measures.
Diversity: Whites accounted for 25 to 30 percent of police candidates since 2016 but made up 41 percent of new hires, according to a city report. Ald. Anthony Beale (9th) argued that background and credit checks, along with psychological exams, “systematically discriminate against minorities.”
Deployment: Supt. Eddie Johnson said a long-promised report on police deployment, expected last year, remains “in draft form.” South and West Side aldermen have long called for redeploying officers from low-crime districts. Johnson told aldermen he would “revisit” a 2012 decision to close three police stations.
Overtime: This year, police overtime was budgeted at $85 million but is projected to reach $170 million—the fifth consecutive year it has doubled the budgeted amount. Johnson pledged to reduce it, stating, “We are not going to continue to use overtime as a strategy.” He also promised tighter supervision to rein in overtime abuse recently flagged by the inspector general.
COPA: The new oversight agency received a $13.3 million budget—far short of the 1 percent of CPD’s $1.5 billion budget required by ordinance. The ordinance excludes grant funding, mainly from the federal government, but the proposed budget also excluded fringe benefits, noted Ald. Scott Waguespack (32nd). “It’s not what we agreed to last year,” he said. “They are shortchanging the agency on the front end.”
Interim administrator Patricia Banks said current funding is sufficient to hire necessary staff but that additional resources will be needed to meet goals for timely investigations and to acquire essential technology.
FUNDING FOR REFORM AND FTOS
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s budget proposal includes a $24 million increase for the police department to fund “enhanced training, reform implementation, officer wellness, and community policing.”
Reform advocates expressed concern that Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan—Emanuel’s supposed partner in negotiating a consent decree to oversee reform—was not consulted on the plans.
The bulk of the new expenditures—$17 million—will fund the addition of 100 new Field Training Officers (FTOs), as well as new staff for the community policing unit and the Office of Reform Management. The U.S. Justice Department’s January report on CPD sharply criticized the FTO program, finding that field training officers often provided probationary officers with guidance that contradicted department policies.
In January, the Chicago Tribune reported that two officers involved in fatal shootings—both of which resulted in multi-million dollar legal settlements—were being promoted to FTOs. One officer was later found to have given false testimony. A CPD spokesperson told the Tribune that union rules gave the department “no discretion over who wins the jobs” after testing and screening, and that disciplinary histories were only minimally considered.
“There have to be significant reforms in field training so that new officers are as prepared as possible in updated policing practices when they hit the streets,” said Walter Katz, deputy chief of staff for public safety, in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times.
ISSUES WITH BOND REFORM
Testifying before the Cook County Board last month on the need to expand pretrial services, Chief Judge Timothy Evans stated that the use of money bonds had dropped by about half and the jail population had decreased by 844 since his order requiring bonds to be set at affordable amounts went into effect in September.
“The new system is doing just what I had promised you it would do,” Evans said.
However, Injustice Watch reports wide disparities in how individual judges have set bond since the order. Judge Michael Clancy issued bonds in amounts higher than defendants could afford in 25 percent of the cases reviewed by Injustice Watch, while three other judges did so in only 2 percent of cases.
“The results seem to fall short of Evans’ declaration in July that ‘no one would be held pretrial based on inability to pay,’” the report noted.
The Chicago Community Bond Fund (CCBF) reported that its observers have found bond court judges “failing to effectively implement” Evans’ order, with unaffordable bonds still being issued. “We are deeply disappointed to see that nothing is being done to hold these judges accountable,” said Matt McLoughlin of CCBF.
In addition, the “overwhelming majority” of people detained because they couldn’t afford bond did not receive the seven-day review mandated by Evans’ order, according to CCBF. “Nothing has been done for the approximately 4,000 people currently locked up in Cook County Jail only because their bonds were set above what they could pay prior to the order going into effect,” McLoughlin said.
Evans testified that the number of bonds requiring home confinement has decreased from last year, but Max Suchan of CCBF said that does not include all pretrial conditions, such as curfew orders. He said his group’s observers have noted an increase in restrictive pretrial conditions.
Injustice Watch reported that Judge John Lyke ordered electronic monitoring or curfews in a third of the cases he reviewed, while the other three judges did so in about 20 percent of cases. In more than half of all cases where electronic monitoring was ordered, county pretrial services had not recommended it based on their risk assessments, Injustice Watch found.
Pretrial conditions such as electronic monitoring and 24-hour curfews “restrict the liberty of innocent people and even mimic the same harms as pretrial incarceration, causing loss of jobs, housing, access to medical care, and putting severe strain on social support networks and family members,” according to a new CCBF report.
“All these pretrial requirements, supervision, and monitoring basically amount to pretrial punishment before anyone has been convicted of a crime,” Suchan told the Chicago Reporter. “We think they are inappropriate and unjust in the vast majority of situations in which they are applied.”
Meanwhile, WBEZ reports that some judges routinely deny access to public defenders whenever a defendant posts bond, assuming that if a defendant can afford bond, they can afford a private attorney—even when a relative or friend has posted bond on their behalf.
A defendant “shouldn’t be making a choice between staying in jail and having his life destroyed [versus] having access to his constitutionally guaranteed lawyer,” Sharlyn Grace of the Chicago Appleseed Fund told WBEZ. “That’s not a constitutional choice.”
The practice was reduced after Evans advised judges to stop it in 2013, but some judges have continued to ignore the guidance, WBEZ reported.
KALVEN MOVES TO QUASH SUBPOENA
Journalist Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute has filed a motion to quash a subpoena issued on October 16 by attorneys for Officer Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with murder in the 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald.
Kalven cites his right under the Reporter’s Privilege Act not to divulge his sources, arguing that Van Dyke’s legal team has not met the law’s requirements to override that privilege. These requirements include specifying the information being sought and demonstrating its relevance to the case. Kalven added that he would oppose any effort by Van Dyke’s attorneys to override his privilege. The defense subpoena demands all “reports and/or information” Kalven possesses about the case. Kalven contends that the subpoena also violates broader legal guidelines barring “fishing expeditions.”
Kalven’s attorney dismissed the defense’s claim that he had jointly interviewed witnesses with the FBI as “outlandish” and untrue. He also pointed out that Judge Vincent Gaughan has already quashed similar defense subpoenas to the FBI and the Independent Police Review Authority seeking evidence of leaks.
Last month, Kalven discussed the subpoena and its background in an interview with Chicago Magazine.
GUEVARA ON THE STAND
On the second day of testimony in a hearing on a motion to suppress the confessions of two men convicted of murder 17 years ago, Detective Reynaldo Guevara continued to claim he did not remember anything about the case. However, when pressed, he denied punching the two men during their interrogation, The Chicago Tribune reports. Asked whether he had slapped one of the men, he stated he did not recall.
Since 2009, Guevara has invoked the Fifth Amendment in hearings concerning his cases, but that option was removed after prosecutors granted him immunity for his testimony in this hearing. Judge James Obbish ruled that prosecutors could use Guevara’s "more forthcoming" testimony from the original trial but said he would determine how much weight to give the decades-old statements.
Meanwhile, a man whose murder conviction was overturned has alleged that he paid Guevara $1,000 a month for protection of his drug business. Jose Maysonet claims Guevara was working alongside disgraced former Officer Joseph Miedzianowski. Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx continues to defend convictions based on Guevara’s investigations, though several murder convictions tied to his cases have already been overturned.
RECORD MISCONDUCT VERDICT
Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel assured aldermen during budget hearings that the city will appeal and overturn a record $44 million verdict, arguing that it involved “the purely private conduct of an off-duty police officer.”
Last month, a federal jury ruled that the city was responsible for failing to discipline Officer Patrick Kelly and for maintaining an inadequate early warning system to identify problem officers. The jury found that Kelly shot his friend, Michael LaPorta, in the head after a night of drinking, leaving LaPorta permanently disabled.
“Kelly, 36, has been found mentally unfit for duty twice, arrested twice, accused of beating a girlfriend, and treated for alcohol addiction,” The Chicago Tribune summarized in an April report on Kelly’s record. “He has been sued six times and has been the subject of more than two dozen investigations into his on- and off-duty conduct, including one in which he was found to have assaulted a female sergeant.”
Kelly was stripped of his police powers earlier this month after invoking the Fifth Amendment 31 times during testimony in LaPorta’s trial, The Tribune reported. He had been assigned to administrative duty last April after the initial Tribune article was published. Both the police department and the Independent Police Review Authority reportedly reopened their investigation into the shooting in February. Investigators had previously accepted Kelly’s claim that LaPorta had attempted suicide.
YOUTH OPPOSE POLICE ACADEMY
Young activists are holding impromptu speak-outs on CTA trains, along with teach-ins, canvassing, and call-ins to aldermen, to oppose Mayor Emanuel’s plan to spend $95 million on a new police and fire academy. Young people from West Garfield Park, where the facility is planned, are leading the organizing efforts, The Chicago Reader reports. They argue that “real safety in our communities” comes from investing in programs and services such as quality schools, healthcare, teen employment, childcare, and living wages.
OVERTIME PRACTICES AND ABUSIVE POLICING
CPD’s failure to monitor overtime use incentivizes abusive policing—particularly “trolling,” in which officers seeking overtime pay actively pursue traffic, disorderly conduct, or other violations at the end of a shift. Officers may also escalate situations that could have been dismissed at their discretion, leading to arrests that extend their hours, writes Sheila Bedi of Northwestern School of Law in The Chicago Reporter. It’s yet another example of “how CPD’s culture of corruption and lack of effective oversight targets Chicago’s Black and Brown communities through both over-policing and under-resourcing,” Bedi argues.
ON “CRIME GUNS”
According to the city’s second Gun Trace Report, 7,000 “crime guns” were recovered over the past four years. At Injustice Today, Stephanie Kollmann of Northwestern’s Children and Family Justice Center examines the language used in the report—and by Mayor Emanuel—and finds it “highly misleading.”
In 91 percent of cases where charges were brought, the report shows, the offense was not for using a gun to commit a violent crime but for illegal gun possession.
Emanuel consistently conflates licensing offenses with violent crimes to push for longer prison sentences for gun possession, Kollmann writes. She argues that legislation requiring state licensing for gun shops would be far more effective in curbing the flow of illegal guns than “endless criminal enhancements passed by painting ‘gun offenders’ with a racialized, punitive brush.” However, such legislation has not been a priority for the city.
In the Sun-Times, County Board President Toni Preckwinkle points out that Illinois requires licenses for barbers and nail salons—but not for gun shops.
DALEY TESTIMONY KEPT SECRET
The Illinois Appellate Court has ruled against a lawsuit by the Better Government Association seeking the release of former Mayor Richard M. Daley’s statement to a grand jury regarding a CPD investigation that shielded his nephew from criminal charges in a homicide case.
“The public’s right to know should trump grand jury secrecy” in cases where “high public officials are under scrutiny,” attorney Flint Taylor told the Sun-Times. Taylor represents the mother of David Koschmann, who died after an altercation with Daley’s nephew, Richard Vanecko, in 2004. He cited a special prosecutor’s report on former Cmdr. Jon Burge, which included detailed interview reports, as a precedent.
Following a Sun-Times investigation into the cover-up, a special prosecutor was appointed, and Vanecko pled guilty to manslaughter, serving 60 days in jail.
NO SPECIAL PROSECUTOR IN FLINT FARMER CASE
Chief Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. denied a petition by Flint Farmer’s father for a special prosecutor to investigate Farmer’s 2011 death. Martin noted that former and current State’s Attorneys Anita Alvarez and Kim Foxx, along with federal prosecutors, have declined to bring criminal charges against Officer Gildardo Sierra.
Last year, the Independent Police Review Authority revised an earlier ruling and found the shooting— in which Sierra stood over Farmer and emptied his gun into him—unjustified. Sierra claimed he mistook Farmer’s cellphone for a gun.