Vol. 2, Issue 53: Chicago's Criminal Justice Playbook
At Issue: Madigan, Fairley Bow Out
The retirement of Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the impending resignation of Civilian Office of Police Accountability administrator Sharon Fairley to run for Madigan’s office will remove two key players from the police reform field.
Two weeks after filing a lawsuit seeking judicial oversight of the Chicago Police Department, Madigan reversed an earlier statement and announced she will not seek reelection. That leaves the future of the lawsuit—and her agreement with Mayor Rahm Emanuel to enter a consent decree—in the hands of her successor.
Madigan’s decision “highlights the critical importance that the communities and people most impacted by Chicago police violence have the power to negotiate the substance of any decree and the power to enforce it in court,” commented Craig Futterman, one of the lead attorneys in a parallel lawsuit filed by police abuse victims and community groups. Emanuel has so far refused to commit to including those groups in a consent decree.
The question now is whether the new state attorney general “will have a genuine and sustained commitment to ending police abuse in Chicago, much less the capacity and will to represent the people and communities most impacted by police violence,” Futterman said. (Fairley’s potential candidacy for attorney general could make that issue more prominent.)
In addition, Madigan’s decision “makes even more tenuous the proposition that any process led by a government official who may not be there to see it through will successfully address decades-long conditions that have allowed Chicago police to abuse African Americans and Latinos with impunity,” Futterman added.
Fairley has not yet made a public announcement, but ten days after launching COPA, she reportedly told Emanuel she intends to resign and run for Madigan’s office, according to City Hall sources cited by the Chicago Tribune. She leaves following the resignation of her chief of investigations, with 25 out of 141 authorized positions unfilled.
Fairley is serving as interim administrator while a selection process for the chief administrator is determined. Last year, the mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force recommended that a community oversight board be given that power. However, the mayor’s office says it has deferred to community groups that wanted a role in shaping an oversight board—a process that has now dragged on for over a year.
The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) issued a statement saying the group “has been meeting intensively for more than a year, engaging deeply with residents throughout Chicago,” and that “community residents have come a long way towards developing the recommendations the task force called for, but there is still more work to do.” It added, “We can’t rush this process” and “we hope the city will respect our process and the residents who have invested the time and effort to build a strong community oversight board.”
Emanuel said little about selecting Fairley’s replacement, the Tribune reported. “I’ve had a number of discussions with individuals about how to create a process,” he said.
On Facebook, Ald. David Moore (17th) commented: “GAPA has had more than enough time, and I am truly concerned about the time and lack of communication and transparency.... GAPA has had more than enough time to put a board in place and should have been prepared for this situation.”
BOND COURT REFORM “UNEVEN”
Results were “uneven” in the first week following the implementation of an order by Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans directing bond court judges to set bonds at affordable levels, according to observers from the Coalition to End Money Bond.
Over the first two days, Judge Michael Clancy set bonds higher than defendants could afford in 17 of 64 cases, said Sharlyn Grace of the Chicago Community Bond Fund. (The Chicago Reader and Injustice Watch have reports on the first day.)
Starting Wednesday, a second judge gave most people I-bonds or cash bonds they could afford, according to the coalition. However, on a single day, that judge ordered electronic monitoring for eight people and imposed 24-hour curfews on 13 others, ignoring recommendations from the court’s pretrial services for release without conditions. “Such conditions still punish people by restricting their liberty before they’ve been convicted of a crime,” Grace said.
The coalition called on Evans to grant a review for 4,000 Cook County Jail inmates whose bonds were set before his order went into effect.
Grace noted that the court is collecting data to evaluate the impact of the order and called for its public release.
TRAINING PROGRAM ANNOUNCED
Chicago police officials announced a timeline for two rounds of in-service training on the department’s new use-of-force policy, along with a significant expansion of in-service training over the next several years.
Meanwhile, grassroots activists launched a campaign opposing the construction of a new police and fire academy, while the Fraternal Order of Police filed a complaint alleging the department’s new force policy violates its contract.
Every CPD officer will complete a four-hour introductory training by Oct. 15, when the policy takes effect. Over the next year, officers will also be required to complete an eight-hour scenario-based instruction “that will give officers hands-on experience with the guidelines,” said Deputy Supt. Kevin Navarro.
Required annual in-service training will increase in the coming years, reaching 40 hours by 2021, he said. Topics will include de-escalation tactics, civilian and officer mental health issues, civil rights, and human rights.
The new training program comes nine months after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation found that CPD’s “pattern of unlawful conduct is in part due to deficiencies in CPD’s training.” The DOJ determined that the department “does not provide officers with adequate training,” leaving them “unprepared to police lawfully and effectively.”
Investigators found that only one out of six recent police academy graduates could correctly articulate the legal standard for use of force. The report also highlighted a “lack of in-service training,” stating that officers receive no instruction on critically important topics such as use of force and handling mental health crises. This gap, the DOJ found, “prevents officers from accepting and emulating a culture of constitutional and fair policing.” The report noted that “generally accepted police practices dictate at least 40 hours of continuing education per year.”
FOP COMPLAINS
The Fraternal Order of Police filed a complaint with the state labor board, alleging that CPD unilaterally implemented its new use-of-force policy without negotiation, violating the FOP contract. The union argued that the changes would impact disciplinary matters, the witness statements required from officers, and “just cause” issues.
A CPD spokesperson stated that the department met “numerous times” with the union to discuss the new policy.
FOP’s new administration took office in April. The first draft of the policy was released last November, followed by an extensive public comment period, with the final version issued in May. At that time, FOP President Kevin Graham said a new use-of-force policy was unnecessary.
The policy, which some reform advocates have criticized as inadequate, upholds “the sanctity of life,” mandates that force be “reasonable, necessary, and proportionate,” and restricts officers from firing at fleeing subjects unless they pose an imminent threat.
“People do not have a right to resist arrest,” Graham commented regarding the new policy in May.
DNAinfo Chicago reports that the FOP has also filed a complaint challenging the requirement that all officers use body cameras.
NEW ACADEMY OPPOSED
A coalition of twenty community groups has launched a campaign to oppose Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s plan to spend $95 million on a new training academy for the police and fire departments, calling for “schools for kids, not cops.”
“Chicago’s communities need resources – not criminalization,” said Page May of Assata’s Daughters in a press release. “We should be defunding and downsizing the Chicago Police Department and investing those funds in the vital resources our communities need.”
Debbie Southorn of the People’s Response Team told View From The Ground that there is little reason to believe additional training will lead to meaningful improvement. “The culture of policing is completely dominated by control, power, and racialized violence, and it’s not clear a few hours of training are going to change that – especially because we still don’t have comprehensive accountability.” She added that the new Civilian Office of Police Accountability “does not categorically change the way oversight is happening.”
“We want to see resources prioritized for life-affirming community services rather than for the city’s most violent department,” Southorn said.
The city plans to finance the new training facility through the sale of surplus property, including the existing police and fire academies. Earlier this month, the Chicago Development Commission authorized the acquisition of a 30-acre site in West Garfield for the project.
DOJ: NEW FACILITIES NEEDED
According to the Justice Department report, CPD’s training division “does not have sufficient personnel, equipment, or space to meet [the department’s] needs.” It also found that “CPD has inadequate training space,” and that “training facilities are in disrepair” and lack basic capacity.
“CPD must identify the resources necessary to [update its facilities] or obtain commitments from the city to provide what is needed,” the DOJ concluded. “CPD should be empowered with the resources and support it needs to make change in the best interest of the officers and the public they serve.”
The DOJ report cited “engrained deficiencies” in CPD’s training program, including a “longstanding failure to invest in the resources, facilities, staffing, and planning required to train a department of approximately 12,000 members, leaving officers unprepared to police effectively and lawfully.”
While implementation of training improvements “will be costly,” the report stated, “the effort is well worth it.”
A new facility is badly needed, said Northwestern University political scientist Wesley Skogan, who has studied community policing for years. “The old place is a wreck, it’s too small, the air conditioning keeps breaking down, and it doesn’t have technical capacity,” he said.
Skogan emphasized that “training is one of the principal means available” to shape the nature of policing. “You can’t do anything without training – and it takes time.”
His research on procedural justice training, provided to the entire force in 2012–13, found a significant impact on officers’ attitudes toward the community.
However, he warned that training “is not a silver bullet. If all you change is training, that’s not enough.”