Vol. 2, Issue 64: Chicago's Criminal Justice Playbook
At Issue: Community Groups Join CPD Consent Decree
A coalition of community groups represented in two lawsuits against the Chicago Police Department signed a memorandum of agreement with the city and the Illinois attorney general (PDF) that grants them the right to monitor negotiations over a consent decree and go to court to enforce its provisions (Chicago Tribune).
The city and Attorney General Lisa Madigan are currently negotiating a consent decree covering use of force, supervision and promotions, accountability and oversight, community policing and impartial policing, crisis intervention, officer support, and data management, with an independent monitor reporting to a judge.
The community groups agreed to stay their lawsuits but can revive them if a consent decree is not reached by September 1. One lawsuit, filed by Black Lives Matter, the Chicago Urban League, and other groups, includes victims of excessive force by Chicago police. The other, filed by the ACLU and community groups, raises issues of disparate treatment of individuals with mental illness and disabilities.
“Our goals are for a robust consent decree to be entered by a court, and for that commitment to be enforced,” said Kathy Hunt Muse, attorney for the ACLU plaintiffs. “This agreement allows community groups to act as watchdogs during the long-term reform process.”
DEBATE OVER COMMUNITY OVERSIGHT COMMISSION
The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) released a report in support of the ordinance it has proposed to establish a Community Commission on Public Safety to oversee the police department, backed by elected councils in each of the city’s 22 police districts.
“This proposal seeks to increase public safety; foster and create trust and improve interactions between and among police officers and Chicago residents; ensure that police policies and reform plans reflect community values and are informed by residents’ experience; and establish an accountability system that operates independently and without bias,” according to the report (GAPA).
Activists were joined by six aldermen—Ricardo Muñoz (22nd), Chris Taliaferro (29th), Scott Waguespack (32nd), Deb Mell (33rd), James Cappleman (46th), and Ameya Pawar (47th)—at a City Hall press conference unveiling the report.
“The mayor endorsed this process two years ago,” Police Board President Lori Lightfoot said at the press conference. “Any effort to stall it and not let it see the light of day... will be met with extreme, extreme hostility. And it will be taken out on them in February of 2019” (Chicago Sun-Times).
Alderman Harry Osterman (48th), who is co-sponsoring the ordinance with Rod Sawyer (6th), stated that “the legislative side of this is going to play out in the full light of day” (Chicago Tribune).
Kevin Graham, president of the Fraternal Order of Police, called the proposal “chaos masquerading as reform” and said multiple layers of oversight have made policing in Chicago “almost impossible.”
Alderman Anthony Napolitano (41st), a former police officer whose ward is home to many officers, argued that the proposed ordinance would cause crime rates to “skyrocket” (Chicago Sun-Times).
“We’ve already created a department of reactive police officers [who] don’t want to do anything right now,” Napolitano said. “Now, you’re going to put civilians on a board who most likely don’t like the police and are going to look for everything they’re doing wrong as well as have the opportunity to fire our superintendent? This is probably one of the worst decisions we could be making.”
“I think it’s important that individual citizens feel they have a vote and have a way to affect the trajectory of policing in this city,” Lightfoot said.
ROSA TO CALL VOTE ON CPAC
Alderman Carlos Rosa plans to invoke City Council’s little-used Rule 41 to force a vote on his ordinance creating an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) to govern the police department. In a joint interview with Frank Chapman of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, Rosa stated that the goal is to get aldermen on the record (Fight Back News).
“Exposing the hand of aldermen, particularly on the highly impacted South Side and West,” is important because “our task is to change the political configuration within the City Council, if necessary, in order to get CPAC passed,” Chapman said.
Rosa called the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability’s (GAPA) proposal for a civilian commission a “watered-down bureaucratic solution” that “would not exist but for the struggle for CPAC.”
“The proposal takes many of the elements that we see in CPAC but attempts to jury-rig them around the existing failed bureaucracy,” Rosa said. “We know that this proposal will fail to address the root causes of the problem.”
LIGHTFOOT: “TIME IS WASTING”
While months pass negotiating a consent decree to establish judicial oversight for the Chicago Police Department (CPD), “time is wasting,” said Police Board President Lori Lightfoot in a speech to the City Club earlier this month (WGN).
“It’s time to get it done,” she stated, pointing to recommendations from the Justice Department and the mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force as blueprints. “It’s time to give the superintendent the tools he needs to really drive comprehensive change without further delay.”
While CPD “desperately needs” a new training academy, the current plan for a new facility in Austin is “ill-conceived,” she argued. “Putting this edifice to police in this high-crime, impoverished neighborhood, where relations between the police and community are fraught, without a clear plan for community engagement is a mistake” (Chicago Sun-Times).
She called on the city to develop “a comprehensive plan to address the drivers of violence.”
With legal settlements for police misconduct costing hundreds of millions of dollars, Lightfoot stated, “I have no confidence” that anyone is “asking on a systematic basis what is driving these costs.” A new early intervention system is being developed, but “in the interim, the work of identifying and intervening with problem officers needs to be done in whatever way possible, and it needs to be done now.”
The mayor’s task force, which Lightfoot chaired, recommended that until a fully automated, mandatory early intervention system can be developed, “CPD should create a manual intervention system which undertakes an immediate assessment of officer fitness for duty.” It further recommended that officers be identified for corrective supervision if they have more than ten civilian complaints, have been named in multiple lawsuits, or have a pattern of missing court (Police Accountability Task Force).
CPD “must not shrink from the responsibility of calling out those in its ranks who have brought dishonor and have forfeited the right to be police officers,” Lightfoot said.
QUINTONIO LEGRIER CASE: ATTORNEYS CHARGE TESTIMONY WAS CHANGED
Lawyers for the families of Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones are again seeking sanctions against city attorneys, alleging they induced a fire department paramedic to change his account of the location of LeGrier’s body after he and Jones were fatally shot on December 26, 2015 (Chicago Tribune).
Chicago Fire Department (CFD) Commander Joseph DiGiovanni told civilian investigators in two interviews in the weeks following the shooting that Jones’ body was found completely inside her first-floor apartment, and LeGrier’s body was halfway inside her apartment, with his feet just inside the outer doorway of the building. However, in a deposition given earlier this year, DiGiovanni stated that LeGrier’s lower body was “beyond the threshold.”
LeGrier’s position is a crucial detail in the case. A report by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), which concluded that Officer Robert Rialmo was unjustified in shooting LeGrier and Jones, noted that Rialmo was the only witness to claim LeGrier had advanced to the first step outside the porch and the only witness to claim LeGrier had swung the baseball bat he was holding. COPA stated that if LeGrier had not passed the threshold, he could not have swung the bat without hitting the doorframe or Jones.
“It’s not until [DiGiovanni] had conferred with the city’s lawyer that the bodies started moving outside,” said Basileios Foutris, attorney for the LeGrier estate. He filed a motion asking that DiGiovanni’s recent deposition be barred from the trial. A previous motion sought sanctions against city lawyers for questioning LeGrier’s mother about the circumstances of his birth.
WATTS VICTIMS DENIED CERTIFICATES OF INNOCENCE
Cook County Judge LeRoy Martin Jr. denied certificates of innocence to five men whose drug convictions were thrown out due to the involvement of corrupt former Sgt. Ronald Watts. The five had been sentenced to probation, and Martin held that state law requires “a term of imprisonment” to qualify for a certificate of innocence (Chicago Tribune).
Attorney Joshua Tepfer argued that the state statute’s definition of “imprisonment” should be broadly interpreted to include probation.
“Maybe the Appellate Court will reverse me, and it would probably be the first time that I’d be OK with being reversed by the Appellate Court,” Martin said during a hearing on March 15.
FEDERAL JUDGE BLASTS ATF STINGS
U.S. District Judge Ruben Castillo “reluctantly” declined to dismiss charges against eight defendants charged in controversial drug stash house stings conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) (Chicago Tribune).
Castillo stated that the stings, which targeted African Americans with criminal records, were “tinged with racial overtones.” However, he ruled that defense attorneys had failed to meet the burden of proof, noting that a statistical study conducted for the defense by a Columbia University law professor was poorly designed.
Castillo further remarked that the stings “generate great disrespect for law enforcement efforts” and must be viewed “through the lens of our country’s sad history with racism.” He added that the future of the operations is now “squarely within the discretion” of the U.S. Attorney’s Office (Chicago Sun-Times).
His ruling is the first to result from a joint hearing on ATF sting cases held in December by nine federal judges.
“Surely ATF agents can uncover real crime and arrest hard-core criminals without conjuring up phony drug houses and dangling the prospect of a big robbery payday in front of small-time offenders,” the Chicago Sun-Times editorial board wrote (Chicago Sun-Times).
The first of dozens of Chicago-area stash house sting defendants expected to receive reduced sentences entered a guilty plea to a single charge of conspiracy to commit robbery before U.S. District Judge Edmond Chang on Wednesday. Prosecutors agreed to vacate two drug conspiracy convictions. Leslie Mayfield, who has served nearly nine years of a 27-year sentence, is expected to be released soon (Chicago Tribune).
Mayfield was on parole and working a full-time job when he was lured into the sting through weeks of cajoling by an ATF informant (Chicago Tribune).
JUDGE, BURGE PROSECUTORS CLASH
Cook Countyc Judge William Hooks “blasted the conduct of special prosecutors” handling a torture case linked to Cmdr. Jon Burge, prompting special prosecutors to file a motion seeking Hooks’ recusal (Chicago Sun-Times).
Hooks criticized the special prosecutors for acting like defense lawyers for detectives who allegedly coerced a confession from Jackie Wilson, who was convicted alongside his brother Andrew for the 1982 murder of two Chicago police officers. The Illinois Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission ruled in 2015 that sufficient evidence of torture exists to merit a hearing on Wilson’s motion for a new trial.
Hooks also noted that one former special prosecutor later joined Burge’s defense team, stating, “That smelled really bad.”
“What began as a passing commentary about various positions taken by the Office of Special Prosecutor has now morphed into a protracted attack on the office itself and the integrity of various individuals who have served that office,” special prosecutor Michael O’Rourke wrote in the motion for recusal.
Wilson’s attorney, Flint Taylor, argued that the motion for recusal was a delaying tactic by the special prosecutor. “These men have stretched out this case for two years,” he said. “The special prosecutor is not supposed to be defending cops, he’s supposed to be dealing with justice.”
OFFICERS CHARGE SEX DISCRIMINATION
Two officers have filed separate lawsuits alleging sex discrimination in the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) Special Functions Division.
Lieutenant Allison Schloss, the first woman to command the department’s Marine and Helicopter Unit, alleged that she received differential treatment and unfair discipline from a supervisor who “did not want a woman in that post” (Chicago Tribune).
Ten-year veteran Maureen Bresnahan had the highest score on an aptitude test when she applied for the division’s elite (and all-male) bomb squad, but evaluators stated that she was “best suited for clerical, office” work—while two male officers with the same score, including one with a domestic violence arrest, were recommended for promotion (Chicago Tribune).
As of May 2016, only eight of 175 positions in the division were held by female officers, according to Schloss’s lawsuit.
MCCARTHY ANNOUNCES MAYORAL RUN
Former Superintendent Garry McCarthy announced that he will run against Mayor Rahm Emanuel in next year’s election, stating that he will confront the “revisionist history” of the shooting of Laquan McDonald while denying that his mayoral bid is motivated by revenge for his firing.
McCarthy “stood by his previous comments that City Hall sought to cover up the shooting by offering the McDonald family a $5 million settlement prior to a lawsuit being filed while refusing to release the video” (Chicago Tribune).
He stated that he is prepared to address the deep mistrust of police in African American communities, criticized the federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department (CPD), questioned whether a consent decree is the best approach, and decried the attitude that “we’re going to be tough on cops, because it’s politically expedient.”
$1.2 MILLION AWARDED IN EXCESSIVE FORCE LAWSUIT
A man who was 15 when he was shot while a passenger in a car fleeing a police stop was awarded $1.2 million in an excessive force lawsuit. Derquann Wilson was shot twice, in his hand and upper back. Another passenger was also hit.
Officer Sajit Walter testified that he fired because the vehicle came at him, but Wilson’s attorney accused him of lying, noting that there was no damage to the front of the vehicle, while a bullet pierced the car’s taillight (Chicago Sun-Times).
PUBLIC SAFETY INSPECTOR GENERAL LISTS PROJECTS
The Deputy Inspector for Public Safety’s office announced its first list of projects. The office—currently seeking a replacement for the deputy inspector general position—is examining the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) gang database, the department’s compliance with its video release policy, CPD’s grievance process, compliance with bodycam procedures, recruitment and training of school resource officers, and other topics, including the department’s Strategic Subject List, secondary employment policy, and record management system.
The office also announced the launch of a series of “community conversations,” focusing on the gang database and other policing issues. The first event will take place on Thursday, March 22, at 6 p.m. at Back of the Yards College Prep (2111 W. 47th). Additional discussions will cover school resource officers and the gang database on Monday, April 9, at 6 p.m. at Legler Library (115 S. Pulaski) and Wednesday, April 11, at Austin Library (5615 W. Race) (Chicago Sun-Times).
TYRONE WILLIAMS FREED ON BOND
Activist Tyrone Williams was released on $30,000 bond on Thursday, March 15, after spending one week in jail. The organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression was jailed for contempt by Judge Vincent Gaughan after uttering a single word—“what?”—in his courtroom. Williams was waiting for a pretrial hearing for Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is charged with murder in the 2014 fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald.
Gaughan scheduled an April 4 hearing for Williams’ sentencing.