Over the past weeks nation-wide protests over the police killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor have debates about police reform into national spotlight. Many are calling for a federal response, which seems doomed by partisan gridlock. Some are even pushing past reform and calling for defunding or abolition of the police. However, the national conversation is also creating renewed pushes for reforms on the local level.
The increased attention and demand for police reform has pushed forward efforts to create more accountability and civilian oversight of police in local jurisdictions. In some cases it is even pushing those reforms further, giving activists leeway to make greater demands for oversight than before.
In Chicago specifically, negotiations over some form of civilian oversight board for the police department has been in the works for years. Since the police shooting of Laquan McDonald nearly six years ago in 2014, and federal consent decree that came out of it, the city has been debating of procrastinating on the creation of some form of civilian oversight. Now with the national attention on police abuse, which features heavily in the old and recent history of Chicago Police Department, pushes for civilian oversight have gained more momentum and seem more urgent. Even in that context, local politics seems to be getting in the way of meaningful progress.
Despite the fact that Mayor Lightfoot headed the Police Accountability Taskforce in the wake of the McDonald shooting, she has not been able to establish the kind of civilian oversight it recommended since her election last year. In March of this year Chicago’s City Council agreed on an ordinance to establish a Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. The vote on that ordinance was postponed due to the coronavirus epidemic.
Now that agreement is coming under new scrutiny. Activists and several aldermen criticize the Commission plan for lacking the teeth of actual oversight or accountability. Earlier versions of the ordinance granted the commission the power to choose the police superintendent, and pass votes of no-confidence for superintendents to request their removal. Those powers were removed in the final proposal because the mayor disagreed with them.
The members of the proposed commission would also be handpicked by the mayor and city council. Local councils made up of civil rights activists and community members would nominate members, but the mayor’s office would have final say. That has become a non-starter for activists that have come to distrust the mayor and her dedication to police accountability. Many Chicagoans disapprove of the mayor Lightfoot’s handling of the protests for Black Lives, such as imposing curfew and allowing police to detain protester without charges.
A civilian oversight commission that is not directly elected by community members, and has only advisory powers when it comes to police policy or leadership is simply insufficient for the moment. In Lost Angeles there is a similar committee that is chosen solely by the mayor, and works closely with the LAPD to determine policy. It even gathers the data and analysis of that policy from the LAPD directly. Not only is that insufficient for mending the broken trust between Chicago neighborhoods and the CPD, but it has landed Los Angeles mayor, city council and police chief in their own crisis of community mistrust.
The historical protests against police violence, and resulting scrutiny of police abuse against protesters, has renewed a push for more comprehensive and empowered civilian oversight. Protesters and a small group of aldermen are now calling for a Civilian Police Accountability Council. Proposal’s for such a council were floated back in 2016, but they were rejected in two years later. Now the ordinance is being proposed again with 19 aldermen supporting it, and civilians rallying for their own aldermen to get on board.
The powers that CPAC would wield would give it more direct oversight and input into police reforms. These powers would go further than establishing trust between police and the communities they serve, but work to make measurable reforms in CPD. This moment reveals why it is necessary to root out the racism and violence that is endemic in police forces across America.
Appointing Police Leadership
Across the nation these protests have shown us how police leadership informs the culture of police departments. From Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo who has personally responded to protesters and spoken out against police violence, to NYPD Commissioner Dermot Shea who has defended such violence, it is clear that rank and file officers take their cues from these leaders. This is already an accepted fact, as can be seen whenever there is a major police scandal, police chiefs are always the first to resign.
Leadership can signal the difference between rewarding police who speak up about abuse, or encouraging police to stay silent and cover-up abuse. It also determines whether abusive police will stay in power or be removed. Reform must start from the top, and that won’t happen if the same political leaders that have tolerated generations of police violence continue to fill those positions.
Union Contracts
Perhaps one the most important revelations from these protests is the ways in which police union contracts enable abusive policing, protect cops from accountability or repercussions of abuse, and allow those police to keep working or be reinstated even after convictions and removal. Many of these contracts require that officer’s disciplinary records be withheld from the public or scrubbed entirely. They also help officers sue to be reinstated or transferred to other departments even if they’ve abused their power to commit sexual assault, make false arrests and murder civilians.
Under the CPAC ordinance, the Council would get final approval over police union contracts. This could address the main mechanism that keep dangerous cops on the street. It can also save the city hundreds of millions of dollars a year spent on settling officer misconduct suits. If the true goal of civilian oversight committees are to establish trust between police departments and the communities they serve, these committees must have a say in the union contracts that protect abusive police and funnel millions of dollars into abusive policing practices.
Disciplinary Procedures
Very simply neither the police nor the city, can be trusted to discipline the police for misconduct. It only ever reaches the judicial when egregious abuse comes under public scrutiny, usually only if it is filmed and that film is released to the public. We are now finding out just how many police have histories of misconduct, but no meaningful discipline, and then go on to murder more black civilians.
The city has protected police who were known to be torturing civilians, and covered up cases or videos of police misconduct to prevent the inevitable public outrage. In many cases even when these police are found to have made false arrests or planted evidence, the city holds up those prosecutions. The systems of regular discipline must be taken out of the hands of the police and put into a civilian board.
The CPAC would have the power to appoint members of a disciplinary police board. This would replace Chicago existing Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which is neither elected by the people nor has the power to enforce disciplinary action, only recommend it. Across the country there are a myriad of police oversight boards with different powers. Consistently the ones that have the power to discipline officers yield more trust within the community and fewer cases of police violence.
All of this in is addition to the powers to have real input on police policy, which could encourage de-escalation tactics and restorative justice, the direct eleciton by community members and input from activists on how to allocate spending on law enforcement, the CPAC ordinance has real potential to heal relations between police and Chicago communities. Moreover it has the power to make the police a more constructive force in the community. Most importantly, it can bring real justice to victims of police violence.
The more superficial proposal agreed upon by city council and Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability earlier this year still has more support, with 31 aldermen backing that plan. However, the push by protesters for substantive reform has not let up in the month since the protests began. Even while the nation grapples with the issue of policing nationally, activists and voters alike are all paying attention to what is happening on the local level.
Mayor Lightfoot and city hall are under pressure to make the long overdue reforms to the Chicago Police Department they have been promising. Beyond that, individual aldermen, who typically escape scrutiny when there is a scandal on the city-wide or federal level, are feeling the pressure as well. In March they may have been able to pass the GAPA plan and receive political points for it. But now citizens are more engaged, and they are demanding more.
It may be that CPAC has the momentum to pass, or we may see some sort of compromise between the two plans. Whatever the case, even the most local officials will be held to account for their response, or lack thereof, at the voting booth.
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