At Issue: Survivors of Police Brutality Sue Chicago

BY CURTIS BLACK

Six African American individuals and seven community organizations including Black Lives Matter have sued the City of Chicago, demanding court oversight for police reform ­– which Mayor Rahm Emanuel has sought to avoid.

“The City of Chicago has proven time and time again that it is incapable of ending it own regime of terror, brutality and discriminatory policing,” the lawsuit alleges, charging a “pattern and practice of excessive force…disparately and intentionally targets Black and Latino individuals.”

The first challenge for the plaintiffs is to win legal standing and class action certification. The city could oppose the lawsuit on those grounds, but even if it prevailed, that would do nothing to improve police relations with residents — and such a victory would come with a high political cost, one civil rights attorney told the Chicago Tribune.

The alternative for the city is to enter negotiations with the plaintiffs and hammer out a consent decree. “If [Emanuel] is serious about ending police civil rights abuses in Chicago, he will agree — as he already did before — to binding court oversight and enforcement,” said Craig Futterman, one of the attorneys filing the lawsuit.

Emanuel’s floor leader in the City Council, Ald. Patrick O’Connor, told the Chicago Sun-Times he’s concerned about the potential cost of the lawsuit.

But the lawsuit argues: “The city continues to pay out tens of millions of taxpayer dollars each year as a result of its pattern and practice of police brutality. The city has proven that it would rather pay for its officers’ continued use of excessive force than remedy the underlying problems giving rise to the abuses in the first place.”

Earlier this week, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan said her office was keeping open the option of filing a lawsuit against the city.

Opposition mounts to Emanuel plan

The new development came as Emanuel’s plan to negotiate a memorandum of agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice to guide police reform — with an independent monitor, but without judicial oversight — came in for strong criticism from key quarters.

Attorney General Madigan termed it “ludicrous” that the city would negotiate police reform “with a Justice Department that fundamentally does not agree with the need for constitutional policing,” and “unacceptable” that the city refuses to release the text of the agreement until it is final.

“The only way for Chicago to rebuild the broken trust between some of its citizens and the police is through a transparent reform process that includes community advocates who have pushed for reform for years,” Madigan wrote in the Chicago Tribune. “The city must negotiate with stakeholders to reach an agreement, not announce one after its details have been decided behind closed doors.”

She added: “Reforms must also be enforceable….The city can agree to a federal court process that avoids the unnecessary expense of legal wrangling and instead focuses on getting the right results.”

Emanuel refused to comment on Madigan’s objections.

In December 2015, Madigan requested the DOJ investigation that resulted in a report that concluded that a consent decree with judicial oversight was necessary to address excessive force and racial bias in the Chicago Police Department.

At a media event last week, Emanuel refused to answer questions about his plan — including a reporter’s question about whether he had considered partnering with community groups to obtain court oversight.

Later Corporation Counsel Ed Siskel did respond to the question, telling theChicago Sun-Times that given the DOJ’s current opposition to a consent decree, “We focused on…how to move forward quickly.” “Rather than spending a bunch of time in court with lawyers spending resources on litigating issues, we are putting those resources to implementing reform and having the process start immediately as soon as the agreement is finalized,” he said.

“This is not a process that’s going to be finished in a year,” Illinois ACLU spokesperson Ed Yohnka told View from the Ground. “This could take years and years and years. This is really hard work — as the DOJ report made clear. These problems didn’t happen overnight and they’re not going to be solved overnight.”

A consent decree overseen by a federal judge is “the only real path to police reform in Chicago,” said Karen Sheley, director of ACLU’s police practices project, calling Emanuel’s proposal “a non-starter for anyone committed to real reform of Chicago’s broken system of policing.” She noted that the mayor’s promises of reform “have not yielded results.”

Two years ago the ACLU negotiated a legal settlement including an independent monitor to report on reform of CPD’s stop-and-frisk program. The group’s Ohio chapter helped negotiate the Cincinnati Collaborative Agreement, under which community groups were party to a broad police reform settlement overseen by a federal judge.

Citing calls by reform advocates for public engagement and judicial oversight, the Chicago Tribune’s editorial board called on Emanuel to “stop, rewind, and do this right.”

Journalists sue for “heat list” details

The Chicago Sun-Times and independent journalists filed a lawsuit last weekdemanding that Chicago Police Department release information regarding the algorithm that determines who is named to the department’s Strategic Subject List, or “heat list.”

“We have learned too many times that a lack of transparency into the Chicago Police Department leads to unconstitutional policing and violations of civil rights,” said attorney Matthew Topic of Loevy & Loevy. “It’s crucial that the public know how these lists are generated and whether they result in discrimination and civil rights violations.”

Last month the Sun-Times reported that the list is far larger than previously revealed, encompassing everyone who’s been arrested, been a victim of a violent crime, or been included on CPD’s gang database.

There’s no oversight regarding how the list is compiled or how it’s used — including whether police and prosecutors, who may not understand how broad the list is, are using it to identify suspects and to make decisions about arrests and charges, said Stephanie Kollmann, policy director of Northwestern’s Children and Family Justice Center, who’s analyzed what’s known about the list.

She found that up to 85 percent of African American males aged 15 to 30 living in Chicago are on the list ­­– and she notes that the only known study of the list didn’t find it to be effective in predicting and disrupting violence.

Alvarez “bombshell”

When then-State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez agreed to vacate Alstory Simon’s murder conviction three years ago, she disregarded the findings of a yearlong investigation by her top assistants, the Chicago Tribune reports. Earlier, Simon’s repeated confessions had led to the release of death row inmate Anthony Porter, who’d been convicted for the same murders, days from his scheduled execution — and led then-Gov. George Ryan to declare a moratorium on the death penalty.

The Trib’s “bombshell” report “blows up” an effort by “police-friendly attorneys,” now representing Simon in a wrongful-conviction lawsuit, to use the case to tarnish the movement against wrongful convictions, Eric Zorn writes.

Police misconduct lawsuits continue

“Chicago’s costly record of police misconduct settlements showed no signs of tapering off in 2016,” when the city paid nearly $32 million for 187 misconduct lawsuits — and paid another $20 million to outside lawyers to litigate the cases, according to an analysis by the Chicago Reporter. Although the city’s inspector general has called for the creation of a risk assessment office, and the Justice Department urged the city to “review settlements and judgments on a broader scale to spot for trends, identify officers most frequently sued, and determine ways to reduce both the cost of the cases and the underlying officer misconduct,” the city has taken no steps to analyze or report on misconduct lawsuits, according to the Reporter.

Discipline delayed in Laquan McDonald coverup

A Police Board hearing officer announced that disciplinary hearings would be delayed — pending the conclusion of criminal proceedings against Officer Jason Van Dyke — for four officers who face firing for participating in an alleged coverup following the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald. Supt. Eddie Johnson suspended the officers and recommended they be fired last August, saying they’d filed false reports on the incident. On Monday, Johnson said the officers would be reinstated with pay but their police powers would be suspended.

County Jail freed of federal oversight

A federal judge lifted a 2010 consent decree aimed at correcting a range of abuses at Cook County Jail — including inadequate medical care, inadequate detainee safety, and excessive force — removing federal oversight for the first time since 1974. Sheriff Tom Dart said he’s poured millions of dollars into increased staffing and training and building a new processing center with medical and mental health treatment facilities. Jennifer Vollen-Katz, executive director of the John Howard Association, said an independent monitor is still needed to guard against backsliding.

Bail reform advances

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx announced Monday that prosecutors will recommend release without a cash bond for nonviolent, low-risk defendants. Last week Gov. Bruce Rauner signed the Bail Reform Act, specifying that cash bail is not necessary for people arrested for nonviolent misdemeanors or low-level felonies, and establishing the right to a rehearing on their bail when detainees can’t afford to pay it.

Vol. 2, Issue 45: Chicago’s Criminal Justice Playbook

The original VFTG newsletter, sent via Mailchimp on June 14, 2017, was headlined “Black Lives Matter Sues Chicago.”