Who Polices the Police? Support for the Community’s Proposal for Oversight of the Chicago Police Department
Where are we now?
Police misconduct and violence, and the resulting mistrust by many citizens, particularly in Black and Latinx communities, has been an ongoing issue in Chicago and nationally. Chicago has made various attempts at police oversight since the 1970s, starting with the Office of Professional Standards in 1974, the Independent Police Review Authority in 2007, and now, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability since 2017 (following the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and subsequent mishandling of the investigation and release of information). The goal of Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) was to create a system of civilian oversight over the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and investigations into misconduct. Because the COPA Chief Administrator is appointed by the Mayor and has little power other than administrative, they can investigate allegations of excessive force and misconduct and create reports and recommend disciplinary action, but the Police Superintendent and the Police Board (also appointed by the Mayor) have the final say in all matters. For this reason, neither the Chief Administrator nor the voters have any legitimate, direct power to hold the Police Superintendent, the Police Board, or any individual employed by the CPD accountable.
Where are we going?
In 2016, a Police Accountability Task Force report recommended various reforms to mitigate some of the major harms caused by the Chicago Police Department – such as racist and violent tactics and harassment, ineffective de-escalation tactics, and more – including calling for the creation of civilian oversight of CPD. Proposals from grassroots organizations to City Council for a civilian-led commission have circulated in City Council for several years; in 2021, the two coalitions behind the most prominent proposals – Civilian Police Accountability Council (“CPAC”) and the Community Commission of the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (“GAPA”) – combined to create the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (“ECPS”) proposal, which emphasizes police accountability from a community perspective. ECPS was put together by two diverse coalitions comprised of multiple different community groups and has the support of several Alderpersons, youth-led activists, labor unions, and religious organizations.
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts has followed the progress of the communities’ joint proposal and is proud to support ECPS. The ECPS ordinance represents a significant departure from previous proposals, is community-led, and has the potential to significantly increase direct voter involvement in Chicago Police accountability efforts.
Although Mayor Lori Lightfoot previously campaigned on her support for the GAPA proposal, she withdrew that support in 2020 and has since proposed her own version of a Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability instead of supporting the ECPS ordinance. The Mayor’s proposal calls for the creation of a Community Commission to oversee the police, borrowing heavily from GAPA’s now-defunct proposal from 2019, but limits even the most minimal decision-making powers that proposal would have allowed voters and the to-be-created Commission. Unlike the community’s ECPS proposal, the Mayor’s proposal focuses on making recommendations to, not requirements of, the CPD. While the proposal increases voter involvement compared to our current system, it fails to give the direct voter oversight of COPA, the Police Board, the Superintendent, or the Commission itself that our communities need or deserve.
Who’s who?
The two current proposals for civilian oversight (ECPS and the Mayor’s ordinance) differ in a several significant ways, but also have some overlap. Both proposals create similar concepts of a District Council, Nominating Committee, the Commission structure, and gives the Commission some semblance of power to select or remove the head of COPA and choose candidates for the Police Superintendent and Police Board.
District Councils
The District Councils will be directly elected by voters in their police district under both proposals. District Council members must be 18 years old, a resident of the district, a registered voter, and may not be a member of the Commission.
Nominating Committee
The Commission Nominating Committee will be comprised of twenty-two members, one from each police district’s District Council. These individuals will oversee the nomination process for the Commission and cannot nominate their own members.
Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability
The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, the Mayor’s Proposal, will be composed of seven Commissioners with one President and one Vice President selected from within its membership. The Commissioners will serve four-year terms, although the initial terms will be staggered. The Commissioners will be chosen by a combination of the Nominating Committee, who must nominate four finalists for each vacancy, and the Mayor, who will appoint Commissioners based on those finalists. Under the Mayor’s proposal, nominees must be residents of Chicago, not current or recent employees of CPD, and must have experience either in public safety, public policy, or community support professions.
Under both proposals, the Commission would participate in the hiring and removal of the Police Superintendent, Police Board, and COPA Chief Administrator — but in very different ways. The Mayor’s Proposal gives power to the Commission to recommend candidates for Police Superintendent, Police Board, and COPA Chief Administrator; the Commission would also have the power to initiate a no-confidence vote for just cause and vote to recommend removal. This would trigger a vote in City Council. If the Commission and City Council voted to remove an individual in one of these positions, the Mayor would still have the choice of how to respond. The ECPS proposal, on the other hand, is much more collaborative in terms of hiring. When Superintendent, COPA Chief Administrator, or Police Board positions are vacant, the Commission’s general process will be to submit three candidates to the Mayor; the Mayor shall select one person who must then be confirmed by the City Council. The ECPS proposal creates a termination process in which the Mayor does not necessarily play a role: if two-thirds of the Commissioners vote to fire any of the officials in question and that decision is confirmed by majority votes in the Public Safety Committee and City Council, the person is fired. ECPS similarly calls for the Commission to have the final say over police department policy.
Another major difference between ECPS and the Mayor’s proposal is the addition of a referendum in 2022, in which voters will decide if they want the power to directly elect members of the Community Commission, giving the then-elected Commission power over the CPD budget and the power to appoint the aforementioned positions that they would otherwise only be able to nominate.
In contrast to the Mayor’s proposal, the ECPS ordinance would give voters the ability to hold Commission members directly accountable for their choice of leadership of and the budget decisions for CPD and related police accountability systems. To be effective, the Commission must have a budget – or at least the ability to submit budget requests to the City Council for policing alternatives. ECPS considers this in their proposal for a referendum on a directly elected Commission – if the referendum passes, the elected Commission will have direct control over the police budget. In doing so, the Commission members will have the “power of the purse” necessary to be effective decision-makers. It would also allow single-issue voting when it comes to police accountability, something that is much more difficult when electing City Council members or a Mayor who must also be competent in multiple other areas.
One of the goals of the Commission under the Mayor’s proposal is to ensure police resources are not used to address public health and safety issues that should be addressed by other professionals. This likely refers to the needs of individuals experiencing mental health crises or addiction but may also include those experiencing homelessness (prior to the pandemic the police regularly removed homeless encampments from sidewalks) and those allegedly committing “nonviolent” infractions. The Mayor’s proposal might take the first steps, but these goals should extend further to focus on reevaluating the police budget and instead improving funding for community-based supports. Community members trained in de-escalation tactics might be appropriate for some conflicts, but these services should be separate from the police department, and community-led support services – such as housing, food assistance, and more funding for schools – should be prioritized as preventative techniques. These goals are more likely to be achieved by the grassroots mission of the Empowering Communities for Public Safety (ECPS) proposal than by the Mayor’s. The Mayor’s proposal does not call for the allocation of funds to support services, community de-escalation training, or the hiring of other professionals in different fields, and does not give the Commission significant say over the how to allocate the City’s public safety budget. Removing the police from inappropriate situations is a start, but replacing them with CPD-affiliated professionals, without providing supportive community services, will leave many issues unaddressed and likely create more problems. Policy oversight and the ability to correctly identify when police should or should not be called is a necessary good, but with the Mayor’s proposal, police involvement in inappropriate situations is unlikely to change.
Unfortunately, under both ECPS and the Mayor’s proposals, certain crimes will disqualify an individual from membership. The Mayor’s proposal includes Class 4 Felonies and above, relating to distribution of controlled substances; the ECPS proposal disqualifies anyone who has “been convicted, by any court located in the United States, of any of the following crimes: bribery, embezzlement, extortion, perjury, or other corruption related offenses.” While policies that create new systems of felony disenfranchisement are always of concern, the Mayor’s proposal is much more troubling. Nationally and in Cook County specifically, Black and Latinx youth are arrested for drug-related offenses at much higher rates than white youth, although data shows they use and sell drugs at similar rates – with some suggestion that white youth rates are actually higher. Further, laws in Cook County allow distribution of controlled substances near a school or public housing to be considered a more serious issue, something that disproportionately affects residents of Chicago in areas where the majority of residents are Black.
Given the documented, racially disparate policing tactics employed against Black and Latinx Chicagoans, the Mayor’s proposal will exclude those who may have valuable personal insights as to what reforms are needed in policing – especially formerly-system-involved people who have experienced violence or unfair tactics during their arrests – as well to what interventions or services would have prevented them from contact with the system in the first place. Lawmakers should consider that excluding Chicagoans that have completed their assigned criminal legal sentence amounts to additional punishment beyond what was sentenced at conviction.
What’s next?
The Empowering Communities for Public Safety Proposal (ECPS) has been pending in the City Council’s Public Safety Committee since January and the Mayor’s proposal has been pending since May. This Friday, June 18, 2021, at 10 AM, the Public Safety Committee is expected to discuss the Mayor’s proposal and the ECPS proposal and decide which one should be recommended to the full City Council of adoption on June 23.
- Click here to send an email telling your Alderperson that you support the community’s Empowering Communities for Public Safety Ordinance for police oversight.
- Click here for more information on the ECPS ordinance from the supporting coalitions.
Contributor: Tessa Weil Greenberg is a rising 2L at Northwestern University Pritzker School of Law the incoming President of Chicago Appleseed’s student chapter, the Collaboration for Justice. Her interests include criminal justice and prison reform, race and poverty inequity in the legal system, and restorative justice.