Public safety isn’t CPD – it’s investing in better schools, creating more affordable housing, making sure we have mental health resources across our cities, and tackling other root causes of violence that will keep our communities safe. I will civilianize certain functions in the Police Department and commit to the Treatment Not Trauma campaign by instituting a non-police crisis response line. I will also invest in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention to tackle these issues head-on. My administration will invest in the individuals and organizations on the ground doing the work and will prioritize passing the Peace Book Ordinance and the Anjanette Young Ordinance.

I’m no stranger to doing this work and getting it across the finish line. In Springfield, I was the lead sponsor on the Ghost Guns Ban, which gets unserialized, 3D-printed guns off of our streets and helped get the Assault Weapons Ban passed this year. I also drafted and filed the State counterpart to the Peace Book ordinance, HB 5336, the P.E.A.C.E. Act – Public Empowerment and Community Engagement.

My plan calls for:

Investing in community intervention and preventative efforts: Chicago is home to some of the most innovative Community Violence Intervention efforts in the nation. But they are under-resourced. Even worse, they are unsupported , isolated and, ultimately, undermined by Mayor Lightfoot and her administration. The city needs a Deputy Mayor of Public Safety and an Office of Violence Reduction that are properly staffed, led by someone with violence intervention experience. Today those functions are poorly staffed and ineffective. The results are devastating – there is little community safety coordination, there is little trust between the community and the police, and violence intervention programs must compete for private foundation funding with little or no City support. In addition, because of the poor leadership and administration, almost 97 percent of the ARPA funds sent to Chicago for violence prevention are still sitting unused in the bank.

Developing a comprehensive Community Development initiative, overseen by the Mayor’s Office, to coordinate ALL CIty investment and development programs in order to develop more robust pathways to social and economic services to help community leaders connect young people to these opportunities.

Make violence reduction a goal and commit to measurable outcomes.

Properly staffing and resourcing the Mayor’s office to coordinate and financially support violence intervention efforts. In coordination with County and State governments, and with private philanthropy, scale and financially support community violence intervention to cover the 15 neighborhoods most impacted by violence.

Investing in re-entry efforts: former offenders face many barriers to successful re-entry into the community. Instead of seeing those who are formerly incarcerated as perpetual perpetrators of crime, I will work with the State and Federal Bureau of Prisons to improve the re-entry process.

Building stakeholder relationships. Maintain constructive relationships between all the actors involved in criminal justice. Coordination between CPD, the County, the State’s Attorney, the Sheriff, the Public Defender’s Office, the Illinois Department of Corrections, the federal Department of Justice, and the County Courts is at an all-time low. Mayor Lightfoot was absent from involvement in Springfield on the Safe-T Act, and other bills that impact our public safety. Worse, her combative approach has made it impossible to develop a whole-government strategy to reduce crime. We cannot move forward when elected officials opt to point fingers at each other rather than to work together. I will bring us together to improve public safety and to provide policymakers and the public with clear, accurate, and timely data.

Long-term efforts to address longstanding inequities must be at the front of the agenda. This is not just an ethical imperative. It is a requirement for sustaining lower levels of violence and crime across our city. My administration will lead the way in investing in communities and combating the root causes and social determinants of health. One of the metrics I will use to determine progress is the level of public and private investment that flows to communities that have lacked capital for too long.

It is important to note that we cannot become a safe city without at the same time moving to become a just one. We will promote economic opportunity, housing security, neighborhood stability and resources, better transportation options to employment, schools, services, and green and community spaces. We will invest in youth workforce development, education, and employment programs. We will enhance the capacity of community-based and also youth-led organizations. We will work tirelessly to attract investment from Chicago’s business and philanthropic leadership and build structural support for community-based organizations. For example, I will include an incubator and accelerator program within the city for community-based organizations just (as the private sector does for startups.

Municipal Restitution Commission – I will establish a commission that will investigate restitution for victims of historical redlining and racially motivated covenants.

Transparency, accountability, and milestones. Improving public safety means committing to produce outcomes. No mayor has been willing to set goals, and that leaves everyone feeling helpless. It does not have to be that way. I will set milestones that residents understand and support, as well as make data publicly available so that progress can be measured, and government can all be held accountable.

ABSOLUTELY NO part of my public safety plan concerns investment in the Chicago Police Department OR hiring additional police officers. I have introduced a comprehensive public safety plan called E.P.I.C., which focuses on a four-pronged approach to improving public safety. The plan is summarized as follows:

(1) Economic Prosperity – studies show that the biggest precondition to violence is a lack of resources, i.e., poverty. We would create programs to stimulate economic prosperity, starting by investing $1000 in a monthly prosperity stipend for 10,000 Chicagoans under the poverty line, creating 10,000 new homeowners, developing 10,000 vacant lots, and creating 10,000 affordable housing units per year. We will also create a city-funded apprenticeship program for youth aged 13-25, streamline business ownership and licensing, and lower fees, taxes, and other costs relevant to home and business ownership.

(2) Prevention – using holistic solutions to prevent crime from being attractive in the first place, starting at childhood through implementing universal 3K, ensuring every CPS school is fully funded and providing a well-rounded education regardless of what neighborhood it’s in, reopening mental and physical health facilities, and developing housing for homeless youth enrolled in CPS schools. We will also expand the unarmed force of social workers trained in de-escalation to non-violent 911 calls, especially those for mental health matters. A network of Peace Keepers will be created for the CTA, who will work with social workers hired to help anyone on a CTA bus or train who may be unhoused or mentally ill.

(3) Intervention – using a diversified social toolkit, we will divert non-violent 911 calls to a Crisis Assistance Response and Engagement (CARE) team made up of mental health clinicians, paramedics, social workers, community outreach workers, and other service providers. We will develop a new citywide Youth Intervention Department to deploy certified social work professionals to respond to youths who display certain warning signs. These Youth Interventionists will have priority in responding to youth-related matters, offsetting police involvement and disrupting the school-to-prison pipeline.

(4) CPD Reform – We will work to hold police officers accountable at all costs. $207 million will be diverted from the CPD budget for non-police response and prevention programs in the first year. Officers will be fined $5,000 for attempting to turn off or block a body camera. Officers must carry liability insurance for their own misconduct. There will be ZERO tolerance for officers who have any affiliation to hate groups.

(1) Enact a Day-One Plan to Get Smart and Serious About Crime
On my first day as mayor, I will enact reforms to make CPD more efficient, train and promote 200 new detectives from the existing rank and file, improve transit safety, and get illegal guns off our streets.

(2) Invest in our Youth and Communities
We start by doubling youth summer employment to over 60,000 jobs, targeting our most at-risk youth and building out a CPS Trauma Response Network.

(3) Expand Support for Victims and Survivors
For far too long our city has ignored victims and survivors of crime, especially those who’ve experienced domestic violence. That ends when I am mayor.

(4) Mental Health, Addiction Care & Housing for the Unhoused
Brandon Johnson will support Treatment Not Trauma; reopen shuttered mental health clinics; have health professionals, not police, respond to crisis calls; and support the Bring Chicago Home ordinance to house Chicago’s 65,000+ unhoused residents.

(5) Strengthen Police Accountability
I will work closely with the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to dismantle systemic racism, strongly enforce long-needed police accountability reforms, and evaluate department goals and performance.

Before answering the question, I would like to note that the Consent Decree requirements in all of its components IS investment in the Chicago Police Department which, as reflected below, I will meet and use as a point of departure for investment in neglected aspects of operations that are impairing the City’s ability to meet Consent Decree requirements at pace and at scale. Constitutional 21st century policing rooted in each community’s needs and sensitivities is the outcome of stronger adherence to the Consent Decree – the lens by which we invest in the communities themselves. I offer the following as examples:

– Full scale implementation department-wide of community policing, not as a tactic or program, but as a holistically-applied philosophy that is incorporated into all aspects of department operations. To do so in a way that addresses our crime epidemic irrespective of hiring more police – which is the premise of you question – means among other things,

Disbanding ineffectual and discredited citywide and special units;

Replacing sworn personnel in technical, administrative and management positions with civilians – CPD’s civilian personnel ranks among the lowest percentage in major police departments nationally;

Where such work requires some law enforcement training, instituting a police reserve unit constituted of former department members now working as firemen – we estimate there are over 400 of them – to be able to, among other things, staff programs or cut down backlogs for things such as the felony registry unit that has been revealed to be understaffed and negligently structured to require the returning citizens we must support as community assets to cross gang lines; thus, subjecting themselves to risk of harm. See https://bit.ly/3Z62LSx

Re-assign the above-referenced sworn personnel to districts and patrol which would better assure that all watches are properly staffed.

Enforce beat integrity.

Re-align beats. Presently, understaffing and a generational lag in beat realignment means that patrol officers are not situated where they are needed, available to respond to 911 calls – in the most recent full year statistics, upward of 40% of priority-coded 911 calls do not get a timely response. On one night this month, 911 call traffic for District 11 revealed no available cars/patrols being available to respond to multiple domestic violence calls. This is unacceptable.

Properly support detective functions with resources and, overtime, an internal crime lab as comparable departments have – NYPD, most notably – to curb the need to send forensic analysis of all sorts out to the State Police and other supporting law enforcement partners. TO the extent one might regard this as “investment”, it is, but not one that requires additional appropriations, but rather cutting waste, and prioritizing budgets and expenditures to align with strategy and need.

Introduce training curriculum that teaches officers the history, evolution and current social, economic and cultural attributes of the communities they are assigned to patrol.

Relatedly, and to improve diversity and cultural competencies, amend outdated background restrictions that disproportionately screen out BIPOC applicants – most particularly Black and brown men. The very characteristic that may best qualify them to patrol in community – their lived experience and personal knowledge of community and the stresses and dynamics with community and that situate them to build relationships and be trusted messengers for community – is used to disqualify them. That’s wrong.

– Fast-track critical requirements of the Consent Decree. While there is rightful attention on compliance with the terms of the Consent Decree as sequenced and scheduled, we must recognize that (i) it is a floor not a ceiling; (ii) technical requirements notwithstanding, it is aspirational and not merely a constricting check list – as was treated and complained of by Superintendent David Brown – but rather should be seen as a sword, not a shield from and for doing all that is necessary to improve the department in the provision of data-informed, community-collaborative constitutional policing; (iii) however detailed it is, it was never designed or intended as a comprehensive organizational reform of CPD – among other things, it does not mandate foundational and infrastructural investments and improvements needed for the department to become an effective law enforcement organization operating on a continuous improvement model that will sustain operational reforms that keep pace with best practices; (iv) key elements of the Consent Decree are designed and specifically intended to support officers in undertaking the stressful and skilled work of 21st century constitutional policing. As we return to the prompt, For these reasons, and among other things, I will:

Fast-track officer wellness components of the Consent Decree – the dimensions, requirements and needs for which are well-known and poorly implemented to date and in doing so heed the expert counsel and advice of NAMI Chicago Chief Executive Officer and long-time officer wellness and mental health adviser and advocate Alexa James, whose recommendations and support to CPD were largely shunned and neglected during the Lightfoot/David Brown administration;

Fast-track the implementation of a 10:1 patrol officer to sergeant ratio needed for effective direction, guidance, managerial oversight, mentoring, performance evaluation. In doing so, I will also ask a new Superintendent to direct best-practice performance evaluations throughout the department which can only be effectively done by stabilizing the officer to supervising sergeant relationship for an extended period – 24-30 months. The current regime of multiple “supervising” sergeants that shift constantly undermine the knowledge and understanding of the officers, their performance, their strengths and deficiencies in need of guidance and possibly further training and wellness. This will require a full commitment to the training of sergeants in areas historically neglected to make them skilled managers of people, not just processors of paper.

Make sure to the fullest extent possible at the current staffing levels and going forward that officers schedules are regular, and not overtime heavy – a major factor in both performance quality and officer health well-being, and the public’s safety, as has been reported in numerous studies nationally.

Fast-track implementation of early intervention systems utilizing best practice data-driven models and analysis drawing upon performance evaluations, and complaint/disciplinary system information to identify behavioral warning signs for intervention and redressment both for the public and for officer wellness.

– Reinstate the vision and mission-based structural reforms Interim Supt. Charlie Beck, formerly Chief of the Los Angeles Police Department responsible for implementation of reforms under a federal consent decree. Those structural reforms include a full reboot and staffing of the Office of Reform Management to be an enterprise-wide driver of a continuous improvement-based organization that will sustain the reforms as implemented and move beyond them as a matter of program and philosophy. Beck did two things during his 5-month span in Chicago – pushed officers back to districts and onto patrol (see #1 above) with community-based policing to be the philosophy, and built on the initial reform infrastructure based on the LA reform model that at its peak had close to 300 people – MANY civilian experts and professionals – to drive reform and improvement, as compared to the 25-30 so assigned during the Lightfoot/Brown leadership tenure. Those experts were not adequately valued, heard or supported, as reflected in the firing of its civilian head by David Brown in the fall of 2022.

– Create the technical infrastructure needed for data-driven policing strategy – a strategy even if not data-driven would be an improvement over where we have been – AND administrative and reform management of the department itself. The Office of Inspector General and its Public Safety Section has offered endless findings and recommendations pertaining to this. Among other things, problems publicly detailed or highlighted are poor data input and management, poor record-keeping, poor internal audit functions, poor budgeting practices, poor time and overtime management and tracking, and so on. This will be changed. Without good management and systems, there cannot be accountability needed to drive improvement and good outcomes for the denizens of the city – residents, businesses and visitors alike. Although none of this is written into and required by the Consent Decree, the technical requirements and aspiration of the Consent Decree cannot be achieved without them.

I will invest in our communities. Especially, communities with the highest levels of gun violence, unemployment, and poverty. I will require our young people graduating from schools to have a trade. I will reopen our mental health clinics and provide counselors for our young people.

I’m committed to making sure that every CPD employee, new and existing, will be thoroughly trained in implicit racial bias and violence de-escalation techniques. Additionally, as Mayor, I will make sure CPD is in full compliance with the federally mandated Consent Decree, which will make the department stronger and better equipped to serve the community. Coming into compliance with the consent decree is a top priority in our Safer-77 public safety plan. And as the only candidate in this race with experience in Consent Decree compliance for a major city Police Department, I understand how this should work. You can read the full plan here: www.kamformayor.com/4-star-agenda/public-safety.

A recent Independent Monitor report criticizes CPD for a vague understanding of what community policing is, stating: “We continue to be concerned about how the CPD understands and discerns the differences and nuances among community engagement, community partnerships, community relationships, community policing, and community service.”

The lack of understanding of what community policing is is painfully evident. We need to invest in real data and accountability for everything from traffic stop numbers to parking tickets. My administration will put an end to the practice of Black and Brown Chicagoans bearing the brunt of policing and penalization.

The elements of my approach lean into the historic consent decree governing police reforms in Chicago. However, for me, the consent decree is a floor not a ceiling to our aspirations for a modern police department.

In building a modern police force, I will focus on rebuilding the police department using its existing budget to add non-sworn officers and staff with skills better suited to addressing community problems including mental/behavioral calls, property and domestic issues, and non-criminal disputes such as social workers, violence interrupters, etc. These actions will include:

Investing in the next generation of command leadership. Some of the change CPD needs can come from within. Many young police supervisors, a group that reflects the diversity of our city, are eager to help build the kind of Department that works in and for a complicated multi-racial and multi-ethnic city like Chicago.

Transitioning mental health and certain other interventions to civilian teams that are appropriately trained for the purpose. Experts across the country agree, this provides more effective response to non-threatening incidents and increases departmental capacity to respond to violence.

Replacing a one-size-fits-all approach to policing so that the department properly responds to the different types of crises that occur in a big city like Chicago. I will insist that the Department build relationships of trust across our communities and develop strategies and tactics that fit the unique needs of all our communities.

Racial disparities have existed in policing for as long as municipal policing has existed. We must work to end this centuries-old institutionalized racism, and we must do so swiftly.

Within my first hundred days, I will start an audit of CPD to identify all areas in which there is racial disparity in its operations. The city will partner with non-profit and activist organizations as well as legal experts and other stakeholders to rewrite departmental policy top to bottom until the scourge of racism is eradicated.

A big part of police accountability is mandating transparency on police interactions with Chicagoans. We cannot end racial profiling without tracking racial profiling. My administration will make publicly available all arrest demographic data, traffic stop demographic data, and release CPD data to FOIA requests.

Strong correlation should be respected as raising and requiring immediate attention to a host of questions, the answers to which should be probed immediately. Under my administration, that follow-up and assessment should be citizen-informed, transparent and swift. The striking rise in traffic stops occurred precisely when CPD implemented the requirement of Incident Response Report(ing) (ISRs) pursuant to an agreement with the ACLU in connection with a racially disparate pattern of traditional street stop and frisk actions. Reportable ISR activity plummeted and traffic stops soared, raising the implication of stop and frisk simply shifting to a new form of police activity. The handoff of oversight of ISR analysis from an independent retired federal jurist to the Consent Decree Monitor has coincided with a near disappearance of public reporting and engagement. Why that has occurred is unclear. And it is also unclear why City Hall did not simply call on the demonstrated public-facing expertise and data infrastructure of the Office of Inspector General is unclear, given the fact that for years OIG – a publicly trusted, objective and neutral component of City government – has been publishing detailed ISR and Tactical Response Report data in a user-friendly interactive public-facing portal. Had the Lightfoot Administration done so, we would not be burning millions in taxpayer money on the fee for service-based Consent Decree Monitor and would have a true public tracking and accounting that would increase legitimacy.

That said, the data requires more rigorous analysis than generally occurs. Field activity patterns are signifiers but alone not dispositive. It needs to be correlated to geography, crime activity, field outcome data, and even socio-economic/census tract data to understand the degree to which the disparity exceeds what would be expected in relation to crime from area to area.

Racial disparities not explained by crime data have no place in policing. Data and pattern outliers raise questions and demand action. Questions undermine legitimacy and neither should be allowed to fester without rigorous analysis, made public, in an accessible fashion for civil society and advocacy groups to themselves analyze, and for the City Council and CCPSA to conduct hearings on, and for adverse findings to be transparently and accountability addressed. And that is what I will make sure is done.

We will bridge the gap between communities and the police that serve them. We will require additional training. Under my Administration everyone will be held accountable.

I will commit to holding City Council hearings on new surveillance technology. Additionally, my administration will commit to transparency overall in how the City manages information and shares information with the public.

I’ve worked to protect individual privacy in Springfield and would bring that same commitment to the Mayor’s Office. I was the sponsor of HB1765 to stop CPD from surveilling and running background checks on people who want to speak at CPD board meetings, which is now signed into law. I also filed HB1381 (the Right To Know Act) this year, which will require tech companies to inform individuals of personal information being shared and provide a data protection safety plan.

I am absolutely committed to implementing the consent decree and creating a police force dedicated to community support and safety. I do not support the current gang database and will commit to review of police data and records by the OIG or appropriate agencies followed by hearings on how data should be collected and analyzed. This includes review and hearings on the application and deployment of new technologies.

The flagrant disregard for Chicagoans’ privacy over several failed administrations must be reckoned with, including the dismantling of failed programs such as ShotSpotter. I commit to full transparency on this issue, and will ensure City Council hearings will be held on and and all new surveillance technology.

Chicago spends $9 million a year on ShotSpotter despite clear evidence it is unreliable and overly susceptible to human error. This expensive technology played a pivotal role in the police killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. That cannot happen again. As mayor, I will end the ShotSpotter contract and invest in new resources that go after illegal guns without physically stopping and frisking Chicagoans on the street. And any investments must be subject to hearings by City Council committee

This is an important question. Law enforcement is not immune from the allure of new technology that pervades our society and leads us in both the public and private sectors to plunge in without consequential thinking or analysis. We seldom do the analysis of consequences or cost-benefit at the front-end, and the courts generally are a few years behind in laying out the constitutional parameters for new surveillance and tracking technologies. The loser is the public we serve.

Additionally, your lead-in has multiple components but lands with personal privacy, with intro and the landing place not in complete alignment. For example, the critique of ShotSpotter has been about efficacy and cost-benefit, rather than privacy. Assuming this is a privacy question, that is a consideration that should be at the front end of any decision to employ new technology. This is especially the case for technology that is designed to capture personal information, or when combined with other information permits whole of information analysis that impacts personal privacy.

Surveillance technology generally should not be deployed in a way that results in the unpermitted piercing of citizen privacy. That said, secondary privacy effects are seldom the subject of front-end analysis and hearings. We have to structure front-end hearings where aspects of them might undermine the law enforcement benefits, but that is where a collaborative relationship with the City Council (and CCPSA) matter. Nevertheless, we need to lean strongly in the direction of front-end assessment before we deploy a new technology to scale. Additionally, once information is captured, public records requirements are implicated and need to be considered as well as balanced with privacy considerations.

There are ways to address all of these considerations through a cooperative relationship with City Council and by requiring thorough front-end analysis, including of privacy and record retention considerations. We also should employ focused pilots designed to generate data that better inform the decision of whether to take the implementation of a technology to enterprise scale. I support that more judicious approach.

ShotSpotter was not the subject of hearings despite independent analysis of its use elsewhere that raised burgeoning questions of efficacy and cost-benefit analysis. Adding to that, CPD obtained it through sole-source procurement processes and then renewed a multi-million dollar contract without any process, meaning governance and accountability issues have piled one on top of the other. It is unacceptable for this all to have occurred without hearings before the Public Safety Committee of the City Council.

Will I commit to my Administration being fully cooperative in any such hearings called? Yes. Will I “hold the hearings” is more complicated. I believe in an empowered City Council, perfected through a city charter, that is a co-equal branch of government being a check and balance on the executive – the Mayor’s Administration. Mayors should not call Council hearings. The Council should. And I support the Council doing so respecting ShotSpotter, and other technology and technology infrastructure features and questions raised above, as well as hearings on how data is stored and under what conditions it may be accessed and/or destroyed. The Mayor should cooperate in the Council conducting this aspect of the people’s business.

I support the constitution and constitutional policing. I will do whatever is necessary within the law to stop the violence in our city. I will consider holding a hearing on the issue of new surveillance technologies.

Yes, I will implement a citywide transparency policy. My administration will ensure that we have clear government accountability and transparency, and an empowered Inspector General who is given the autonomy and the charter to release findings accessibly. The people of Chicago deserve to receive findings from these investigations promptly and clearly. I will also get rid of the gang database and other similar lists that solely exist to control, not to make us safer.

As part of implementing the consent decree I will mandate transparency in how we handle and release public data and data on residents. Releasing public records is critical to maintaining public trust and information should be made available despite legal bases if the public is better served by their release.

As Mayor, I would require full transparency of ALL public records whenever it is possible to do so. The only situation in which records will be allowed to be withheld is in cases of: 1) third party personal privacy, especially in the case of civilians, 2) when doing such would impede an ongoing investigation, or 3) extreme cases of public safety. Additionally, city agencies would be held to extremely strict deadlines in responding to FOIA requests.

City agencies and the people who lead them shouldn’t hide behind the law when it comes to matters of public interest and public good. Yes, I commit to a citywide transparency policy. We must ensure that public institutions manage our public resources in a way that maximizes their potential to do good for the residents who need them.

Yes, transparency is an essential component of good governance. Chicagoans deserve to know what their government is working on for them, and what is not working at all. To the extent permissible by law, I will release public records if it is in the public interest to do so.

FOIA is widely abused and in need of an overhaul. The fact that something falls into an exemption category does not mean the exemption should be invoked; particularly when there is no reason to do so in the context of a specific request – and politics is not an applicable reason in that calculus. I have spoken to this question in other contexts, including notably in my campaign’s response to the candidate questionnaire from Reform for Illinois. Repeating some of the high points:

(1) I will create the position of Public Information Advocate and endow it with sufficient resources to make determinations about categories of routinely generated government records that are properly public record and delineate how they might best be made public in a manner that assures compliance with a host of privacy protection law – e.g., personal identifier information, HIPPA, education records, financial records, privacy statutes regarding other forms of personal information, as well as criteria concerning law enforcement sensitive information. That Public Information Advocate will be charged and empowered to issue periodic public assessments of the City’s performance on transparency which also will provide a basis for City Council subject matter hearings where indicated.

(2) Proceed under a philosophy of proactive transparency, making public that which is categorically deemed public. This will, over time, require significant technology investment, but in the near-term make proactive transparency a fundamental principle of a City-wide transparency policy.

(3) Respecting FOIA, and in accord with the philosophy of proactive transparency, apply a presumption of disclosure for record the Public Information Advocate finds to be a public record absent particular circumstance or condition. That will be reflected in the following:

– Making any material produced in response to an individual FOIA request publicly accessible to everyone. Presently, production in response to a single request is siloed bilaterally, generally requiring others to make requests for the same information. I will change that.

– In addition, I create a publicly searchable log of requests and responses with the rationale for denials part of the public record.

Yes, I support transparency and will require this in my Administration. I support FOIA and openness.

A recent report from the Independent Monitor showed that only 5% of Chicago’s consent decree is in full compliance and just 17% are secondarily compliant – that is not sufficient. Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown have systematically failed to prioritize compliance with the majority of mandated reforms.

CPD’s community policing program is half-baked at a time where our city is desperate for real solutions to crime and the gun violence epidemic that plagues us every day. I know that there is deep distrust that goes both ways with many Chicagoans and the police, and it’s indefensible that a Mayor who promised reform has delivered so little where it matters most–public safety. My public safety plan commits to making meaningful progress on the reforms outlined in the Consent Decree, and I’m the only candidate in this race who has experience helping a big city police department work through the requirements of a Department of Justice Consent Decree from my time in New Orleans. This is a top priority for my administration.

My administration will also ensure that CPD is accountable to a standard of conduct – people who exhibit bigotry, such as affiliation with the Proud Boys, will not be tolerated in my administration (as it has been with the current Mayor). I will make sure that people who affiliate with those ideologies are removed from positions of power promptly.

The City’s current police accountability mechanisms are ineffective. For one, the city under the current Mayor is not transparent. And for another, under the current Superintendent officers are not held accountable.

My Safety Plan Calls For:

Training – Deescalation, Trauma Informed Responses, Anti Bias Training

Investments in Mental Health and Wellness and Civilian Crises Responses
Investments in Community Violence Prevention, Intervention and Community Investments

Compliance with the Consent Decree

My public safety calls for fully staffing, but also, training, civilian crisis responders, investments in mental health and wellness, investments in violence prevention and in violence interruption.

The police accountability mechanisms in this city do not work. I am prepared to take on the rampant misconduct within CPD by instituting zero-tolerance policies for racism and discrimination, and by requiring CPD officers to carry their own liability insurance for their own misconduct.

Lacking. As mayor, I will work closely with the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to dismantle systemic racism, strongly enforce long-needed police accountability reforms, and evaluate department goals and performance. Specifically, this means:

• Enact Anjanette Young ordinance to end no-knock warrants
• Close Homan Square, fund reparations & Burge Torture Survivors Memorial
• End the ShotSpotter contract
• Erase the racist Gang Database
• Immediately enact the Federal Consent Decree
• Publish arrest and traffic stop demographic data
• Terminate officers affiliated with Oathkeepers and Proud Boys
• Collaborate with democratic CCPSA and District Councils
• Lift communities as senior partners in Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy (CAPS)

It is essential that we both uplift our police, and hold them accountable. I do not think that the way the department has been run under this administration has led to good outcomes for safety or for accountability. First off, we need to fire Superintendent Brown and promote new leadership from within the Department who has the respect of their fellow officers, knows our communities, and knows the force. We need to fully fund and empower the Office of Constitutional Policing not only to implement the consent decree but to be a true advocate for accountability and good, community driven police work.

The City’s police accountability mechanisms are a mixed bag that in the aggregate are in need of a restructure to work as we might hope.

I believe the Office of Inspector General in general and its Public Safety Section and Data Transparency Portal are excellent.

COPA has yet to get clear of the tainted legacy of its predecessor, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) and the even more troubled, sclerotic legacy of IPRA’s predecessor, the Office of Professional Standards (OPS). COPA’s ability to be effective as an investigative body for police shooting cases I believe is impaired in fact, appearance and reputation because its investigators do not have lead homicide investigator certifications from the State of Illinois. I also believe it suffers from an insufficiently dedicated focus on its core mission – investigation. It diverts too much of its resources and attention to policy analysis. Where there are policy implications arising from investigations of disciplinary matters, those should be referred to the Office of the Inspector General and/or the Community Commission for Public Safety Accountability (CCPSA).

CCPSA is too new to evaluate individually or in context. The Lightfoot Administration cynically slow-rolled and delayed the legislation for its creation and then slow-rolled the hiring of an Interim Executive Director and more seriously slow-rolled the appointment of Interim Commissioners.

The Chicago Police Board is an anachronistic body whose significance in the public’s understanding is grossly outsized relative to its function and value. Devised generations ago in response to an entirely different set of challenges in an entirely different cultural context, it provides limited value. It is primarily adjudicative but handles very few cases, takes too long to adjudicate them, does not operate from precedent or principle but rather approaches them on a case to case basis. A specialized component of the City’s Department of Administrative Hearings could serve that function. It has never inhabited its policy making authority despite a 50-year head start on the other components, which now has largely been rendered moot by OIG, COPA (but see above) and like CCPSA. And it lacks legitimacy in that it has long been a haven for friends of mayors. Moreover, it has long held its hearings IN the Public Safety Building and seldom if ever in the community further undermining its legitimacy.

As found by the Office of Inspector General recently, COPA does not work from a standardized set of criteria for its disciplinary recommendations. The same could and should be said for the Police Board which, as noted above, does not even operate from a precedent-oriented framework. The same criticism should be applied to CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs, and its Command Channel Review process through which disciplinary findings and recommendations are vetted on their way to final decision by the Superintendent.

Having been involved in the negotiations of the last bargaining round between the City and FOP 7, I am aware of the existence of a disciplinary matrix – analogous to the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines – whose implementation was suspended because of an arbitrators ruling that it should have been the subject of consultation and negotiation with the FOP. I would endeavor to close the loop on that. The implementation of a transparent, publicly disclosed and understood disciplinary matrix would bring a standards-based approach to disciplinary determinations, making them more transparent, consistent and fair from the perspective of officers for which, again referring to the Office of Inspector General’s work, face a byzantine, seemingly standardless disciplinary investigative system with numerous tracks.

I would work towards something that was known to be needed but never acted on – a 2.0 version of the current police accountability and investigatory architecture to clarify roles, render them connected and complementary rather than overlapping and competing, reduce bodies and functions that are not needed, and bring greater simplicity and transparency to the whole.

We all can do better. I will hold police leadership accountable for dealing with misconduct.

I have publicly supported the initiative to build the Burge Torture Survivors memorial for years and will continue that advocacy as Mayor. I’ve also said that the $5.5M and other “benefits” offered are not enough to repair the damage inflicted by state violence on victims of these tragedies. As Mayor, I will do more than just declare support for these communities; that’s the bare minimum. My administration will work to secure funding and resources to provide true reparations for victims of state-sanctioned violence at the hands of CPD. We will also end qualified immunity and protection of these people who have held our communities hostage.

In 2015, I endorsed an Ordinance calling for reparations for victims of police torture and for Burge victims.

The package provided:

A full and public mayoral apology;

$100,000 payments to each of the approximately 60 living police torture survivors who had not received compensation from lawsuits;

A center where victims of police violence could meet and receive professional counseling;

Teaching the history of police torture to students in the Chicago public schools;

Job training and free public college education for torture survivors and their families;

A public memorial dedicated to the survivors of police torture.

In June of 2019, Chicago unveiled its proposed memorial [for] those tortured by Burge and officers under his command. Mayor Lori Lightfoot has yet to commit any funds for the memorial’s construction.Chicago could find $2.25 million for the memorial. It’s time to build the memorial.

My plan also calls for full transparency with regard to police misconduct settlements. I believe that the police should be held accountable, which is why I am committed to speedy compliance with the consent decree.

The legacies of monsters such as Jon Burge are far from over, with people alive today still living in the shadow of the torture they went through. From beatings to electric shock devices, these heinous acts need to be fully accounted for. That means further reparations for all victims of terror once hidden behind the badge.

More than 7,000 Chicagoans have been held at an off-the-books warehouse in Homan Square, where they often faced torture and other unconstitutional treatment. We must ensure that the legacy of Jon Burge remains firmly in the past instead of stretching into the future. As mayor, I will close the Homan Square facility, support expansion and professional development for Reparations Won curriculum in Chicago Public Schools, explore plans for reparations for survivors of police torture, and call for full funding and construction of the Burge Torture Survivors Memorial.

Officers who commit these crimes – and that is what they are – need to be held accountable, with firing, loss of pension, and civil liability payments on the table. We also know that we can’t act after the fact. We need to proactive in shaping the recruitment, examination and training processes to ensure that we have a police force which looks like – and more importantly, understands – our city. Thirdly, we need to rapidly expand alternative responses to policing. Over 50% of 911 calls are for non-violent incidents, and by replacing police with social workers and other alternative responses when appropriate we can reduce the risk of incidents while freeing up police to handle the most pressing violent incidents.

As you probably know, in addition to police reform, which I believe addresses the structural deficiencies that allowed those scandals to happen, I also fought Mayor Lightfoot for a Reparations Committee. I only succeeded, due to her opposition, in getting a sub-committee she ensured would be far less effective.

I am a firm believer we need reparations in Chicago for the historic and systemic injustices that have not only caused great suffering and injustice, but also harmed the growth, prosperity and happiness of various peoples.

I want the victims and descendants of victims to be compensated, but I want broader reparations for all people who have suffered from police injustice in the forms of scholarships, job training programs, and a variety of low- and no-interest rate loans for everything from business development to mortgages.

Individual cases obviously must always be met with commensurate individual redress. However, the Burge, Watts, and Guevara scandals – and those are just the ones most recently known – have many victims and are the product not merely of bad apples, but failed systems. Where the City has utterly failed is in learning from those scandals and instituting the reforms needed to prevent them in the future – reforms that are desperately needed to redress abuses of power most significantly impacting Black and Brown communities. There is a public administration best practice for that for which the City of Chicago and the current Administration has abdicated its commitment and responsibility – risk management. Mayor Lightfoot as a candidate stated publicly, repeatedly, that her first order of business would be to create the position of Chief Risk Officer. And she did so, recruiting, as the first Chief Risk Officer, someone with a national standing in the field. Yet, she then didn’t provide her the authority or resources needed to do the job, resulting in her departure after little more than a year – with the position then being left unfilled for more than half a year and then operated as nearly invisible.

Every civil rights case filed or threatened against the city should receive scrutiny and analysis for systems and standards vulnerabilities that can and should be rectified to prevent future infractions. Complaint and claim histories should be the subject of routine link analysis to determine patterns suggestive of the development of a corrupt street operation involving multiple officers, as was manifestly apparent in cases involving Ronald Wattsand John Burge. The point is that effective use of data and simple algorithms and regression analysis could prevent scandals of this nature and scale from metastasizing and running rampant for months to years. We don’t do that. We must. And for that every part of the accountability system must contribute to a infrastructure of holistic reform and risk management.

We will be fully transparent and hold everyone accountable for their actions.

It’s a top priority of my administration to change the culture of silence and hold people who engage in that culture accountable for their actions. I was one of the authors of the SAFE-T Act that recently passed, and I’m incredibly proud of that work. The SAFE-T Act includes components that punish officers for corroborating and lying on reports. It also includes provisions that prevent certain types of collaboration and tightens rules on body-worn camera reviews.

My commitment is to rebuild the police department and creating a police force dedicated to community support and safety. Implementing the consent decree means holding officers accountable for their actions and in following the rules and procedures. I will ensure that the new Police Superintendent is absolutely committed to the same goal and creating procedures to implement that accountability. Diversifying the staff of the police department will be critical to breaking down the old culture and make it safe for good, responsible officers to come forward.

Chicago’s public safety crisis is as much of a failure in management as it is a failure in policy. That failure starts at the top with the Mayor. Superintendent Brown is a manifestation of that problem, but he isn’t the cause.

This management failure is obvious with the continuing liability exposure from police misconduct and unconstitutional practices. To be sure, many of the practices prompting these settlements pre-date the current administration. But they have persisted and grown during her term with NO clear response from the Mayor or the Superintendent.

The issue of police perjury – “testilying” – is a major issue that must be addressed immediately. It is crucial to enforce strict consequences for lying, limit opportunities to lie in the first place, and heavily push a shift in culture and transparency within the CPD. Whistleblowers are an important resource to these changes, and we will make changes to ensure there are no retaliatory consequences for doing such. We will work with non-profit and activist organizations and other stakeholders to develop comprehensive reforms of this system immediately.

We must immediately enact the federal consent decree, for which the current mayoral administration has missed every meaningful deadline for implementation. Meeting the requirements of the consent decree more quickly will drastically reduce police misconduct. I am also committed to working collaboratively with the CCPSA and district councils to better shape CPD policy, establish goals, and better select police leadership to reflect the public safety needs and values of our ommunities. And as that leadership is implemented, create and enforce consquences for perjury from all parties involved.

We need to ensure our officers leverage the technology of body cameras and dash cameras fully and completely for each shift. We need regular audits to ensure compliance and create a culture focused on serving the people instead of a code of silence.

Again, I’ve already begun to address this. My police reform includes provisions about the leeway police are given, being allowed to read other accounts of an incident before making their reports. But we also need to add true consequences to this historical problem in policing.

Police have cost the city hundreds of millions of dollars in abuse and misconduct settlements, and have brought untold amounts of misery and injustice to victims of abuse.

Police who lie should face consequences that are swift and severe, including firing and loss of pension.

Honesty, integrity and veracity is fundamental to credibility. An officer who lies whether orally or on paper, whether by statement or material omission, forever relinquishes his credibility, Credibility is a fundamental qualification for being a sworn law enforcement officer. An officer who loses it therefore warrants, in fact requires, termination. An officer who permits the untruthful acts or assertions of a fellow officer to proceed unchecked, is abetting a lie and becomes institutionally complicit in those lies and similarly should be terminated.

Our current Police Superintendent, who was disciplined for lying early in his career in Dallas, does not hold such a view. Nor apparently does the Mayor, which is ironic given her background as a federal prosecutor, head of OPS, a precursor to COPA, and as President of the Police Board. I will hire and hold to account a Superintendent for the enforcement of Rule 14.

I will also direct all relevant city components to work coordinately towards the creation of some form of so-called Brady log so that the City is meeting its constitutional obligations in its participation and contribution to the criminal justice system that depends on truth and accuracy for its legitimacy and ultimate effectiveness.

Thank you for the solicitation, the opportunity to share some of my views on these critically important issues and for the continuing work of the Chicago Council of Lawyers and Chicago Appleseed.

This requires leadership. I will make sure that we have a CPD that is responsive to the community. I will bring back CAPS and beat meetings with the community and all police leaders. We will do whatever it takes to have opens within the Department.