A week after a task force assembled by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, D, released a scathing report pillorying his police department, the city is making a series of changes aimed at reforming the force.
Emanuel and Eddie Johnson, the police superintendent, said Thursday that the department would beef up investigations into misconduct, establish penalties for those officers found to have engaged in misconduct, and speed up internal inquiries.
They described these and other measures as steps needed to improve accountability and trust between the police and Chicago residents, which they called part of an ongoing effort toward reforming the department.
“Trust is at the heart of good policing, safe communities and is the central challenge facing Chicago today,” Johnson said in a statement. “These reforms are a down payment on restoring that trust, and build on the important progress we’ve made in recent months.”
Many of the changes announced Thursday focus on accountability, which the task force had said was effectively absent in the department. The police will set up an “early intervention system,” which the task force recommended to help deal with issues as early as possible; train specific officers to conduct internal probes; and work with other city agencies to review complaints as well as officers’ histories and, when needed, discipline “officers with histories of excessive force.”
Some of the things they announced are building on recent actions and announcements. Johnson has been holding meetings with community members to discuss improving relationships between officers and residents, something he will keep doing, while the police will continue with plans to roll out more Tasers and body cameras. The city also says it will improve training for 911 operators and dispatchers.
While Emanuel adopted many of the recommendations the task force made last week – his office said he was immediately implementing nearly a third of the group’s suggestions – the changes Thursday left key issues raised by the report for the future.
The task force had described the Independent Police Review Authority, which is meant to investigate misconduct on the police force, as “badly broken” and said it should be scrapped and replaced with a new civilian agency.
However, the changes announced by Emanuel said that, for now, this authority will remain in place, though it will adopt clearer penalties for misconduct and seek to form a board of community members. And Emanuel did not discuss whether the city would create an inspector general for public safety, as the task force suggested last week.
Lingering over all of this is the Justice Department’s ongoing investigation into the Chicago police force, the second-biggest local law enforcement agency in the country. This ongoing probe is looking at whether department violated the Constitution or federal law.
Emanuel said the city had spoken with the Justice Department about the task force’s recommendations for increased independent oversight of the police, talks that he said would continue while the city works to create a system for police discipline.
While the Justice Department would likely acknowledge in its report reforms the city makes during the investigation, these changes may not make a big difference to the conclusions reached by the federal inquiry, according to an official familiar with the investigation.
