By Bill Ruthhart and Annie Sweeney
Chicago Tribune
April 21, 2016
CHICAGO -- Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to adopt a series of recommendations from his police reform task force, but so far is stopping short of a complete overhaul of the oversight and investigation of the Chicago Police Department until federal officials finish their probe.
On Thursday, the mayor will direct the Police Department to act on more than two dozen changes that range from holding more meetings with minority communities and conducting faster investigations into alleged police wrongdoing, to writing new guidelines for disciplining officers and training more 911 dispatchers and cops on how to handle mental health cases.
He'll also officially accept other changes the Police Department already has started to move on, including the use of more body cameras and Tasers along with a policy that dictates how CPD should release video of police-involved shootings.
The initial response is a way for Emanuel to start moving on last week's 190-page report issued by the Police Accountability Task Force and continue to address problems within CPD that U.S. Justice Department investigators are likely to kick up in their probe, which could conclude in costly, court-ordered reforms and oversight.
Emanuel scrambled to appoint the reform panel in December during the aftermath of the Laquan McDonald police shooting controversy. That shooting spurred widespread outrage after the mayor complied with a court order to release a video of white officer Jason Van Dyke shooting the black teenager 16 times in a Southwest Side street.
The mayor said he spent the weekend reading through the various proposals before deciding which ones he could take action on immediately.
"Within 41/2 work days of getting the report, the city is implementing about a third of their recommendations," Emanuel told the Chicago Tribune on Wednesday. "Some are about training, some are about new technology, some are about accountability, some are about discipline, but they are all built toward what I think are the building blocks of better trust and cooperation between the police department and the community.
"This is a down payment on putting us down the road to reform."
That down payment, however, does not include some of the task force's most substantial recommendations.
Emanuel did not commit to scrapping the Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian body that is charged with investigating accusations against officers but rarely has found any wrongdoing by them.
The mayor also chose not to create a reconciliation process — a formal acknowledgment of, and meetings on, the police department's history of racism — or create the position of deputy chief of diversity as the task force recommended.
And Emanuel did not start the process of creating an inspector general or community oversight board over the Police Department as his panel called for. He did leave the door open to those changes once Justice Department officials conclude their civil rights investigation into CPD's use of force.
Lori Lightfoot, who Emanuel appointed to lead the task force, said Wednesday she hadn't been briefed but, given a rundown of which recommendations the mayor had chosen to move on so far, characterized the steps as a start.
"It sounds like there are some steps that are being taken to address some of the recommendations and findings, which is a good thing," Lightfoot said. "But there is obviously much more that can be done."
Changes old and new
A draft news release of Emanuel's Thursday announcement shows the mayor agreeing to about 25 recommendations dealing with the key issues the city faces: persuading a doubtful public to trust officers, injecting transparency into the Police Department and creating more accountability into how police misconduct is investigated.
New police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the mayor's embrace of the changes signaled a new day at CPD.
"This whole reform, I've got to be quite honest, I am totally committed to getting this right," said Johnson, a longtime officer who rose through the ranks to top cop. "This is our moment in time to address a lot of things that have been wrong."
Emanuel already had directed CPD to start acting on some of the task force report changes, such as body camera expansions and "de-escalation training" to help officers defuse situations before turning to lethal force.
The mayor also already had announced he'd comply with another recommendation the task force made to expand Crisis Intervention Training — a 40-hour course that trains officers on helping people who are mentally ill or in extreme crisis. On Thursday, Emanuel is set to reiterate a pledge to have 30 percent of the department certified in that voluntary program by the end of 2017. Every shift in every district will have at least one officer on each shift with that training moving forward, Emanuel said.
Other task force recommendations approved by Emanuel jump off of existing programs or call for an overhaul of current policies. For example, body-worn cameras will be tried out in seven districts beginning June 1, but the program has been in existence since January 2015.
The mayor said he'd OK a recommendation to address bias and cultural differences through training. But in doing so, the mayor's office highlighted the city's existing "Bridging the Divide" program that for several months has brought Chicago youth and police officers together for conversations on race, bias and policing.
Emanuel also said City Hall would follow time-limit recommendations on investigations handled by the Police Department's Bureau of Internal Affairs, another idea that is not new.
Under the policy, investigations into severe matters would be limited to 45 days and less severe probes to 30 days, but Johnson noted in an interview with the Tribune that internal affairs had such investigation deadlines previously but they often weren't followed.
"There was a time limit but it was difficult," Johnson said. "We are already looking at increasing the number of members assigned. If we want to get this right, we have to get them the resources."
As for new concepts, Emanuel has agreed to create a hotline for officers to call to report misconduct, which Lightfoot called "great." The mayor also will back training sergeants to conduct internal investigations at the district level to help speed things up and a requirement that internal affairs investigators take detective training. Emanuel also has called for internal affairs interviews in felony cases to be recorded for the first time.
"That goes to our transparency," Johnson said. "We want people to know we are aboveboard."
'More to be done'
Some of the task force's more notable and specific recommendations were about race and the need to dissolve IPRA, two issues that will go mostly unaddressed by Emanuel for now.
The first section of the panel's report called for the city to face difficult, harsh truths about systemic racism in CPD. To do that, it suggested the creation of a deputy police chief for diversity and a reconciliation process between police and the community that already has been used in several other cities and is intended to address head-on deep and difficult issues. That would include the department acknowledging the decades of damage racism has caused, fact-finding, sharing of experiences and identifying changes.
Emanuel has not approved either of the race recommendations.
The mayor pointed to Johnson's community meetings as an effort to improve race relations. Asked if there was a need for a deputy chief of diversity, Emanuel would reiterate only that Johnson is African-American and grew up in the Cabrini Green public housing project and is surrounded by a diverse leadership team.
The task force called for the elimination of IPRA in favor of a Civilian Police Investigative Agency. The panel also suggested the creation of an Inspector General for Public Safety, whose office would independently audit and monitor CPD and the new police oversight system.
Emanuel will not back those recommendations initially but left the door open to the possibility. Instead, the mayor said he was moving forward with some interim steps the task force recommended for IPRA until the new investigative agency and inspector general offices were created.
That includes more community outreach from IPRA, a more aggressive pursuit of sworn affidavits from complainants so issues can be probed, and finishing a discipline matrix with a "fixed set of penalties for misconduct."
Emanuel also said he was committed to the concept of a "public safety auditor" but would not say how that position would be similar to, or different from, the inspector general recommendation. Without offering specifics, the mayor said he also backed the concept of the task force's idea of a community board to oversee the Police Department.
But the mayor said he agreed with the task force's broad brush strokes that the civilian oversight system of CPD must be reformed and have more transparency. How exactly it gets done, he said, will require input from Justice Department officials.
The mayor said the last thing he'd want to do is reconstruct police oversight only to have the Justice Department come along months later and order another revamp.
"We're going to make changes. They're going to be significant. They're going to be systematic. They're going to be structural," Emanuel said. "And when we do them, I want to get it right, do it once and set the rules of the road for the future in one fell swoop."
Lightfoot emphasized that the task force recommendations are "like a mosaic," an interconnected set of reforms designed to "address a wide range of issues" that ail the Police Department.
"I think it's an important step, and I don't want to be critical," Lightfoot said of Emanuel's initial set of directives. "But there is more to be done."
The mayor acknowledged as much.
"I told you I was not going to let the task force recommendations gather dust. We're off to the races in making the changes," Emanuel said. "But we're not done by any stretch of the imagination. ... It's the beginning of a process, not the end."
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