Activist groups have asked the court-appointed monitor overseeing reforms to the Chicago Police Department to investigate and report on allegations that officers abused protesters who flooded the streets last weekend to decry police mistreatment of African Americans.
The groups also want the monitor, former federal prosecutor Maggie Hickey, to require the city to discourage officers from arresting protesters. The letter to Hickey, who is overseeing a consent decree that mandates broad changes to the troubled police force, also complains of protesters being detained without contact with lawyers and asks her to establish a process for attorneys to communicate with arrested clients.
In the letter sent Thursday, Sheila Bedi, a Northwestern University law professor who is among the attorneys for the groups, wrote: “Clearly, the consent decree entirely failed to provide any meaningful protection to the people of Chicago against CPD violence during the recent protests.”
“If the independent monitoring team fails to take decisive, urgent action at this moment, the consent decree will be a historic failure,” the letter states.
A hearing by telephone in the federal court case is scheduled for Friday morning.
A spokeswoman for Hickey’s monitoring team declined to comment, citing the rule in the consent decree that limits the monitor’s public statements. A spokeswoman for the city Law Department could not be reached for comment.
Annie Thompson, a spokeswoman for Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul, whose office is a party to the agreement, said of the request for Hickey to investigate, “We agree that the public has a right to a full accounting as soon as possible.”
The widespread local protests and separate property destruction, which followed the death of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis police, led to an influx of complaints to Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability. The police disciplinary agency took in 82 complaints from Friday morning through Monday afternoon, compared with 34 over Memorial Day weekend, according to COPA spokesman Ephraim Eaddy. He noted that the totals included complaints over all matters, but added that agency officials believed that more than half of the recent batch were “related to protests.”
CPD spokesman Luis Agostini said people who felt they were mistreated should call 311 and file a complaint.
The consent decree is one of the most substantive results of the furor sparked in November 2015 by the release of video showing white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
The footage, and ensuing street protests, led to a wide-ranging U.S. Department of Justice investigation that found Chicago police to be badly trained, loosely supervised and prone to excessive force, particularly against minorities. After then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan sued the administration of then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel to force court oversight of reforms, city officials signed a consent decree that calls for changes to training, discipline and supervision, among other measures.
In the new letter, one of the activist groups’ demands was the use of alternatives to arrest, “particularly related to non-violent protest-related charges.” The letter came with an attachment listing the groups’ prior recommendation that the consent decree require cops generally to get a supervisor’s sign-off before arresting anyone on charges of obstructing, assaulting or resisting an officer, disorderly conduct or a host of other offenses. The activists recommended that the city rely less on arrests and more on routing people to other social programs, such as mental health services.
As it now stands, the consent decree encourages CPD to explore “alternatives to arrest” and says the city is committed to them.
dhinkel@chicagotribune.com
