RAHM’S REFORM MOVE
Mayor launches task force charged with recommending changes to improve ‘independent oversight of police misconduct’
On the same day he bowed to pressure to fire Police Supt. Garry McCarthy, Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Tuesday employed a time-honored tactic for Chicago mayors under siege: He announced he was creating a task force — this time on police accountability.
The five-member panel — with Chicago native and former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick as its senior adviser — will be charged with recommending reforms aimed at improving “independent oversight of police misconduct” in the wake of the furor over a white police officer’s October 2014 shooting of Laquan McDonald as the 17-year-old was walking away from Officer Jason Van Dyke.
The task force was further charged with strengthening an early warning system to identify and evaluate the handful of Chicago Police officers whose conduct draws multiple citizen complaints and establishing best practices for release of videos of police-involved shootings and other incidents.
Later Tuesday, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced she asked the U.S. Department of Justice to investigate the Chicago Police Department’s use of force, including deadly force.
In a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Madigan also asked the department’s Civil Rights Division to look into allegations of misconduct; the department’s training, equipment and supervision of officers; and whether there is a pattern of “discriminatory policing.”
“Trust in the Chicago Police Department is broken. Chicago cannot move ahead and rebuild trust between the police and the community without an outside, independent investigation into its police department to improve policing practices,” Madigan said in a statement.
In a statement Tuesday evening, U.S. Department of Justice spokeswoman Dena Iverson wrote: “The department will review the letter from the Illinois attorney general.”
At the same news conference dominated by his demand for McCarthy’s resignation, Emanuel outlined his marching orders to the task force with a tight March 31 deadline to recommend reforms on better ways to go about “policing the police.”
“See if the oversight and the accountability and the discipline systems are as vigorous as they need to be and are there any changes. Two, what do we . . . not have in place or is not effective as it relates to an early warning to officers that have repeated problems. And third, how do we deal with the transparency — both to those cases, but also in making information public,” Emanuel said.
The mayor was reminded that 18 citizen complaints had been filed against Jason Van Dyke, who has been charged with first-degree murder in the McDonald shooting, but the officer was never disciplined.
Eight complaints alleged excessive force. Two involved the use of a firearm in addition to the McDonald shooting. One prompted a federal jury to award $350,000 to a man whose shoulders were injured after being roughed up by Van Dyke during a traffic stop for a missing front license plate.
Emanuel’s five-member panel includes:
Hiram Grau, a former deputy police superintendent and finalist for superintendent who ran the Illinois State Police under former Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn. With McCarthy forced out, Grau could be a candidate for superintendent once again.
Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who is still investigating the Chicago Police officers blamed for engineering the massive police cover-up in the David Koschman case.
Police Board President Lori Lightfoot, the former federal prosecutor who once ran the Chicago Police Department’s Office of Professional Standards, the forerunner to the Independent Police Review Authority. Lightfoot was chosen earlier this year to lead a police board with a troubling history of reversing the superintendent’s recommendations to terminate accused officers. Firings of wayward police officers have been recommended at every meeting since the new Police Board was seated.
Sergio Acosta, a former federal prosecutor now serving as a partner at the clout-heavy law firm of Hinshaw & Culbertson. Acosta has served on previous mayoral task forces, including one on minority setasides.
Randolph Stone, a former Cook County public defender-turned-professor at the University of Chicago Law School who also serves as director of the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Project Clinic. “The horrifying shooting of Mr. McDonald requires more than words of sadness. It requires that we act — that we take more concrete steps to prevent such abuses in the future, secure the safety and the rights of all Chicagoans and build stronger bonds of trust between our Police Department and the communities they’re sworn to protect,” the mayor said.
‘‘THE HORRIFYING SHOOTING OF MR. MCDONALD REQUIRES MORE THAN WORDS OF SADNESS. IT REQUIRES THAT WE ACT.’’
MAYOR RAHM EMANUEL