Lightfoot assesses reforms year after blistering report
One year ago Thursday, the earth moved for the Chicago Police Department.
The Task Force on Police Accountability appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel on the day he fired Police Supt. Garry McCarthy issued a blistering, 190- page indictment of the Police Department that would lay the groundwork for a similar report by the U. S. Department of Justice.
It characterized the Independent Police Review Authority as so “badly broken” it needed to be abolished, and it condemned a police contract it claimed turns a “code of silence into official policy.”
On the same day, the City Council unanimously confirmed Eddie Johnson as McCarthy’s permanent replacement, even though Johnson never applied for the job.
This week, the Chicago SunTimes sat down with Police Board President and task force co- chair Lori Lightfoot to talk about police reforms not yet implemented.
Internal accountability system
The University of Chicago Crime Lab has made some progress toward creating a $ 3 million “electronic early intervention system” to pinpoint problem officers. The mayor’s office is also attempting to round up private funding for it. But the new system is “a year away from even being piloted,” Lightfoot said.
Community policing
Lightfoot is not impressed with Johnson’s plan to create an advisory committee and hold a series of neighborhood hearings on ways to rebuild the moribund community policing program.
“You have to have a plan for how you engage people at the district level. And that plan has to be fully resourced,” she said.
Chief diversity officer
Every organization needs some- one whose sole responsibility is to focus on race, gender and diversity and make certain that sensitivity permeates hiring, promotions, training and interactions with the general public, Lightfoot said.
“If you don’t have a person who owns that function and you rely upon diversity happening by people who have other main occupations, it doesn’t happen. Whatever progress you made, you either plateau or fall back,” she said.
Training
Lightfoot is encouraged by Johnson’s decision to create a training oversight committee headed by First Deputy Supt. Kevin Navarro and “embed” training officers in every district.
But she argued that incentives are needed to encourage officers to take on those additional responsibilities and attract enough field training officers to handle a twoyear police hiring surge.
Supervision and promotions
Lightfoot said there’s been no effort to “rethink job descriptions” for supervisors, particularly sergeants.
“It may require a recalibration of what the tests are for supervi- sors. That work has not been done, and that is an absolute critical necessity,” she said.
Bureau of Internal Affairs
Lightfoot refers to this bureau as a “black box” because there is “no transparency” to the work they do. The spotlight over the last year has been justifiably focused on IPRA. But Internal Affairs needs “the same level of scrutiny,” she said.
Police contract
The City Council’s Black Caucus is threatening to hold up ratification of any police contract that continues to make it “easy for officers to lie” by giving them 24 hours before providing a statement after a shooting and includes “impediments to accountability” that prohibit anonymous complaints, allow officers to change statements after reviewing video and require sworn affidavits.
Lightfoot acknowledged that Emanuel can’t “negotiate” the contract in public. But she is demanding that the mayor “articulate the values” that will be driving those negotiations.