Chicago’s new top cop must connect with communities to do the job
The new Chicago police superintendent will take office as the number of Chicago homicides is coming down, consistent with the national return to “normal” after a 2020-21 spurt caused by pandemic shutdowns and protests over the police murder of George Floyd.
The problem for Chicago is that the pre-pandemic “normal” means double the homicide rate of New York, Los Angeles and other cities successful at lowering the death toll. There is nothing in the economic or other conditions of our city that accounts for that difference; Chicago’s rate of violent crime is something we and our institutions have brought about ourselves.
A strong new superintendent, with the right support, can engage the city in bringing down violence here as other cities have.
Above all, a new superintendent’s effectiveness in reducing crime will depend on the active engagement of citizens in communities across the city. A great police chief once said, “When things are going right, we don’t police communities; they police themselves with our help.” That kind of cooperation happens now in some Chicago communities. But it doesn’t happen in our highest-crime neighborhoods. And we know from every study that a major reason for that failure is a lack of trust in the police.
To build that trust, the new superintendent will need to make changes in personnel and policies. Those changes will offend and anger forces within the department, but they will have political allies. If there’s no one on the current slate of three candidates Mayor Brandon Johnson is sure he’s ready to support in making those changes, he should reject them all and ask for alternatives.
The new superintendent also needs to be free of political interference. The City Council confirmation process is a good opportunity for aldermen to make clear they will stop efforts to interfere in internal police decision-making.
The most egregious example has been pressure from aldermen to maintain staffing levels in police districts serving their wards. The allocation of officers among districts should be determined by the professional judgment of the superintendent; officers belong where they can be most effective in reducing serious crime. Cities that have made real progress in crime reduction don’t tolerate dysfunctional political interference in decision-making.
Charlie Beck, in his brief and widely praised tenure as interim superintendent, made big changes such as moving officers from headquarters to the districts where they could work directly with communities. But when Beck left, most changes were reversed. An overwhelming majority of Chicago police officers have been profoundly dissatisfied with recent leadership and want a strong new leader.
The new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability has done a good job (except for a few late leaks) keeping confidential its deliberations about candidates. It’s important to continue that confidentiality, as the Illinois Open Meetings Act expressly allows, to the commission’s ongoing evaluation of the new superintendent’s performance in office.
A chief executive’s authority is instantly diminished by public criticism from board members. In public proceedings, however, the commission and the new superintendent will be engaged in reviewing and approving changes in department policy. That discussion can be positive as long as it focuses on the practical impact of real policies, not political or ideological rhetoric about words on paper.
The new superintendent will need to be a vocal advocate for the proactive, day-in-and-day-out community engagement by police in every district that builds trust and reduces crime. One strength in Chicago today is the network of private violence prevention groups such as CRED and READI that help individuals move out of gangs and other criminal activity; those efforts work best when they operate seamlessly with local police.
Another strength is the federal consent decree for training and continuing education of officers in constitutional policing and in techniques of positive community interaction; continued compliance with that decree is essential. As the state implements the Community Emergency Services and Supports Act, which establishes a mental health alternative to police response in all 911 districts, police developing a positive relationship to those new crisis response teams, and collaborating with them only when necessary, can be a big step in eliminating a major source of tension in community relations.
We know from bitter experience how dramatically trust can be affected by leadership response to high-visibility incidents such as the police shooting of Laquan McDonald. Procedural changes, like prompt video release, can help, but the next incident may be something totally different. Whatever the specifics, the new superintendent will need to bring to it the trust-building principles of candor, recognition of inevitable honest mistakes and intolerance of deliberate abuse.
Even more important than high-visibility incidents will be the day-in-and-day-out interactions between police and residents at the district level. The superintendent will need district commanders who can build a culture of trust. The new district councils elected in April are a promising vehicle for exchange of information both ways: from the police to the community about stops, arrests, crimes and clearance rates; and from community representatives to the police about sources of illegal guns and gang activities, key targets for police efforts. In an institution motivated to build community support, other ideas will emerge.
Some cities that were once poster children for police-community mistrust have crime rates today that reflect a profound change in those relationships. In Los Angeles in the 1990s, for example, the Rodney King beating by police was the catalyst for new Justice Department authority to bring court action against a pattern and practice of abuse, and the city had more homicides than Chicago; today, it has a homicide rate less than half of ours.
We need to give a new police superintendent the authority he needs and work together with him to bring that same change to every community in our city.
John Schmidt is a partner at Mayer Brown LLP. From 1994 to 1997, he was the associate attorney general at the Justice Department, where his responsibilities included the creation and oversight of the COPS program, the Violence Against Women program and all other aspects of implementation of the 1994 Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act.