FERGUSON: POLICEREFORMJUSTBEGINNING
Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s new multitiered system of police accountability is the “beginning— not the end, in the long path” toward establishing “public legitimacy and confidence” in the Chicago Police Department, Inspector General Joe Ferguson said Tuesday.
In a letter to the mayor and the City Council that accompanied his quarterly report, Ferguson said the new, $ 137,052- a- year deputy inspector general for public safety who will preside over a 25- employee, $ 1.8 million unit in his office will “strive to meet that call by scrutinizing investigations” of police misconduct and the discipline that follows.
The deputy IG will also analyze “policing and police accountability practices and procedures” and provide “robust public reporting” of its own findings and the response to those recommendations by the Police Department and the new Civilian Office of Police Accountability that will replace IPRA.
“Much of OIG’s recently increasing work around police and police accountability has come at the expense of resources intended to provide oversight for all of city government,” Ferguson wrote.
“Historically, the city did not provide the resources or the open cooperation needed for OIG to bring the full benefits of independent oversight to CPD — a department that delivers one of the most important municipal services and constitutes approximately 40 percent of the city’s workforce and operating budget. The creation of a special subject matter unit dedicated to suchworkmarks public safety oversight as an executive and legislative priority, constituting an important milestone in the city’s history.”
But Ferguson warned that City Council approval of the first two parts of Emanuel’s police accountability overhaul — COPA and the new public safety IG — marks the “beginning — not the end in the long path” toward restoring public trust shattered by the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.
“Public discussion must continue regarding the composition and powers of a community oversight board, another nationally recognized cornerstone to police reform,” Ferguson wrote, without saying whether he believes the oversight board should be elected, appointed or under mayoral control.
“No reform in this arena can be successful without a participatory voice from the community the system is supposed to serve. The work of the future police and police accountability function, no matter how substantive and rigorous, cannot be fully effective if it is not responsive to the evolving needs of the community and critically assessed by a formal community oversight board constituted of true representatives of and from the communities we all serve.”
Ferguson served on the mayor’s Task Force on Police Accountability that branded the Independent Police Review Authority so “badly broken” it needed to be abolished and replaced by a more powerful agency with a guaranteed budget of 1 percent of the Chicago Police Department’s annual spending not including grant funding.