City Hall, cops union’s new leadership at odds in contract talks
The Chicago Police Department’s largest union and city officials apparently remain starkly divided on a new police contract after the city’s first proposal for a deal was provided to the union’s new regime.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has offered the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police a 10% raise for thousands of rankand-file cops over a fouryear period — along with changes to how the city handles disciplinary issues involving allegations of misconduct.
But the union’s leadership said itwould not agree to the proposal and would soon make a counteroffer.
The proposal on Tuesday was the first offered by city officials to the FOP since John Catanzara was elected its president earlier this year. The 10% raises would have been spread out over three years of backpay as well as a fourth year, a period that ends June 30, 2021 — the same day the new contract would have expired.
The union’s last contract expired at the end of June 2017.
Reached by the Tribune on Tuesday evening, Catanzara declined to get into specifics on the city’s offer as it relates to disciplinary issues but acknowledged the unionwas unhappy with the city’s proposed changes to the contract that could weaken the rank-and-file’s rights when faced with disciplinary investigations by the Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs or the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
A police accountability task force headed by Lightfoot during former Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration recommended that negotiations over the next contract should focus on removing provisions that prevent people from filing anonymous complaints and force them to sign affidavits
describing police misconduct.
The union and city officials have been divided on police disciplinary issues at a time when the FOP has also voiced opposition to a federal consent decree aimed at overhauling how the city’s historically troubled police force operates. Lightfoot has made reforming the department a priority.
“We are not taking the short end of the stick. … We’re last in line when the teachers should have been last in line,” said Catanzara, lamenting how Chicago Public Schools teachers last year were able to secure a new contract before the city’s 8,000-plus rank-andfile officers.