Longtime head of controversial Police Board still serves despite expired term

Despite an ordinance designed to install fresh blood on the city’s cop disciplinary board, a 1996 appointee of Mayor Richard M. Daley remains its president even though his term is long-expired.

Four years ago, Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) championed an ordinance that reformed the Chicago Police Board, including a ban on members serving more than 10 years. But that hasn’t stopped 68-year-old Demetrius E. Carney from serving.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel reappointed Carney in July 2011, a month before Fioretti’s ordinance was approved. Carney’s term expired in August 2014, yet under the ordinance he can stay on the board until Emanuel names a replacement.

“I think it’s time to look for a replacement for him as president,” Fioretti said, adding that Carney’s eight-month carryover “seems like a long time.”

“People should not be wedded to a board forever. Turnover is good,” the alderman said.

Like Daley, Carney is a graduate of De La Salle High School. They met through the school’s alumni association. When Daley appointed Carney president of the board in 1996, Carney said he was confident he could be independent of City Hall despite his friendship with Daley and his firm’s business ties to the city.

In 1996, anti-police sentiments were roiling the nation like they are today.

“This is not a great time to be a police officer,” Carney told the Chicago Sun-Times back then. “Because of Mark Fuhrman and Rodney King, there’s a lot of cynicism toward police officers. People are watching police over their shoulder. I’m sure it invites more complaints and sometimes bogus complaints. If they come before us, we’ll deal with that as well. Our purpose is not to badger police officers.”

Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said the mayor plans to announce a replacement for Carney “in the near future.”

“We take the appointment of community members to this panel seriously. That is why we have been actively working to select a new chair,” he said.

The administration has asked ministers and community leaders for their advice on the best choice to run the board. As a result of Fioretti’s term-limit ordinance, Emanuel has already replaced two other members whose terms expired.

Carney could not be reached for comment.

Ald. Anthony Beale (9th), former chairman of the City Council’s Police Committee, said new blood is needed on the Chicago Police Board to restore public trust.

“If there are positions that need to be filled or terms that have expired, we need to fill those in a timely manner. We need to make sure the police board has integrity — people who make sure that, if there are grounds for termination, those decisions are followed and there’s enough meat so [officers] can’t win on appeal,” Beale said.

Beale called the police board’s record of reversing the superintendent’s recommendations to terminate accused officers and meting out lesser penalties “troubling.”

“The board is put in place to make sure citizens are protected. But based on what I’m seeing now, I don’t think that’s happening. I just don’t think a lot of their opinions are correct. I don’t think the city has the trust in the board that it should have,” Beale said.

None of the other board members’ terms expires before August 2017. All of them are mayoral appointees.

The nine-member police board decides disciplinary cases in which the police superintendent seeks to fire or suspend an officer for more than 30 days — and cases in which the superintendent and the Independent Police Review Authority disagree on the recommended punishment.

Suspensions ranging from six to 30 days are also reviewed upon request.

A Chicago Sun-Times review of the board’s decisions found police Supt. Garry McCarthy loses most of the cases in which he seeks to fire an officer.

Between March 2014 and March 2015, the board considered requests to fire 25 officers.

The board fired only seven of them, two of whom already had been convicted of criminal charges in separate court cases. Of the 18 who kept their jobs, 13 were found not guilty of wrongdoing and restored to duty, and five others were either suspended or reprimanded for misconduct.

The board also fired one officer the superintendent sought to suspend.

In four additional cases, the board downgraded the punishments of four fired cops after they won appeals.

Civil-rights activists — stung by the recent acquittal of a Chicago detective on an involuntary manslaughter charge in the fatal shooting of a woman in 2012 — say the city desperately needs a police board that’s tougher on police misconduct.

Among them is the Rev. Michael Pfleger, who served on Daley’s search committee that hired former police Supt. Jody Weis in 2007.

“Until the police board challenges and prosecutes acts of police that are wrong, then every policeman out here suffers because they have to deal with people that don’t trust them,” Pfleger said.

The anti-police riots that erupted in Baltimore last week could happen here, he warned.

“I don’t understand how every good cop would not want a very harsh, strong police board,” Pfleger said.

In 2011, Fioretti sponsored an ordinance that revamped the way the police board operates. The changes were hailed for providing more transparency about the secretive board’s decisions.

In addition to the 10-year limit on serving on the board, members are barred from missing more than three monthly meetings a year. One member, Emanuel appointee Susan McKeever, already has missed three meetings this year, but that was because of a serious medical issue, a city official said.

Fioretti’s ordinance also mandated that the police board’s decisions — and the rationale behind them — be posted online within 10 days.