CPD rejects most use-of-force recommendations proposed by working group

The Chicago Police Department announced Wednesday it will accept five of the 155 changes to its use-of-force policy put forth by an appointed working group of community leaders.

The 20-member working group began meeting weekly in June after George Floyd’s death at the hands of Minneapolis police officers and the protests that followed.

“Ultimately, our goal is simple: Create better policies and better training for our officers in order to empower them to address situations appropriately and prevent incidents stemming from excessive uses of force in the future,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said at the time.

Chicago police Wednesday confirmed the department would accept five proposed changes. The department said it would be “publishing the full working group recommendations [and the] CPD responses to each soon.”

In a statement Thursday, the CPD said that 42 of the recommendations had already been adopted in its current policy. Of the rejected recommendations, 50 “would have directly contradicted the City’s Consent Decree or State law, and therefore, could not be legally adopted,” the statement said.

Thirty other recommendations were deemed “not operationally feasible,” such as the recommendation that CPD “create an outside entity to conduct autopsies of people killed by police, essentially usurping the authority of the Cook County Medical Examiner,” the statement said.

CPD claimed that 28 other recommendations were not relevant to the use-of-force policy.

The department last revised its use-of-force policy in 2017, after the court-ordered release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video, which also prompted a federal consent decree aimed at reforming the department. In June, the independent monitor overseeing the decree announced that the department had missed over 70% of its deadlines in the second reporting period.

The department’s “Use of Force Dashboard,” which tracks incidents dating back to 2015, shows that 1,865 use-of-force incidents have been reported in 2020. Last year’s total of 2,877 incidents was nearly a 25% drop from the 3,744 incidents reported in 2015. The department defines “force” as “any physical contact by a department member, either directly or through the use of equipment, to compel a subject’s compliance.”

Contributing: Fran Spielman