Lawsuit forces CPD to improve access to lawyers for detainees

Getting your phone call while in the custody of Chicago police should get easier after city officials on Wednesday settled a lawsuit with activist and legal aid groups alleging CPD routinely denied arrestees access to lawyers.

Standing in “Freedom Square”— a vacant lot across the street from CPD’s Homan Square facility notorious as an interrogation site — activists touted a consent decree finalized by Judge Neil Cohen as the end of a decades-long struggle to end the department’s practice of isolating detainees from lawyers and family in violation of state and federal law that has been on the books since the 1950s and ‘60s.

“This did not start two years ago, this started 20 years ago,” said Damon Williams of LetUsBreathe Collective, one of the eight plaintiff organizations, which also include the Cook County Public Defender, MacArthur Justice Center and Black Lives Matter Chicago.

“The answer many times, when people pushed to the city [and said] ‘don’t do anything new, just follow the law.’ The answer was no. They had to be brought to court to be compelled to follow the law.”

The settlement agreement, which takes effect in February, essentially spells out steps CPD will take to comply with existing law — including the 5th and 6th Amendments — as explained in the familiar refrain of “Miranda rights” that are a staple of detective TV shows, said Craig Futterman of University of Chicago Law School.

Attorneys long have complained that their clients “disappear” after being taken into police custody, their location unknown and unreachable by lawyers and loved ones, allowing police to conduct marathon interrogations that have led to wrongful convictions, Futterman said.

“Finally, we are delivering on the promise of ‘Miranda,’” Futterman said.

The decree mandates the department install phones inside interrogation rooms and detective rooms, with signage in English, Spanish and Polish that includes the phone number for a hotline to the Cook County Public Defender, said Alexa Van Brunt, director of the MacArthur Justice Center. Stations will also add private space for phone calls.

Lawyers will be able to call into stations to reach clients. Most importantly, CPD will train officers to follow state laws and allow detainees to call an attorney. The SAFE-T Act, a package of criminal justice reforms legislation that takes effect Jan. 1, mandates that detainees be allowed to make at least three phone calls within three hours of arriving at the station.

The plaintiffs will be allowed to tour police facilities to verify compliance, and CPD will have to share data about arrestees’ access to attorneys for the next two years. The agreement is the first of its kind in the nation and sets a high bar.

“Hopefully this is something that can be a model for other cities,” Van Brunt said.

The lawsuit was filed by the Cook County Public Defender’s Office and a coalition of other organizations amid mass arrests by CPD during the wave of protests in the summer of 2020.

Roughly a quarter of more than 1,000 arrestees represented by the Public Defender’s Office in the spring of 2020 were never allowed a phone call, and those who did get a call waited an average of more than four hours, according to the lawsuit.

“This was going on well before the protests of 2020, but the protests allowed us to show that this was a department policy not to follow the law,” Van Brunt said.

The settlement states that the city does not admit the allegations in the lawsuit. A spokeswoman for the Law Department said the city had no comment on the settlement.