City Council members violated their state constitutional oaths by denying Chicago police officers accused of the most serious wrongdoing the right to bypass the Police Board, risking a costly court challenge the city is destined to lose, an independent arbitrator warned Thursday.
Independent arbitrator Edwin Benn had already affirmed and reaffirmed that state law guarantees that when Chicago police officers are recommended for firing, or for suspensions of over one year, they have the right to take their cases to an arbitrator who might be more sympathetic and would hold proceedings behind closed doors.
Thursday’s second reaffirmation was no surprise and sends the matter back to the City Council for a second vote.
But the tone of Benn’s second reaffirmation was unexpected.
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara was so emboldened by Benn’s harsh tone, he’s heading straight to court to request for a summary judgment immediately enforcing the arbitrator’s ruling and a temporary restraining order to suspend all Police Board cases impacted by the ruling.
“I’m not gonna wait for a very simple reason: I don’t trust the City Council and the mayor. ... They think political cover is more important. They want to do the easy thing instead of the right thing. That is the definition of a terrible leader,” Catanzara told the Sun-Times.
“You’re noticing a trend here. [State’s Attorney] Kim Foxx gets to arbitrarily decide what the threshold for shoplifting is, even against statute. They think they get to arbitrarily decide what labor law is. They don’t. They’re supposed to uphold the current law. But they’re saying, ‘No. We know better.’”
The tone of Benn’s ruling was, in fact, unexpected.
He harshly criticized Mayor Brandon Johnson and the 33 alderpersons who rejected the earlier ruling at the mayor’s behest. Benn also issued what he called a “last-ditch plea” for them to reconsider. Otherwise, he wrote, they risk litigation that “may well go on for years” with “no possibility” of the city prevailing.
Benn compared their arguments — arbitration is “just not right,” the process occurs “behind closed doors” and there’s “distrust” and “indeed a disdain” of the police — to Donald Trump’s “Big Lie” that the 2020 presidential election was “rigged.”
The rule of law “is not a request or a cafeteria selection process for the City to choose which State of Illinois laws should apply and which should not. Compliance with the Rule of Law is an obligation,” the arbitrator wrote.
If allowed to pick and choose, every Chicagoan could “opt to not pay taxes, fees, fines, comply with City ordinances, state and federal laws, etc. which they similarly believe are not ‘just’ or `right’. In a democracy, that is not how it works.”
Benn noted the Workers’ Rights Amendment to the state constitution states: “No law shall be passed that interferes with, negates or diminishes the rights of employees to organize and bargain collectively over their wages, hours and other terms and conditions of employment.”
That, he said, is a “constitutional protection of the statutory right to final and binding arbitration.”
Last month’s Council vote rejecting the arbitrator’s ruling delivered a symbolic, but temporary message expressing commitment to police reform and accountability.
Catanzara responded then by predicting what happened Thursday.
A statement released by the mayor’s office said the city disagrees with Benn’s ruling. Policing gives officers “unparalleled responsibility for Chicagoans, their safety, and their lives,” the mayor’s office said, so “it is crucial that law enforcement continue to be held to the highest standard of accountability and transparency.”
The statement did not reveal whether Johnson would again urge his allies to reject the ruling.
Benn laid out the argument for why the city is destined to lose the court fight, then urged the Council to accept the ruling, now that the political statement had been made.
“Please don’t throw away potentially large sums of taxpayers’ money that could be used better elsewhere than on a legal fight you cannot win which you are undertaking to make a point you have already resoundingly made,” he wrote.
Ald. Andre Vasquez (40th) predicted the Council would again ignore Benn’s warning, but acknowledged it would be preferable for the Council to lobby to change state law, placing officers in a “separate category” held to a higher standard.
Meanwhile, Vasquez said, the Council simply must reaffirm its commitment to police reform and accountability.
“No other union has the ability to shoot, kill, arrest or contain,” Vasquez said. “We lose an average of $100 million every single year due to police misconduct settlements because we don’t have enough accountability.”
Ald. Nick Sposato (38th), one of the police union’s staunchest Council supporters, said he hopes his colleagues reconsider, swallow hard and accept the ruling.
“They had a job to do by saying, ‘We stood up to this. We did what we could do.’ [And they could easily say], ‘Now, we’re gonna have to stand down,’” Sposato said.
“I have nothing to base it off of other than they’re not that dumb of a people,” Sposato added. “They know what they did. And a couple of my colleagues said, ‘I only voted against this for political reasons. I don’t think we could win this. But politically, it’s suicide for me.’”
