EDITORIAL: Dogs, cops and the lessons of better police work

If the Chicago cops can kill fewer dogs while still doing good police work, we’re pretty sure they also can fully respect the constitutional rights of every human being while doing the job.

It is all a matter of improved police practices and training, and beware of any claims to contrary.

Two news stories in the last two days once again have burrowed into the question of how properly the Chicago police do their job and the consequences.

In the first story, published over the weekend by the Chicago Sun-Times, reporter Frank Main documented that Chicago cops have shot or shot at about 700 dogs in the last decade — far from always with justification — costing the city millions of dollars in legal settlements.

The good news, though, is that the Chicago Police Department has succeeded in dramatically reducing the number of dogs shot over this time, including a 67 percent decline in just the last three years. CPD has done this by upgrading training and teaching officers how to approach a seemingly aggressive dog safely.

In the second story, the Chicago Tribune on Monday reported on a study by two University of Utah professors that blames Chicago’s sharp rise in violence on a federal court requirement that officers more thoroughly document every street stop they make. Since that requirement has gone into effect, at the behest of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois so as to curb racial profiling, street stops have plummeted. The police made about 600,000 stops in 2015, but only about 100,000 in 2016.

We can’t completely dispute the study’s finding, certainly not until the full report is released. But it’s telling that the two professors previously published a study that argues that Miranda warnings for suspects in custody — that they have a right to remain silent — have “handcuffed” police officers.

If the message here is that effective police work means trimming civil liberties — by such means as ending Miranda warnings and making street stops without sufficient cause — that message is dangerously wrong. Free societies don’t trade the fundamental rights of the few for the safety of the many. Every street stop by a police officer must be based on a reasonable suspicion.

We continue to believe that a far better way for the Chicago police to drive down the city’s violent crime crime rate is to improve professionalism, community relations and trust.

Toward that end, it was a welcome step last week when a coalition of community groups — including Black Lives Matters — was granted a formal role in a court-enforceable effort to reform CPD. The consent decree, to be overseen by a federal judge, is being hashed out by the city and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan.

Community groups now will have a seat at the table, giving them a say in what reform should look like and an insider’s ability to challenge the police department when those reforms are not carried out. If the city truly wants buy-in for the plan from minority neighborhoods that long ago learned to be skeptical of the police, this is an excellent development.

By the same token, we strongly support a plan to build a $95 million police training academy in Chicago’s West Garfield Park neighborhood, where the need is greatest for everything the academy might have to offer — jobs, community investment and a closer working relationship between the police and the public.

The challenge will be to create a training center that is truly integrated and engaged with its West Side community, as Police Board President Lori Lightfoot said earlier this month in a City Club of Chicago speech. Without “a clear plan for community engagement,” Lightfoot said, the training center will be “a mistake.”

We find it remarkable that CPD and the city have responded practically and effectively to the scandal of dogs being shot by cops unnecessarily, yet we must continue to fight to defend the basic rights of people in their dealings with the law.

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