The former federal prosecutor overseeing police reform in Chicago urged officials Thursday “to not lose focus on making deliberate progress” as they prepare for the Democratic National Convention this summer.
In her latest report on a federal consent decree mandating sweeping changes, independent monitor Maggie Hickey said police officials have “worked diligently” with her team and the Illinois attorney general’s office to update policies and training ahead of the convention in August.
But Hickey noted that those parties and a coalition of community groups are still “working through relevant policies to ensure the Chicago Police Department protects First Amendment rights and addresses other community concerns.”
The police department’s troubled response to the protests and unrest in the summer of 2020 looms over those preparations. Hickey and the city’s inspector general both wrote exhaustive and scathing reports detailing misconduct, abuses and operational breakdowns.
In her letter Thursday, Hickey noted there had been “lessons learned” from her report, including the need for better communications, consistent supervision and use of force reporting.
As Hickey pushed the department to remain focused on reform in the coming months, she also acknowledged that “we often see the city lose or slow progress during significant summer demands.”
The letter doesn’t explicitly refer to an ongoing battle over a new mass arrest policy the police department has adopted ahead of the four-day convention.
On March 13, the consent decree coalition warned in a court filing that the policy “eviscerates protections required by the First Amendment, the consent decree, and CPD’s existing First Amendment policy.”
In another filing April 12, the coalition formally urged U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer to take a series of steps to address its concerns, including finding the policy violates the consent decree and ordering the department to instead train officers on the First Amendment policy protecting protesters’ rights.
The new policy was spurred by the coalition’s previous concerns about “systematic brutality and consent decree violations” during the 2020 protests that followed the police killing of George Floyd.
Among other issues, the coalition claims the new policy allows officers to engage in unlawful arrests, violates prior use of force reporting requirements and fails to adequately prohibit retaliation and “kettling,” a controversial method for containing crowds that police were accused of using in 2020.
Chicago Corporation Counsel Jennifer Bagby pushed back in a court filing on April 19, saying that much of the coalition’s analysis of the policy was “inaccurate and misleading.”
Bagby noted that the policy was crafted with the help of Hickey’s team and the Illinois attorney general’s office, which brought the lawsuit that resulted in the consent decree.
The monitoring team and the attorney general’s office didn’t offer any formal objections to the policy, according to Bagby, who insisted that it’s directly linked to the First Amendment policy and other general orders governing officers’ conduct.
Judge Pallmeyer announced that the parties met for closed-door settlement talks on May 14 — just over three months before the Democratic convention is set to kick off.
A slow path to reform
Overall, Hickey said the city “made earnest progress toward addressing issues that are instrumental to sustained compliance and long-term success” during the latest monitoring period, stretching from July through December of last year.
The city has now reached some level of compliance with 89% of the sections of the consent decree, up from 85% in the last reporting period.
Much of that progress has been made in the first two levels of compliance, which respectively deal with policymaking and training. The city has only reached full, or operational, compliance with 7% of consent decree sections, up from 6% in the last reporting period.
In a Sun-Times op-ed column this week, Snelling argued that simply focusing on deadlines and compliance “will never give a true look at the systematic improvements that have been made.”
At the same time, he touted that “CPD has made more progress than any other American city under a consent decree at the five-year mark.”
But in Snelling’s first seven months as superintendent, he has yet to appoint someone to lead the department’s court-ordered reform efforts — a position that has been mired in controversy.
Bob Boik, a former director of the office of constitutional policing and reform, was fired in August 2022 after questioning deep cuts to the office.
His replacement, Tina Skahill, resigned in May 2023, alleging that then-Interim Supt. Fred Waller retaliated against her for leading an investigation that led to his suspension. Waller remains a key adviser to Snelling.
Focus on traffic stops amid growing criticism
In her letter, Hickey said her team and the attorney general’s officer renewed a recommendation to create a plan to reform the department’s traffic stops after Snelling recently made public comments supporting that move.
Criticism of the police department’s practice of using traffic stops as a crime-fighting strategy grew after the police killing of Dexter Reed in March.
A group of five tactical officers stopped Reed on a residential street in Humboldt Park for a purported seatbelt violation, according to the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability. Reed resisted orders and shot one of the officers, setting off a gun battle in which the other officers fired 96 times in just 41 seconds.
The shooting prompted protests and raised questions about the police department’s commitment to court-ordered reform.
Civil rights activists have for years decried a surge in traffic stops that coincided with the department reaching an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union in 2015 over CPD’s use of so-called stop-and-frisk tactics with pedestrians.
The ACLU again sued the department in 2023, alleging that traffic stops for minor violations were being used as a pretext to search Black and Latino drivers’ cars.
A day before COPA released jarring video footage of the shooting in April, Supt. Snelling said the department has made progress deprioritizing traffic stops and vowed that those stops would soon be monitored under the consent decree.
“This will be here long-lasting after I’m gone,” Snelling said. “So this is a commitment that I’m making to make sure that we get a handle on this situation.”
Judge Pallmeyer announced last week that members of the public will soon have two opportunities to comment on what changes should be made under the court order. Two hearings, one virtual and another in-person, have been set for June 11.
