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cago Police Board, Karen Sheley, director of the Police Practic- es Project at ACLU Illinois, and Arewa Karen Winters, member of Black Lives Matters (BLM), discussed a consent decree that would give more authority to groups like the ACLU and BLM to participate in the creation of a federal body to oversee the police department.
As The Watch astutely shared the next day, a reported titled “The ACLU Effect” from researchers at the University of Utah cited in the ACLU’s intrusion on police practices as the primary factor that led to an explosion in the city’s murder rate in 2016.
According to the report, Chicago Police Officers conducted 600,000 street stops in 2015. The next year, the police made 100,000 stops. The murder rate went from 480 in 2015 to 754 in 2016, a 58-percent increase.
The reduction in stops, of course, came in the wake of the settlement the ACLU prompted with the Department that led to the Investigatory Stop Reports (ISRs), significantly longer than previously required documentation to be completed with race or ethnicity of the person stopped, among other details.
“Requiring officers to do more paperwork takes hours away from officers that could be used patrolling the streets,” Fioretto observes. “You know that makes officers reluctant. The com- munity doesn’t want that. They want officers to be proactive. I think it’s all reactionary. That’s what COPA is doing, reacting to situations highlighted by the fact that they don’t get input from the police officer.”
Most officers have felt the suffocation from Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). Created by a City Coun- cil ordinance in 2016 to replace the Independent Police Review Association (IPRA), COPA posts a “File a Complaint” tab on its website.
According to its mission statement, COPA has the power and authority to conduct investigations into complaints against of- ficers alleging domestic violence, excessive force, coercion or verbal abuse. And while COPA has been given the authority to investigate any time an officer discharges a duty weapon, as the Lodge has repeatedly pointed out, none of COPA’s chief investi- gators have experience working for the Department.
If policing in the current era sometimes feels like being in the thick of a Chicago winter, the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) has been part of the blizzard. Convened during the summer of 2016, GAPA claims to touch 30 wards, in- cluding neighborhoods “most directly affected by violence and police brutality, misconduct and harassment.
Based on conversations with 1,650 residents in 19 commu- nities, GAPA wants its reign to advocate for a seven-member Commission for Public Safety and Accountability. The commis- sion would be chosen by elected members of 22 district-level police councils that, among other objectives, would set goals for the Department and its oversight bodies.
And then there is the lightning coming from BLM Chicago (BLMCHI). On its website, BLMCHI has published its 10 de- mands, six of which can be construed as reducing opportuni- ties for Chicago Police Officers to police. The website also asks:
“If you see someone being arrested/beaten by cops, take out your phone and film it. Ask the arrested person to shout their full name and birthday. Get this information to a National Law- yer’s Guild representative.”
The resulting gathering storm has left Chicago Police losing faith in the justice system.
“We’re so far behind the eight-ball that when we go into some cases, it doesn’t matter how strong the case we put on, the out- come is already pre-decided,” notes Daniel Herbert, who did 12 years on the job before becoming an attorney who represents many Lodge 7 members. “I always tell my clients and friends
“It has left officers concerned on a daily basis if they are going to get jammed up.”
Pat Fioretto, attorney for Lodge 7
who are Police Officers that they have to remain positive even in the darkest hour, which is what we’re in right now.”
Still, the daily weather report that seems to rarely shed a ray of sunshine on the police comes via the news media. This can be perhaps defined through a Feb. 7 Chicago Tribune editorial cited on The Watch headlined, “Rewriting Chicago’s Police Con- tract” in which editors asked, “Has City Hall been handcuffed by its police unions?”
The editorial spelled out the themes that the paper has pushed about police corruption and discipline, including “col- lective bargaining agreements making it harder for citizens to file complaints” and “there’s no reason an officer involved in a shooting should have 24 hours to coordinate stories with others at the scene before giving a statement.”
Then, there was the story the Trib reported on Feb. 16, three days after Commander Paul Bauer was gunned down by a four- time repeat offender. The newspaper wrote about Bauer being part of a chase of offenders who struck and killed a pregnant woman more than a decade earlier. This is only one example of relentless hits below the belt that have left Chicago Police Officers out in the cold.
“Invariably, we’re going to see it play out that police officers have allowed themselves to be victims of battery in situations where they could have utilized appropriate necessary force, but they were hesitant to do so,” Herbert warns. “Eventually, our leaders have to step up and recognize that all of this is mak- ing it more difficult and dangerous to do the job that needs to be done. It it’s not done, we have anarchy, which is essentially what we have right now.”
Gimme shelter
The Lodge and its collective bargaining agreement has be- come the lightning rod in all of this. With supervisors having the software to track the location of beat cars at all times and the footage coming from dash cams and body cams, Lodge 7 First Vice President Pat Murray speaks from experience about the approach to the job under all this scrutiny.
“You have to play by the rules,” he explains. “You can get called out anytime, so make sure what you have done is doc- umented.”
With that done, the umbrella comes from the FOP enforcing its collective bargaining agreement. The ULPs Graham men- tioned that have been contested and won during the past year include preventing the Department from unilaterally making changes without bargaining, a pattern that suggests the prac- tice is part of a storm front rather than isolated incidents.
Lodge 7 won ULP claims regarding the discipline matrix and the use of body cams. Currently, challenges of the release of video footage and changing the use of force policy are still un- der investigation.
“The Department has the right to make changes, but they have to bargain with us over the impact of those decisions, especially when it comes to safety and discipline,” Fioretto re-
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