Month: July 2018

On Friday, July 27, the city of Chicago and the Illinois Attorney General issued a joint agreement proposing police reforms in light of the DOJ report on police misconduct in Chicago. At this stage, their report is only a draft. It has been issued to solicit public comments. A final, revised report is due to be filed in court later this fall.

After the publication of a 2017 DOJ report tracing the recent history of police misconduct in Chicago, the Attorney General of the United States dismissed the findings of the report and refused to enforce it. As a result, a group representing Black Lives Matter, the ACLU, and the Attorney General for Illinois filed separate lawsuits to implement the reforms called for in the DOJ report. Pushed by those suits, the Chicago government began to work with those groups to draft a consent decree desigbed to control police misconduct.

It has been a long and contentious process. The Police Accountability Task Force, offered a report. Community and activists groups prepared a draft decree to help guide the process. When parts of a draft agreement were leaked (here) the FOP objected to the elements of the proposal.

July 31: more reactions to the draft: From a mayoral candidate (and the former president of the Chicago Police Board). From the governor of Illinois.

And from August, another important discussion. Still more here.

A review of works that consider the disturbing intersection of violence, constitutional order, criminal justice, and white power: Elizabeth Dale, Victims’ Rights and White Power, JOTWELL (July 13, 2018).

We all too often ignore the role courts play in enabling police misconduct, ignoring prosecutorial excess, and expanding mass incarceration.

This article notes one instance (a bail decision) where a judge advanced criminal justice reform.

Police misconduct in Chicago (predictably) gives rise to problems in the courts:

At least 37 criminal cases have been dropped by State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office since Chicago police removed Elizondo and Salgado from street duties on Jan. 31, according to the analysis of Police Department arrest data obtained through an open records request as well as court records.

 

This description of what happened in 1988:

During interrogation, Kitchen says, officers handcuffed him to the wall and beat him repeatedly with a nightstick, a telephone, a telephone book, and their own fists.

Sounds a lot like what Robert Nixon claimed happened to him in 1938:

After that, several officers (Nixon guessed there were about six) had him stand on something while they cuffed his arms to the wall. Once his arms were secured, they kicked whatever he had been standing on out from under him, leaving him hanging by his arms.

Here’s data on six years of stop and frisk by the CPD (gathered through FOIA requests by Lucy Parsons Labs and organized by Chicago Data Collaborative)

And here is a recent report by the UIC Policing in Chicago Research Group. It examines the scope of Chicago’s gang crime database.

… as defense of property.

For more on this case, see here.

update: 7/13/18

That was quick:

Officer Robert Rialmo was involved in another physical altercation early Friday morning after being ejected from a Northwest Side bar, Chicago police confirmed Friday.

Related to these earlier posts (here and here), there is this story in today’s Sun Times:

Though one of the charges against him will be dropped, embattled Chicago Police officer Robert Rialmo is set to go on trial next week over his role in a December 2017 fight at a Northwest Side restaurant.