Reforming the Chicago Police Department

Episode Notes

Transcript

Planet Lex – Northwestern Pritzker School of Law Podcast

Reforming the Chicago Police Department

08/15/2018

 

00:00:00 File start

Rodriguez: Hello and welcome to Northwestern Law’s Planet Lex podcasting from the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law in Chicago, Illinois. I’m your host Dean Dan Rodriguez. My guest today is Alexa Van Brunt, a clinical associate professor here at Northwestern Law School who works in the MacArthur Justice Center housed in our Blum Legal Clinic. Alexa has worked on many key cases since joining the MacArthur Justice Center in 2010 including representing victims of the Jon Burge police torture scandal and other cases of police misconduct. She’s also been the lead attorney on suits to address such as issues as conflicts of interest within the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office and the violation of prisoners’ rights in Illinois correctional facilities. Alexa also instructs teams of students in the MacArthur Justice Center’s civil rights litigation clinic and manages their participation as junior counsel on the center’s cases. In 2017 last year she won the United States District Court for the Northern District of Illinois and federal Bar Association’s award for excellence in pro bono service.

00:01:05 Alexa, thank you for joining me today to discuss the topic of policing, a nice small fine topic.

Van Brunt: I’m really happy to be here, thanks Dan.

Rodriguez: Sure so let’s start with the most recent news. In late July Mayor Rahm Emanuel, mayor of Chicago and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced they had reached an agreement for a draft consent decree which MacArthur Justice Center and other community groups played a huge role in making this happen. Can you talk through a little bit what this means and how we got here and also what happens next?

Van Brunt: Sure well it was a momentous occasion. At the end of last month in July, the mayor and the Illinois Attorney General announced a draft consent decree to reform the Chicago Police Department, and specifically CPD’s use of excessive force against people in Chicago, and especially people of color in Chicago. But it’s been a long road to get here.

00:02:00 And we’re current, were definitely not done yet. I’ll say my part in this started especially about a year ago in June 2017, McArthur with many other civil rights attorneys in Chicago, brought a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department on behalf of community groups including Black Lives Matter Chicago, the Chicago Urban League, NAACP, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, and others alleging systematic and widespread excessive force against people in the city and force that was targeted especially at the black and brown communities.

Rodriguez: Can I just stop you and ask, I’m intrigued by your phrase first-of-its-kind, first-of-its-kind because this was the first omnibus excessive force case, the first case like this in the city of Chicago, what was novel about this suit at this time?

Van Brunt: What was novel is that it was a city-wide class action seeking injunctive relief, meaning well that was one part of it actually.

00:03:02 We were trying to get an injunction against the entire city of Chicago relating to its police force. The more novel part is I think the plaintiff contingent here. It’s many community groups, specifically representing those communities that are most heavily policed in Chicago, and those communities were standing in for the federal government who usually brings these kinds of cases. And as we all know, once President Trump took over office, he abdicated his role and the role of the DOJ in enforcing civil rights, especially in police departments so we stepped in.

Rodriguez: And just to add since the election and the events of the election were not all that long ago, had special, especially negative things to say about the city of Chicago.

Van Brunt: Oh yes, he is no fan of Chicago and neither is Jeff Sessions, his AG. They have not only abdicated their role of enforcing rights among police departments, but they have gone completely the other direction.

00:04:07 And said that police departments should be left alone and should really do whatever they want to and that policing is a local matter. So if the Trump administration were ever to intervene in a Chicago case, they would not be on the side of the people we would believe, you know I don’t think that’s going to happen. But it’s a completely different world we’re living in.

Rodriguez: I want to come back to the consent decree and I interrupted you but I want to just kind of maybe wrestle to the ground a little bit the political dynamic here

Van Brunt: Oh yes.

Rodriguez: and say this, you mentioned that, you mentioned the Trump’s administration as you put it abdication of responsibility, but the problem of police in the city of Chicago didn’t begin in January 2017, right.

Van Brunt: Oh no.

Rodriguez: Why hasn’t or didn’t the federal government under the Obama administration, President Obama, somebody from Chicago, why didn’t, why hadn’t they intervened, not only intervened but brought a lawsuit long before?

Van Brunt: Well they actually did. They conducted a year-long civil rights investigation that ended in January 2017 right before inauguration of President Trump. And their findings were that the Chicago Police Department has a pattern and practice of using excessive force. And that they have a pattern and practice of covering up misconduct. The problem was that administration left the White House before they could then file a lawsuit based on those findings. And that’s why we as private community groups and attorneys stepped in.

Rodriguez: And what was the MacArthur Justice Center’s role in bringing in some of these outside groups? Maybe the question is loaded, I should ask how was the MacArthur Justice Center brought in? How did these plaintiffs’ groups, the ones you mentioned remarkable diverse group

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: convene to come together?

Van Brunt: Well it was a major undertaking.

00:06:02 Community lawyering spearheaded by my colleague Sheila Betty also at the MacArthur Justice Center, and also the clinic at UChicago, the police accountability project led by Craig Futterman, we worked closely with community groups to get them on board. I mean they had been doing this work, advocacy work to reform the police and to change the police for years. We were not bringing anything new to their docket. But we were hoping they could help us by being legal representatives for the community. And to really bring these abuses to light into a court of law. So we did a lot of, we had a lot of meetings, we had a lot of outreach, we had a lot of students going to a lot of meetings, and a lot of information gathering and community awareness building. It was a long process and it took some time but it was completely worth it.

Rodriguez: So the case never went, say never went to trial.

00:07:01 It led to a consent decree of course so but do you know enough about the early stage of litigation to be able to say what the government’s defense was, what was the position of the Chicago Police Department?

Van Brunt: Well so things got a little I will say I think we should back up a bit because there are actually three cases that are proceeding against the Chicago Police Department. We filed in June and then Lisa Madigan filed in August

Rodriguez: State’s Attorney General, former State Attorney General.

Van Brunt: Exactly, and she filed a very similar suit to our own brought on behalf of the state of Illinois against the city. The day she filed she actually stood at a podium with Mayor Rahm Emanuel and said we have plans to settle this suit and we will not be litigating it.

Rodriguez: It’s an odd thing to say, in the announcement of a lawsuit.

Van Brunt: It’s interesting, it happens, it happens. You know we had reasons to be hopeful and pessimistic about that, given that the city hasn’t been willing to settle before and they certainly weren’t willing to settle with us.

00:08:01 They litigated against us very strongly and filed many motions to dismiss. And I can tell you their strategy was to knock us out of court any which way they could on standing grounds, mostly why can community groups come into court and try to gain this relief on just basic immunity grounds, on grounds that we didn’t plead a claim. I mean they really just brought the kitchen sink at us. And then to complicate matters the ACLU of Illinois got into the mix in October last year. They filed their own lawsuit, similar claims but focusing specifically on the rights of people with disabilities in Chicago. So the city of Chicago and the AG started negotiations right away, closed-door negotiations. We were not a part of those. But the next made milestone in my view came in the winter in which the ACLU’s clients, our clients, the city, and the AG signed a memorandum of agreement that allowed the community groups to have a right to enforce any consent decree that was signed by a federal judge or entered by a federal judge.

00:09:17

Rodriguez: The right to enforce in federal court.

Van Brunt: That’s right and that is momentous because there is no such other agreement on the books anywhere else in the country that gives community groups like Black Lives Matter Chicago the right to file a motion to hold the city in contempt if they have sufficient evidence to show they’re not agreeing by the agreement.

Rodriguez: And who would be expected to represent them?

Van Brunt: We would. We would, MacArthur Justice Center will still be representing them throughout the monitoring process and throughout the enforcement process. And we’ve also been very busy lately going over that draft decree that just came out in July 2017 or 2018.

00:10:00 And we’re basically giving edits to the state and to the city about what that decree needs to include to be truly transformational.

Rodriguez: Let’s assume, as we hope we can, that

Van Brunt: Yeah.

Rodriguez: you will, there will be agreement reached about language

Van Brunt: Yep.

Rodriguez: that will satisfy not only the MacArthur Justice Center but all of the community groups that this is a consent decree that aims to solve the problem. How optimistic ought we to be that there will be substantial structural reforms in policing in the city of Chicago?

Van Brunt: well I should say that the current iteration of the draft has some really positive language about restricting use of force by police. That said, it is not transformational, and we think it needs to go a lot farther in terms of pushing de-escalation tactics, getting firearms out of the hands of police, especially in schools, making sure that police officers are not on the front lines of a response to people who are in mental health crisis.

00:11:02 all of these things and so many more need to be included in any decree that is actually implemented. And the other huge component of this, that in order to ensure the success of this decree is transparency. And that doesn’t mean just we need to have a lot of data about what the Chicago Police Department is doing. It means the public gets that data, and the public sees which officers are constantly committing misconduct, and what the city is doing to discipline them. And those provisions aren’t really in there right now. It’s not very transparent. So that needs to change or else we’re not going to see a real difference in CPD culture.

Rodriguez: Do you expect to see some institutional and structural reforms along the lines of what of course many big city police departments deal with, citizen review boards, and things of that kind or is that a can sort of kicked down the road?

00:12:01

Van Brunt: No there are provisions for civilian investigations. Currently COPA, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability handles police misconduct allegations. We contend that, that is not a sufficiently independent entity to be doing those investigations. The COPA is appointed by the mayor. Our clients and ACLU clients would prefer something that is actually more of a civilian board that actually

Rodriguez: Who would appoint them?

Van Brunt: Well they you know our clients want something called CPAC which has been pushed by many political groups and CPAC would be you know a community elected process much like they do for school councils in the city of Chicago. And pretty revolutionarily, the CPAC would have the right to fire the superintendent which is a very different view of policing than we currently have.

00:13:00 So that organization or agency would have much more independence than COPA does. And that’s not in the decree. That is an ask from our client group.

Rodriguez: When we talk about the clients, just to go back to your, the picture that you paint of the diversity of client groups

Van Brunt: Yep.

Rodriguez: what are the challenges of bringing together such an admixture of different community groups who can expect to be, to have diverse goals

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: right and diverse agendas?

Van Brunt: Exactly, I mean I think the challenge is also the benefit of having such diverse organizations. We wrote a community consent decree that we hoped would guide the AG in cities decree. We released it last May. It was over 135 pages long and it covered a myriad of topics including use of force and reporting and transparency in schools. And so our clients all have very different experiences and interest areas.

00:14:03 So really they focused on the areas that they were most interested in and believed that they had the most to bring to the table about. So it was really useful to have a certain group like Brighton Park Neighborhood Council which knew a lot about policing in schools and Black Lives Matter Chicago which knows a lot about police use of force including shooting, officer-involved shootings, to have the different areas of expertise. We are a consensus-based group, so even if we don’t always agree, we do always agree to rule by consensus. And that has been the way we’ve operated since the beginning and it’s served us well.

Rodriguez: So let me take us back a bit. The Laquan McDonald shooting in 2014 and the release of the video in 2015 is talked about as a major flashpoint in terms of CPD

Van Brunt: Yep.

Rodriguez: and community relations focused on that shooting but of course it echoes so many of the Michael Brown and other shootings and other events, awful events of the last few years.

00:15:03 Are relationships between law enforcement and communities, particularly communities of color, getting worse or is social media just bringing attention to and amplifying these issues in a more recent way?

Van Brunt: Well probably both. I mean police abuses in Chicago are not a new phenomenon. We know Chicago officers were known to employ the third degree in confessions back in the ’30s. We know that police officers attacked protesters violently at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. We know about the Burge torture scandal that plagued the south and west sides in this late ’70s, ’80s, ’90s and many other abuses besides. So no, excessive force and police abuses are not new. What is new is, as you pointed to, the Laquan McDonald case which indicates this, those abuses are being caught on camera.

00:16:00 They are being caught on cameras by bystanders, they are being caught on body cam footage, and then that body cam footage is going viral.

Rodriguez: And just as an aside, what’s truly remarkable is the publicity of these shootings which are on video for goodness sake

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: right which has to scratch the surface of these abuses that are not recorded and hadn’t been recorded on video.

Van Brunt: I think that’s right. I mean suddenly you have video that say, that shows that officers reports are false, including in the Laquan McDonald case. You have video that shows that investigations of that misconduct subsequently didn’t do a valid job because there is the misconduct on tape and the investigators found no misconduct in their own investigation. So I don’t think videos are the be and end all of fixing policing.

00:17:00 But I do think they’ve really brought a lot of transparency to what policing on the ground looks like in Chicago and in other jurisdictions.

Rodriguez: Let me play a little bit of the devil’s advocate here and

Van Brunt: Sure.

Rodriguez: try and so this carefully. I mean you allude to the history, the troubled, tortured history of Chicago, going all the way

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: back to 1968 and beyond.

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: The devil’s advocate part would be those who suggest there’s a level and depth and breadth of violence in Chicago though that is unique. And while no one would ever, even the devil’s advocate would not justify police abuse or torture, the notion is it just may be a much more difficult city to police in light of the violence, in light of the gangs, in light of the trafficking of guns coming from Indiana and other places. So is there anything to say about well Chicago is unique but it’s unique not just in its policing but in the police having to address the systemic and acute violence in the, in our community?

Van Brunt: Yeah I would flip that on its head and say that cities with aberrationally high violence like Chicago, cities that include Ferguson, Baltimore, Cleveland, they also have histories like Chicago of long institutional abuse, police bigotry, and violence.

00:18:13 And no real accountability or transparency for law enforcement officials who harm civilians. So my take on it is that when the police are not trusted by communities, when the police are so feared that people would rather suffer violence than call them in because the police are more violent than what’s going on in their neighborhoods, then that’s an indication of a systemic malfunction. And that’s an indication of a problem with city law enforcement and not with people who live here. So I think if you look at trends in other similar cities, it’s policing we really need to focus on and the culture of policing and not the people who are being policed.

Rodriguez: I’m going to stick with this devil’s advocate theme for a moment longer

Van Brunt: Sure.

Rodriguez: and ask about an issue that came up in the course of the presidential campaign.

00:19:02 And all of that is some techniques and tactics that have been not just in our community but throughout the country sort of regarded not acceptable, stop and frisk for example

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: chokeholds to bring out an older example, and others, the argument is put law enforcement officers in a position with one hand tied behind their back. They as it were in the effort to reduce abuses make it more difficult to police in that environment and may generate more of a likelihood or temptation to use firearms. Again I’m not making this argument but you hear the argument and you’ve heard that

Van Brunt: Of course.

Rodriguez: made. Is that, is it an unintended consequence I guess is what I’m trying to get at of the removal of various law enforcement tactics that the police can’t adequately police?

Van Brunt: Yeah we’ve heard this a lot since Ferguson. It’s the so-called Ferguson effect that police can’t do their jobs properly because either they’ve lost the tactics they used in the prior you know administration’s or

00:20:04

Rodriguez: In the good old days.

Van Brunt: In the good old days yeah or else because they’re too scared to do their jobs for fear they’ll get hit with a misconduct complaint or a lawsuit. My answer to that is police have a ton of power. We know this because of as a civil litigator they have qualified immunity for almost everything they do. It’s very hard to hold police officers liable. They are very, very rarely meaning almost never arrested or charged for conduct committed in the course of duty. And they’re very, very rarely disciplined in the city of Chicago. So given that they are all armed with guns and tasers and many of them are part of special gang forces and SWAT forces, it’s really hard to see how they are under-resourced such that they have one hand tied behind the back. And really what we’re asking them to do half the time is just document their actions.

00:21:03 One of the big sticking points in this current decree is the city doesn’t want a document every time an officer pulls a gun on someone. They say that hinders them in their job which is just really hard to understand. I mean well first of all it points out how frequently they do it. They are saying they can’t document it because it happens so often. And second of all how is writing a short report about the fact that you brought a loaded firearm to somebody’s head hindering you in the performance of your duty to protect and serve the public. I don’t buy it.

Rodriguez: Does the consent decree address that issue?

Van Brunt: It’s being litigated actually so this draft decree does not include language about that. The AG wants it in there, the city doesn’t. So it’s going back before Judge Dow who’s overseeing the case.

Rodriguez: Interesting. You said in the introduction, in your long and continuingly storied career you’re involved in the Jon Burge scandal and all of that. So Chicago in addition to all of its other reputations has that history

Van Brunt: It does.

00:22:04

Rodriguez: of corruption.

Van Brunt: It does.

Rodriguez: Deeply embedded corruption in, to what extent is that a continuing problem and I guess the second part of that two-part question is to what extent does a consent decree get at you know the roots of corruption in Chicago?

Van Brunt: Well I already talked about police investigations, how that’s been a problem from a, for a long time. The old OPS, Office of Professional Standards was an agency that really helped cover up the Burge scandal. It gave way to the embattled IPRA which was what was in effect during the Laquan McDonald shooting. It also had many flaws, all of which were pointed out by the DOJ when it came here about its inept investigations, covering up for police, failure to do actual you know delving into police reporting of uses of force. So the fact that there was no accountability system in place for so long has really allowed this culture of impunity to continue.

00:23:04 COPA, you know we have greater hopes for COPA, but we that’s why we think we need a really robust civilian board and civilian entity that is completely removed from the city to have true independence. The other real big problem I will say over the years has been the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office. They have been complicit in so much of the misconduct that’s happened over many, many, many decades. And Kim Fox, our newest state’s attorney is trying to make changes and I applaud her for that. But one huge issue is that the state’s attorney’s office would not you know they would not bring to the attention of higher-ups officers who lied on the stand, officers who committed constitutional violations in interrogation rooms. They would actually sit by and watch those interrogation tactics be used.

00:24:00

Rodriguez: These were cover-ups or just or something more

Van Brunt: Yeah.

Rodriguez: more passive than that, just

Van Brunt: No actually active cover-ups. We’ve sued many times the state’s attorneys who were involved in the Felony Review Unit which is the unit that’s in the police stations. They are supposed to approve charges in felony cases as the name suggests. And many of them were in the interrogation rooms while police officers were using physical abuse, psychological abuse, coercive tactics to get especially kids to confess to crimes they didn’t commit. Felony review officers were present during Burge torture, they never said anything, and not only that, they testified falsely under oath at trial subsequently to help convict the people who falsely confessed. So the state’s attorney’s office was complicit and a really positive change would be to see the eradication of the Felony Review Unit which I think has been a huge problem in this city.

Rodriguez: How do you and your colleagues at the McArthur Justice Center prioritize in your litigation and your policy efforts the various issues, you’ve touched on many and there are many others that are involved in the criminal justice system.

00:25:11 You have lawsuits pending against the Cook County Sheriff’s Office right, there are lawsuits and activity with respect to, that we work in all, in various programs in the Blum Legal Clinic here at Northwestern with regard to false confessions.

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: Right and eyewitness testimony.

Van Brunt: Yep.

Rodriguez: DNA evidence, then there’s of course the sentencing issues and I mean that it seems limitless, right from the

Van Brunt: Yeah.

Rodriguez: very beginning to the end.

Van Brunt: It really is.

Rodriguez: Policing being the beginning of the process.

Van Brunt: Yeah.

Rodriguez: How do you think about the priorities given what are the worst problems in our system?

Van Brunt: I think of it, at least personally, is having a de-incarceration focus. So we work on policing as you say it’s the front end of the criminal justice system, and I also do work to try to reform pre-trial detention, cash bail.

00:26:03 We do work on parole revocation to make sure fewer people get locked up while they’re on parole and that they have due process while they do it. So really we try to attack every phase of the criminal pipeline or the justice pipeline so to speak to make sure fewer people are funneled into it. Because you know Illinois’ prisons are woefully overcrowded. And a lot of people are there who shouldn’t be, and even innocent people as our lawsuits can attest to.

Rodriguez: How do you, if I can jump in on this, how do you confront the issue I think it was a prominent law professor who coined the phrase the new Jim Crow.

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: Right the issues that are so central

Van Brunt: Michelle Alexander.

Rodriguez: Michelle Alexander.

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: About race.

Van Brunt: Right I mean that’s the heart of everything we do. Racial justice isn’t a separate category of litigation for us, it’s all our litigation. You know black and Hispanic people are overrepresented in police arrests, in pre-trial detention, in denials of bail, in prisons, in parole.

00:27:03 I mean it just is everywhere and it’s throughout the system. So every single case we bring I really can’t think of one that didn’t address racial inequities in the criminal justice system. It’s a major goal of our organization.

Rodriguez: To bring it back to the consent decree, what parts of the consent decree implicate issues like that, and by that I mean for example diversity on police forces, training for unconscious bias

Van Brunt: Right.

Rodriguez: and other kinds of issues.

Van Brunt: Right you know I’ve talked to Destiny Piri a lot, a fellow

Rodriguez: Our colleague at Northwestern.

Van Brunt: a colleague at Northwestern who  is really just the forefront of the world on, the work on implicit bias. And implicit bias as part of it for sure, doing training on implicit bias, but also explicit bias which is very, very present still in the CPD. There are many provisions related to impartial policing, specifically how officers should not choose specific neighborhoods to police based on the racial demographic.

00:28:01 The south and west sides which are primarily black and Hispanic are woefully overpoliced.

Rodriguez: Woefully overpoliced.

Van Brunt: Overpoliced.

Rodriguez: I have to put on my devil’s advocate hat here

Van Brunt: Yeah.

Rodriguez: and say overpoliced but the problems of crime and violence are just absolutely say, I mean I can’t think of hyperbole enough right to make the point that those are communities that are suffering extraordinary violence.

Van Brunt: It’s true but all my clients will tell you, my clients in every case I have, they walk out their door, they get stopped by a police, they walk down the street, they get stopped by police, they’re asked their name, they’re checked, name checked, they’re thrown into a squad car and driven around, they’re asked if they have weapons.

Rodriguez: Like driving while black or walking while black.

Van Brunt: Walking while black, I mean it is, it’s harassment and it’s constant and its unending. So yes there is violence but you know I gave you my reasons for what I think contributes to that.

Rodriguez: Sure. Is that the other

Van Brunt: And you just don’t see that on the north side of Chicago.

S: I don’t want to put words in your mouth but is that the, is that maybe the flipside of community policing is that

Van Brunt: Yes.

Rodriguez: Community policing may be overrated as a tactic on that?

00:29:02

Van Brunt: Yes. Nail on head, Dan. I think community policing is a risky venture. One of the things the consent decree does is try to increase positive communications and you know interactions between police and the community. We think that’s the wrong approach. We think you really just need to survey community members for what they want and figure out what policing should look like from their standpoint. Increasing positive interactions actually often leads to more arrests, more citations, more prison time. So if we really want to change things, increasing police presence, increasing the number of police I don’t think that’s the answer.

Rodriguez: So if you put a crystal ball, we use our crystal ball and look at let’s say three years from now, consent decree’s inked, it’s implemented in good faith.

Van Brunt: Yep.

Rodriguez: What does, what would be the measure of success from you and your organization’s vantage point say three to five years from now?

Van Brunt: Well I mentioned community views.

00:30:02 We think a community survey should be a big part of this decree. Community satisfaction with what’s happening in their neighborhoods, more attention paid to development and job growth and better schools than policing in their neighborhoods. Transparency measures are a huge part of it. Do we actually know what’s going on in the police force and do we actually have access to data showing these reforms that the city is supposedly, and I’m sure will posit are happening. We’re going to have an independent monitor with this consent decree. That monitor, if he or she and his or her team are truly effective, will really make public what reforms are taking place. And we’ll just have a lot less violence. We won’t have shootings caused by officers firing weapons at fleeing people. We won’t have kids tasered in schools. We won’t have the day-to-day brutal violence that we see on the south and west sides between police and teenagers.

00:31:06 That kind of thing will end and we’ll have true accountability for the repeat offenders in CPD. you know we’ll see transformation, that will be really the sign of success.

Rodriguez: Great, well I want to thank you on two different levels. I certainly want to thank you for being my guest today but I also want to thank you on behalf of the community of Chicago for your efforts and the efforts of your colleagues of

Van Brunt: Thanks, Dan.

Rodriguez: on the part of the MacArthur Justice Center for this incredible work that you do on this litigation, and other litigations in the past, so thank you for that.

Van Brunt: I really appreciate it, thanks for having me.

Rodriguez: So thank you this Alexa Van Brunt for joining us today on Planet Lex, this is Dan Rodriguez from, broadcasting for the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.

00:31:49 File end

Continue Reading