Over a year ago the Justice Department launched a federal investigation into the Chicago Police Department following the shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald, the findings of which were published Friday and detail the extent of the department’s systemic failures in numerous areas. At a press conference, Attorney General Loretta Lynch said “CPD does not give its officers the training they need to do their jobs safely” and “officers exhibit poor discipline when discharging their weapons and engage in tactics that endanger themselves and public safety.”
The scathing report was already in the works when its predecessor, an investigation into the Ferguson, Missouri Police Department was released, with both reading like white papers that compliment the broader historical narrative of institutional inequality penned by civil rights attorney Michelle Alexander in The New Jim Crow. The Chicago report details common abuses of authority, among them foot chases that often ended in officers unreasonably shooting someone, tasers being used on individuals who posed no threat, and officers dropping known gang members off in rival neighborhoods when they refused to provide information. The report also found that “officers shoot at vehicles without justification and in contradiction to C.P.D. policy.”
In one case, an officer who responded to a trespassing call to find teenagers riding their bikes “pointed his gun at them, used profanity, and threatened to put their heads through a wall and to blow up their homes”, the report describes “The boys claim that the officer forced them to kneel and lie facedown, handcuffed together, leaving visible injuries on their knees and wrists.” The officer ended up receiving a five-day suspension and was never interviewed about the incident. In another case, an officer “handcuffed a 12-year-old Latino boy who was outside riding a bike under his father’s supervision” and when the child questioned what was happening the officer responded that he was “old enough to bang”, meaning engage in gang violence, despite no evidence for the boy’s guilt of any crime besides his race.
At Friday’s press conference, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel acknowledged progress that he says the city has already made, including body cameras and the most diverse command staff in the history of the Chicago Police Department. Despite his claim that the city is “already on the road to reform”, President Obama’s former chief-of-staff turned mayor also acknowledged the severity of the allegations in the report, calling it “sobering”. Emmanuel promised to cooperate with Justice Department initiated reforms moving forward; however, Trump’s nominee for Attorney General has criticized the consent decrees used by the federal government to initiate policing reform, arguing that they unfairly vilify officers and go too far. Responding to concerns that her efforts might be undone or halted once the new administration takes office, Lynch said that the negotiations would proceed “regardless of who sits atop the Justice Department” and Emmanuel assured Chicago that “We’re going to negotiate,” adding “I can’t negotiate, assuming Jeff Sessions gets confirmed, I can’t negotiate for him. But we’re going to be at the table.”
