Politics
Chicago’s Compliance With Consent Decree ‘Unsatisfying’: Federal Judge
(Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
City officials’ efforts to comply with the federal court order requiring the Chicago Police Department to stop routinely violating residents’ constitutional rights are “unsatisfying,” the federal judge overseeing the reform effort said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer’s remarks came during the first status hearing in the federal court case since WTTW News and ProPublica reported that the effort to implement the reforms required by the federal court order known as the consent decree is at a tipping point, with advocates for police reform losing faith in the process and increasingly concerned the opportunity for lasting reform is slipping away.
“The level of compliance is unsatisfying to the public,” Pallmeyer said, calling for an “aggressive” reform effort. “I am determined that we will be seeing good progress ... in 2025. Let’s accelerate the progress.”
CPD has fully met just 9% of the court order’s requirements in the more than five years since it took effect, according to the most recent report by the monitoring team.
Read More: In Five Years, Chicago Has Barely Made Progress on Its Court-Ordered Police Reforms. Here’s Why.
Pallmeyer’s statements represent the first time she has expressed concerns about the lack of significant advances in the push to implement the consent decree.
Pallmeyer said she was pleased Mayor Brandon Johnson had agreed, under fire, to reverse deep cuts to the number of employees charged with implementing the consent decree.
Johnson reversed course after Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul and the team monitoring the city’s compliance with the binding agreement warned the cuts would make it impossible for the city to comply with the requirements of the court order.
If Johnson’s cuts had been enacted by the City Council and made permanent, it would have dealt a “devastating blow” to the reform effort, attorney Maggie Hickey said during a Nov. 13 court hearing on consent decree compliance. Hickey is in charge of the monitoring team.
Hickey said Tuesday she was pleased the cuts had been reversed.
The monitoring team — which is made up of lawyers and public safety specialists — has the power to recommend to the judge that the city and CPD be punished for failing to meet the terms of the consent decree. While it has repeatedly highlighted the slow pace of reforms in its reports, the monitoring team has never demanded sanctions, despite pleas from the coalition of reform groups.
The mayor’s revised budget proposal earmarks $8.9 million to reverse deep cuts to the number of employees charged with implementing the consent decree, bowing to intense pressure from advocates for police reform.
Those estimates assume that the employees who fill 162 positions set to be restored to the city’s 2025 spending plan will be paid significantly less than the average cost of a Chicago Police Department officer, who earns $150,000 annually, including benefits.
That cost of restoring the positions will be covered by an expansion of the city’s automated speed camera network.
If approved by the Chicago City Council, city officials will earmark an additional $208.8 million for the reform effort in 2025, documents show. Between 2020 and 2024, the city set aside $667 million to implement the consent decree, but failed to spend at least a quarter of those funds every year, according to a WTTW News analysis.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
