The board on Tuesday rejected a motion brought by the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, which sought to move 22 disciplinary cases from the board to an independent arbitrator, following a summer ruling that opened the door for such a shift.
Fraternal Order of Police
The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7’s political action committee made an in-kind contribution of approximately $10,000 to the campaign of Julian “Jumpin’” Perez, who used those funds to pay for the flyers.
Under a new policy announced Tuesday, Chicago Police officers will get at least one day off every week. The policy was announced approximately 24 hours after the inspector general released an analysis that determined that more than 1,000 officers were scheduled to work 11 or more consecutive days between April 1 and May 31.
Inspector General Deborah Witzburg conducted the inquiry after Supt. David Brown’s decision to repeatedly cancel officers’ scheduled days off during the historically violent summer months erupted into controversy.
The city’s 2022 spending plan increased the Chicago Police Department’s budget for counseling services by 73% to allow the city to hire an additional 11 clinical therapists — enough to assign one clinician to work full time in each of the city’s 22 police districts.
After three Chicago Police Department employees died by suicide in recent weeks, Police Superintendent David Brown is defending his decision to cancel days off during the historically violent summer months.
It is the second time in six months that alderpeople have called an emergency meeting of the City Council to publicly push back against Lightfoot’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate. The alderpeople demanded the session one day after the deadline for Chicago Police Department members to get at least the first dose of the COVID-19 vaccine.
Employees who are not vaccinated will not be paid and may face additional “disciplinary action, up to and including termination,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s office said in a statement Friday evening.
Chicago Police officers must be vaccinated against COVID-19, an arbitrator ruled Wednesday, handing Mayor Lori Lightfoot a significant victory.
The ruling gives the unions’ employees until Dec. 31 to get their first shot of one of the three approved COVID-19 vaccines, and until Jan. 31 to get the second dose of the Moderna or Pfizer BioNtech vaccines.
“Everyone is always welcome downtown, everyone is welcome to enjoy all our city has to offer,” Police Superintendent David Brown said. “Chicago belongs to all of us, but if you come downtown or anywhere else, you engage in disorderly conduct or other crimes, you will be arrested.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot issued a statement Wednesday night saying the city had dropped its lawsuit at her discretion following an increase in compliance among Chicago police officers with the city’s COVID-19 vaccine mandate.
A day after he announced his intention to leave the department, John Catanzara — the first-term president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 — posted a picture of his personnel action request on his Facebook page, which shows that he has indeed retired from the CPD.
The stunning announcement comes after John Catanzara, the head of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, spent hours testifying at his own termination hearing Monday.
“It is not surprising to me that he did not want to face accountability for his own conduct,” Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.
More than 4,900 members of the Chicago Police Department are not fully vaccinated against COVID-19 or have refused to disclose their vaccination status to city officials, one month after the deadline set by Mayor Lori Lightfoot, according to data released Monday by city officials.
