Mayor Brandon Johnson Johnson declined Monday to say whether Chicago police officers should continue making traffic stops for minor violations to find evidence of an unrelated crime.

City officials agreed in June 2023 to expand the consent decree to include when officers can stop and search Chicagoans, which are officially known as investigatory stops.

The task force, formed in February, has met twice, and the next meeting is set for Wednesday, Deputy Mayor Garien Gatewood said.

“Look, we have inherited quite the mess,” Mayor Brandon Johnson said, emphasizing that many of the lawsuits allege misconduct that occurred decades ago.

Ald. Gilbert Villegas plans to invoke a rarely used rule at Wednesday’s Chicago City Council meeting to force representatives of Mayor Brandon Johnson to answer questions publicly about their plan to handle police misconduct lawsuits.

Ald. Jeanette Taylor (20th Ward) said the program is “absolutely” racially motivated. “Unless you’re Stevie Wonder or Helen Keller, you can see it,” she said.

LaKenya White, who served as a director of investigations for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, will replace Andrea Kersten, who resigned as the chief administrator under fire a month ago.

Andrea Kersten recently resigned as chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, known as COPA. The move happened after the city’s police oversight board issued a letter to Kersten saying it was planning to take a vote of no confidence in her leadership.

“He didn’t deserve 16 shots,” said Charlotta Pritchett, Timothy Glaze’s partner of seven years. “I can’t find any justification in that.”

Inspector General Deborah Witzburg urged Mayor Brandon Johnson in July to form a task force as part of an effort to “implement a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to preventing, identifying and eliminating extremist and anti-government activities and associations within CPD.”

Civilian Office of Police Accountability Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten much of the last 12 months at odds with the city’s top cop and the head of the city’s police oversight board.

The latest survey from the monitoring team charged with enforcing the consent decree found that Chicagoans’ confidence in CPD and the reform effort is exceedingly low, despite a reform push that began six years ago.

The proposed policy “impermissibly allows officers to use race, ethnicity, and other protected characteristics when making decisions on whether to stop, frisk or search people, in violation of federal and state law,” according to the coalition led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.

During the past six years taxpayers have spent at least $472.4 million to resolve police misconduct lawsuits, setting a new record, according to a WTTW News analysis.

A Chicago Police Department spokesperson told WTTW News in a statement the department does not “utilize quotas” for traffic stops.

In all, the settlements approved Wednesday account for nearly half of the city’s annual $82 million budget to cover the cost of police misconduct lawsuits.