Mayor Brandon Johnson’s decision to put the brakes on City Council approval of a key part of a new police contract was politically pragmatic and a win for accountable government — and also a legally contestable maneuver that may not succeed in the end.
Welcome to life under a new mayor willing to risk defeat in pursuit of police accountability and his progressive agenda.
The contract with the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge No. 7 has been under negotiation for nearly half a decade. It’s so complex, and the issues so fraught, that the city and FOP have tackled it in parts.
Agreement on the main economic terms was reached two years ago. The first major steps toward reforms required by a court-monitored consent decree were hammered out separately, too.
Negotiators have made further progress on those issues since then. And Johnson will take the proposed final contract — including a hefty pay raise of roughly 20% over the next four years — to City Council for approval.
This is good news. The pay increases are rich, true. But gains made in other areas justify approval of the main body of the agreement.
For example, an approach to homicide investigations modeled after a Los Angeles Police Department approach mobilizing unified teams of detectives until cases are solved could help address the CPD’s woeful record on unsolved murders.
Next comes the legally tricky part — the one involving an arbitrator’s ruling that seeks to take major police disciplinary proceedings behind closed doors. Johnson has decided to contest it by breaking it out for a single-topic City Council vote.
The mayor is offering the ruling up for consideration while also asking Chicago’s progressive-minded council to vote the measure down.
The issue at hand is the FOP demand that police officers facing suspensions of a year or longer, and outright dismissals, should have a right to seek arbitration rather than facing discipline from the Chicago Police Board, as currently required.
This is a distinction with a big difference: Police Board hearings are held in public, with public access to records created in the process. Arbitrations, on the other hand, would be held in secret, with a possibility that even the outcome of the dispute might not be fully disclosed.
The mayor was right to single out this vitally important matter. At stake was his campaign promise to hold Chicago police accountable for misconduct. In the balance, too, hung a commitment to transparency on police disciplinary proceedings — without which public confidence in Chicago’s police may never fully be earned.
Arbitrator Edwin Benn has ruled that Chicago cops have a right to arbitrate major disciplinary cases, with all the mystery and secrecy attendant to that approach. He fashions his ruling as one in favor of the rule of law, over “slogans and catch phrases” such as “behind closed doors.”
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Benn’s air of certitude is undermined by evident flaws in his logic and willful dismissal of relevant facts.
Observing that the existing FOP contract allows for secret arbitration on suspensions of fewer than 365 days, Benn claims there is “no reason” secrecy can’t apply for suspensions exceeding a year — and outright dismissals, too.
Well, yes, there is a reason: Those major cases are the most extreme ones. The alleged conduct is a threat both to public safety and to public confidence in the CPD. Dismissal cases come to the board only by referral from the police superintendent.
In such major matters, the public’s right to know what happens in the proceedings, and why, should outweigh the privacy concerns of the cops in question.
Imagine if a cop accused of an unjustified shooting — in cases like the police shootings of Laquan McDonald or Adam Toledo — were exonerated in a secret hearing. This might ignite public outrage and destroy confidence in the system of police accountability.
No fussy adherence to the privacy rules of arbitration can justify such a risk. Justice is at stake. So is big money: Hundreds of millions paid out by the city in recent years to people victimized by rogue cops.
Benn claims to be following the rules of arbitration in his finding. One of them, he notes, sanctions changes such as those sought by the FOP only when “the existing condition is broken.”
The FOP has made no such showing, and a dissent to Benn’s ruling by the city’s lawyer demonstrates the current condition is anything but broken. Just for starters, Police Board review of major disciplinary cases has been in effect for 12 contracts since first instituted in 1981, without challenge from the FOP.
From 2013 to 2017, half the 78 dismissal cases led to a separation, and 20% resulted in a not-guilty finding. From 2017 to 2021, cops were fired in 65% of the 32 dismissal cases. “Statistics like this are hardly the mark of a biased tribunal,” wrote Cicely Porter-Adams, the city’s chief labor negotiator.
As compared with unaccountable arbitrators, the board answers to the public. Previously appointed by the mayor, Police Board members under a 2021 law are now appointed by the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability — a panel appointed with input from Chicago voters, from districts designed to assure equitable representation citywide.
Benn also has the temerity to interpret his own ruling as one required under the new “Workers’ Rights Amendment” to the Illinois constitution, passed by referendum just last year.
This is rich: An unelected arbitrator, who built his legal practice representing the FOP and other trade unions in the 1980s, abrogating to himself the right to base a high-stakes ruling on his own reading of the state’s newest constitutional codicil.
Benn’s ruling, despite its flaws, could yet hold up if it goes to court. But Johnson is doing right by standing up for transparency, with an open approach to disciplinary hearings that has stood the test of time and brought a measure of accountability and justice to policing in Chicago.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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