SPRINGFIELD — Attorneys for the union representing Chicago police officers and the city’s Department of Law squared off before the Illinois Supreme Court on Thursday to argue the most significant police misconduct-related case in the city’s modern consent decree era — one that will decide the future of disciplinary proceedings involving Chicago Police Department officers accused of serious misconduct and the public’s right of access.
More Top Picks Best Blue Light Blocking Screen Protectors For Laptops
Matt Pierce, the Fraternal Order of Police attorney who delivered Thursday’s argument, contended that CPD officers, as public employees in a collective bargaining unit, are entitled to have the most serious discipline cases heard and decided by a third-party arbitrator. Those hearings are inherently private, and there is no existing law that would force them to be open to the public.
Further, there would be a cascading effect impacting unions across the state if the high court ruled that those proceedings should be open, Pierce said.
“If this court looks to the past practices of a single municipality … to set the policies for the entire state, then you are allowing one employer, effectively, to dictate public policy for every worker in the state,” Pierce said. “The public policy of the state of Illinois, it cannot be city-specific, it cannot be employer-specific, it cannot be union-specific.”
The oral arguments before the Illinois Supreme Court came after more than three years of paused proceedings in the most egregious cases of alleged misconduct by CPD officers.
City attorneys argued that the city’s long-standing practice of adjudicating those cases by the Chicago Police Board should remain in place. To allow those proceedings to go to arbitration would violate the public’s First Amendment right to access and would run counter to the goals of the ongoing federal consent decree that was spurred by the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald and the ensuing fallout.
“Chicago’s facts matter,” Assistant Corporation Counsel Aya Barnea told the justices on Thursday. “The fact that we’ve done it this way for 60 years, the fact that there is a deep distrust among many members of the community.”
“The consent decree is formal recognition by the state that public access and public engagement with CPD is of critical importance,” Barnea added.
After about an hour, the seven justices took the case under advisement. A ruling from the court could be delivered before the end of the year.
The impasse dates back to summer 2023, when the City Council bifurcated the new collective bargaining agreement with the FOP. In negotiations before the contract was approved, an arbitrator ruled that CPD officers, as public sector employees in a collective bargaining unit, may have their most serious disciplinary cases heard and decided in private by a third party.
Before the court fight was launched, Edwin Benn, the arbitrator who oversaw 2023 contract negotiations between the city and FOP, warned the City Council that any attempt to undermine his award to the union would be futile.
As the delay has languished, scores of accused police officers and alleged victims of misconduct have been forced to wait.
“Officers should not have to spend years with serious charges hanging over them. Alleged victims should not have to wait years for resolution,” Chicago Police Board President Kyle Cooper said last month. “And Chicago residents should not have to wait years to learn whether serious allegations against a public servant have been proven. This delay serves no one.”
More Top Picks Best Slip On Walking Shoes With Arch Support
In the last three years, the city’s longtime process for adjudicating those cases has been largely paused as the legal fight between the city and FOP, the union representing rank-and-file police officers, wound its way through the state judiciary.
In briefs submitted to the court, attorneys for the FOP have argued that the city is seeking to “create a brand-new public policy that would require the City, its employees, and their labor unions to open their grievance arbitration proceedings to public attendance for the first time in history.”
Attorneys for the city, meanwhile, say the union’s effort to remove those hearings from public view flies in the face of CPD’s ongoing reform efforts and would undermine confidence in the city’s Police Department.
“Transparency, when the most serious police misconduct is on the line, has been crucial in Chicago, where the policing landscape is extraordinarily complex and many residents harbor mistrust towards police,” city attorneys wrote in recent filings. “Public hearings build trust and cooperation between CPD and the people it serves.”
Attorneys for the union countered that “these are political arguments about what those groups believe that the public policy of the State of Illinois should be, not statements of what the State’s well-defined public policy actually is.”
As the lawsuit appeal process has played out, officers have retained the option to have their cases heard and decided by the Police Board. So far, just four of the 31 CPD officers currently facing charges have opted for a board hearing.
In the meantime, work has continued for investigators with the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and CPD’s bureau of internal affairs despite no clear adjudication method.
A Tribune review of police misconduct data found that, since September 2023, COPA has sustained findings of misconduct in more than 650 investigations. Of those, 22 related to police shootings.
Meanwhile, the bureau of internal affairs has sustained findings of misconduct in another 463 inquiries, records show.