The Office of the Illinois Attorney General on Tuesday called for the formation of a new law enforcement task force to investigate shootings by Chicago Police officers.
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After more than seven years of growing compliance with a federal consent decree steering department reform, the city and CPD have still not adhered to “one of the most significant remaining projects” that “goes to the core of the consent decree,” Chris Wells, the chief of OAG’s public interest division, said during a Tuesday status hearing.
“Public confidence depends in significant part on who is conducting these types of investigations,” Wells said. “An agency should not investigate a death that occurs at the hands of one of its own.”
Paragraph 492 of the voluminous court order mandates that “Criminal investigations into the actions of any CPD member relating to any ‘officer-involved death’ will comply with the Police and Community Relations Improvement Act.”
“The City will use best efforts to ensure that a ‘law enforcement agency,’ as that term is defined under PCRIA, will conduct such investigations,” the consent decree states. “The ‘law enforcement agency’ conducting criminal investigations into the actions of any CPD member relating to any ‘officer-involved death’ will have substantial experience and expertise in criminal homicide investigations.”
At present, shootings by CPD officers, fatal and non-fatal, are investigated by CPD detectives assigned to the department’s Investigative Response Team as well as the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. COPA’s civilian staff is charged with investigating if use-of-force incidents fall within CPD policy, though the agency can make referrals to outside prosecutors.
Since 2019, the city has seen, on average, about 14 police shootings per year.
“The city of Chicago and CPD can not achieve compliance with PCRIA on their own,” Wells said.
Wells also mentioned the Illinois State Police and the Cook County Sheriff’s Police as potential solutions, but said “the most likely option” would be “a combination of resources from multiple law enforcement agencies assembled into a task force.”
Interim CPD Superintendent Fred Waller cheered the idea of an outside task force brought in to investigate those incidents.
“To have a task force that allows us to have transparent, external investigations of police shootings, that’s something that we’ve always looked for,” Waller said Tuesday.
U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer noted the requirement “involves not only the consent decree, but plain language of state law.”
The Fraternal Order of Police, the union representing rank-and-file CPD officers and detectives, has long been a vocal critic of COPA’s civilian investigators. Still, FOP president John Catanzara questioned where funding and manpower for any task force would come from. Further, he told the Tribune that the requirements of Paragraph 492 appeared to already be met.
“I just don’t get where Maggie’s coming from,” Catanzara said of the monitoring team. “I mean, the current (expletive) paragraph is being met by the current setup, there’s no violation of it.”
Tuesday’s hearing came a few days after the consent decree monitoring team, led by Maggie Hickey, released its 14th semi-annual report on CPD’s adherence to reform mandates.
As of June 30, the city achieved preliminary compliance in 99% of monitorable consent-decree obligations, meaning the police department has established specific policies to reach reform goals. Secondary compliance — when training on those policies is implemented — has been reached in 78% of the decree’s requirements.