A significant reason the Chicago Police Department faces problems, a reason that is routinely ignored, is that internal politics drive promotions at the leadership level. That results in leaders who lack the competency, experience and often the character needed to effectively oversee the city’s largest and most important agency.
CPD’s federal consent decree overlooks the leadership issue. It’s unfortunate that we needed a consent decree to tell us that Chicago police need working cameras and Tasers, sufficient supervisor-to-officer ratios, ongoing and redundant training and a training center.
If the objective of the decree is to help the Police Department deliver effective, constitutional, community-based policing while curtailing poor decisions and rooting out bad actors in its ranks, the agreement must have a structure that removes politics from policing and ensure superior professionalism and leadership.
CPD will never experience transformative change unless it’s insulated from politics and supported by an infrastructure that promotes and sustains excellence. The city needs a superintendent selection process that allows for serious vetting by distinguished public safety professionals, as well as the filling of all exempt ranks — department chiefs and district commanders, most notably — with officers who have earned promotion and more responsibility by virtue of their experience, training and record.
This process must apply all the way down to front-line supervisors, where the rubber meets the day-to-day, shift-to-shift road. Promotions to sergeant, lieutenant and even training officer should be based on length of time in a position (time-in-grade), additional training and job performance. Promotions should be earned, not awarded based on who an officer knows or by misguided quota systems that lack rigorous standards. In other words, professionalism, not politics, and performance, not patronage, should determine who rises up the ranks.
We need to heed the words and actions of former Los Angeles police Chief Charlie Beck during his too-short stint as Chicago’s interim police superintendent. Among many other reform measures, Beck immediately suspended the so-called merit promotion system that has been responsible for much of the inadequacies in the CPD command structure. Unfortunately, Superintendent David Brown, who followed Beck and recently exited, reinstituted it.
Whatever the perceived marginal benefits, so-called merit promotion should be limited to no more than 10% of promotions at each rank, with only officers who have attained time-in-grade eligibility based exclusively on field time. Driving a desk should not be a pathway for promotion.
Recommendations for such promotions should come only from an independent board of distinguished officers in the field. Officers with little field experience who have spent their years in administrative positions should not suddenly make sergeant. Time-in-grade means real time in the field.
Political leaders in their clumsy attempt to bring greater diversity to the system have only diminished its quality. They have made the rank and file cynical about the promotion process and created a crisis in confidence in CPD leadership. A Police Department can be built that reflects the community while not sacrificing quality and generates an esprit de corp.
A CPD command and general staff school would guide police training, strategy and tactics. It could be modeled on the best practices of other police and federal leadership training schools, such as the National War College and Command and General Staff College, which not only guide military training but also provide the rigorous schooling required of military officers before they can join the senior ranks.
The school would use rigorous training programs to develop future CPD leaders while developing a training program to recruit a new cadre of police training officers who would be selected based on training and experience and compensated accordingly. (Think of the military rank of corporal.)
A command school could work with local high schools and colleges to create a feeder system that would bring in recruits from all areas of the city.
CPD could partner with Chicago Public Schools’ military academies and ROTC programs and a revived Chicago Police and Fire Training Academy (CPFTA), which is also open to private school students, to improve the quality of the police recruitment pipeline.
These schools should be pressed into service to help groom future police officers. The thousands of students enrolled annually in our military academies and ROTC programs are overwhelmingly Black and Latino, and a large percentage are female. If the curriculum is aligned with City Colleges and local university courses, these schools and programs could also feed the city’s first responder departments, similarly to how ROTC and JROTC programs serve the military.
The veterans and line of duty preference in hiring would continue, with stepped-up efforts to recruit veterans and award children of slain police officers.
With these pipelines in place, there would be no need for CPD’s CPS graduate hiring preference, which produces neither the numbers nor the quality candidates the department needs. The pipelines would also ensure future police candidates are well schooled in areas critical to effective policing.
Partnering with the military academies and ROTC programs and expanding and improving the high school CPFTA program would ensure that the next generation of police and first responder candidates make up a diverse pool of local, motivated and accomplished people who are well prepared to join the ranks.
Like the military, if future promotions are based on experience, performance, continuous professional development and accomplishment, CPD will be assured that its future leadership is diverse and of the highest quality.
Paul Vallas is an adviser for the Illinois Policy Institute. He ran for Chicago mayor this year and in 2019 and was previously budget director for the city and CEO of Chicago Public Schools.
Submit a letter, of no more than 400 words, to the editor here or email [email protected].