CHICAGO _ The ACLU of Illinois filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday alleging the city's police reform efforts have neglected deep-seated issues on how officers are trained to handle people with mental illnesses or developmental disabilities.
Sounding a familiar tone already alleged in other pending litigation, the 53-page suit filed in U.S. District Court alleged the Chicago Police Department has a decadeslong record of mistreating minority citizens, with blacks and Hispanics disproportionately affected by shootings and other police violence.
The suit alleged the brutality was "magnified for people with disabilities." Nationally, an estimated 33 percent to 50 percent of those killed by police have a disability, with approximately 25 percent of people killed having a mental illness, the suit alleged. The problem also extends to police use of non-lethal force, including with Tasers, the ACLU contended.
"The City of Chicago deploys officers armed with guns and Tasers but not deployed with critical de-escalation skills, and in doing so subjects residents, police officers, and bystanders to harm," the suit alleged. "When people with disabilities are subjected to CPD's use of force, the role that their disability played is often either ignored or cited to blame the victim."
The suit seeks a permanent injunction to block the city from continuing its current policies and practices "of using unlawful force against black and Latino people and individuals with disabilities." It also seeks to have all court costs covered by taxpayers.
The ACLU's litigation comes after two other lawsuits were filed against the city in recent months urging Mayor Rahm Emanuel to allow a federal judge to oversee reforms within the Police Department following heavy criticism from a U.S. Department of Justice investigation into Chicago's police practices.
The 164-page report, made public earlier this year, blasted the Police Department for its poor training of officers, lack of officer supervision and failures in adequately disciplining officers for misconduct.
The investigation was prompted by the court-ordered release in 2015 of video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black teen Laquan McDonald 16 times a year earlier. The video sparked widespread protests, the firing of Chicago's police superintendent and calls for widespread reforms. Van Dyke is awaiting trial on first-degree murder charges.
After the Justice Department released its findings in January, Emanuel signed an agreement with then-President Barack Obama's Justice Department to seek a consent decree in which a federal judge and court-appointed monitor enforce reforms. By May, however, Emanuel was trying to reach an out-of-court agreement with President Donald Trump's administration, which has signaled its opposition to court oversight of police departments.
Until Madigan announced her lawsuit in late August, Emanuel had shown little sign of backing off his talks with the Trump administration and argued such a deal would get the same results as a consent decree.
In June, a group of civil rights lawyers filed suit against the city on behalf of six African-American plaintiffs who allege they were victims of excessive force and other abuses at the hands of Chicago police officers. The federal lawsuit was filed days after Emanuel had backed off from a pledge to have a judge monitor the Police Department's reform efforts.
Since then, city attorneys have asked a judge to dismiss the case, arguing the plaintiffs' claims were "moot" because the Emanuel administration already had instituted police reforms that were recommended by the Justice Department and the mayoral-appointed Police Accountability Task Force a year earlier.
