A federal judge Thursday approved a historic consent decree meant to bring significant reform to the Chicago Police Department.
U.S. District Judge Robert Dow entered the 16-page order as part of the lawsuit originally brought by former Attorney General Lisa Madigan against the city of Chicago.
“The State of Illinois and the City of Chicago have entered into this consent decree with the goal of using it as a vehicle for solving the common problems identified in the complaint in a manner that defuses tension, respects differences of opinion and over time produces a ‘lawful, fair, reasonable, and adequate’ result for everyone involved,” Dow wrote. “Let us begin.”
Dow wrote that the effective date of the decree will be the date on which the court enters an order appointing the monitor and the monitoring team. The court continues to work with the parties on the monitor selection process and anticipates that it will be completed no later than March 1, 2019.
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The cost of hiring a legal monitoring team to enforce the consent decree — a maximum of $2.85 million a year — has drawn some criticism, the judge acknowledged.
“This is a large expenditure of public money by any measure,” Dow wrote. “Yet it is a tiny fraction of what the city has spent paying out judgments and settlements, not to mention lawyers (both outside and inside counsel), for civil rights litigation over the past few decades.
“Indeed, had a monitoring team been billing the city at the rate of $2.85 million per year since 1790, when Jean Baptiste Point du Sable first set up camp at the mouth of the Chicago River, the total bill of $652.65 million would not equal the city’s litigation-related payouts in civil rights actions since 2004,” the judge noted.
The possibility of a consent decree, while not a foregone conclusion, has hovered over Chicago for the past three years amid its difficult conversation about police reform. Following the court-ordered release in 2015 of video depicting the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke, Madigan called for a federal civil rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department.
The McDonald video rocked Chicago politically, and Van Dyke wound up facing criminal charges.
In January 2017, then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch came to Chicago to announce the Justice Department had found widespread constitutional abuses by police. She and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration also agreed to seek a consent decree. Still, the political winds were changing.
President Donald Trump took office later that month and installed a new attorney general, Jeff Sessions, who quickly made dismissive comments about the Chicago investigation performed under his predecessor. Eventually, Emanuel joined forces with Madigan, and they pursued a consent decree on their own through a lawsuit filed by Madigan against the city.
The two sides revealed a draft of the consent decree last summer, after roughly a year of negotiations.
A few months later, a jury found Van Dyke guilty of second-degree murder in McDonald’s death.
Dow held a two-day hearing last fall to take public comment about the proposal in the ceremonial courtroom on the 25th floor of the Dirksen Federal Courthouse in the Loop. The judge heard from Chicagoans from all walks of life — from Black Lives Matter activists to the Chicago police officers to ministers.
That hearing gave everyday people a rare opportunity to be heard by a federal judge on a contentious issue that has long troubled Chicago. Several people dropped names during that hearing like Fred Hampton, Jon Burge and Van Dyke.
In a joint statement, Emanuel and Chicago Police Supt. Eddie Johnson praised the judge’s order.
“This is a historic day for Chicago and a step towards significant, lasting change,” the statement reads.
“This agreement builds on the strength of the reforms underway at the Chicago Police Department today, ensures there are no U-turns on that road to reform and will help secure a safer and stronger future for our city. After seven separate attempts at police reform in the last century, Chicago now has an enforceable agreement that will stand the test of time.”
In statement Madigan noted: “For the first time, Chicago has an enforceable, detailed plan to change police practices and ensure constitutional and safe policing for residents and officers.”
The city’s police union has vehemently opposed the consent decree. But its attempts to intervene in the case have been denied by Dow and the 7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, who have said the Fraternal Order of Police waited too long to try to get involved.
