CHICAGO _ In the 13 months since federal officials began a civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has made changes to police training, policy and discipline designed to repair a scandal-plagued force.
When the Justice Department finally emerged Friday, it included praise for some elements of initiatives that Emanuel pressed last year as he sought to get ahead of the investigation's findings.
On some of Emanuel's changes, though, federal officials concluded that the new policies had been rushed or were insufficient to solve the department's problems.
The hundreds of new Tasers the Police Department distributed came with ineffective training. New body cameras were hampered by "vague or confusing" directives on their use. And the city's ordinance creating a new civilian oversight agency fell short, in part by failing to limit cases in which officers can acknowledge misconduct in hopes of lighter discipline, the report concluded.
The investigation's findings offer a mixed assessment on just how much progress Emanuel and his police brass have made on overhauling the department since the release of video from Laquan McDonald's shooting death sparked protests and a push for reform. At a news conference on the report Friday, the mayor spent much of his time trying to boost public confidence in police while saying little about the victims of the systemic misconduct the investigation found to be long-standing.
And as President Barack Obama's top law enforcement officer and her deputies announced the report built on scathing evidence of cover-ups and negligent training, federal officials also complimented Emanuel _ Obama's first chief of staff _ as the mayor stood by.
Attorney General Loretta Lynch said Chicago has "not been standing still" as the Justice Department investigation progressed. U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon, meanwhile, praised city officials and others who "worked hard and thoughtfully" on reforms.
"In our report, we address each of those new measures, in some cases simply with applause because we agree with them and in other cases by pointing out how and where we find the new measures insufficient or inadequate," Fardon said. "Those critiques, while important, in no way detract from the reality that the city and CPD have leaned in and are pushing for change."
While emphasizing the steps he'd already taken, Emanuel said, "We're not going to rest on our laurels, because our work is not done."
One name not mentioned at Friday's news conference was that of McDonald, the African-American teenager whose videotaped shooting death in October 2014 sparked the federal investigation and the mayor's reforms.
Emanuel's administration fought for more than a year to avoid releasing the video _ which showed white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times, even as he lay on the ground _ and its court-ordered release in November 2015 led to weeks of street demonstrations rooted in decades of grievances over policing, particularly among black Chicagoans.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan promptly called for a federal civil rights investigation, which Emanuel initially opposed. He changed his mind after -Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton's call for such an investigation. Lynch announced the investigation later that month.
Friday's news conference, and Emanuel's approval for working toward a plan for court-enforced reforms, bring him full circle on the issue.
The Justice Department report paints a picture of a broken department where poorly trained officers routinely use force _ often against African-Americans and Latinos _ with little fear of discipline from the city's ineffective oversight systems. The department has tolerated racially discriminatory conduct among officers, the report found.
In their assessment, federal officials offered praise, sometimes qualified, for elements of Emanuel's initiatives, including building a new police oversight agency, revising the department's use-of-force policies and adding to the paltry training officers had previously received, among other moves.
But their report also contends that the Police Department's reforms might not last without court-enforced oversight. Along with Friday's announcement, Justice Department officials resolved a lingering question by announcing that Emanuel had agreed to negotiate a court-enforced consent decree, a tool federal authorities have used to force changes in other cities.
The filing of such a decree could be months away, however, and the future of federally enforced reform of local police departments is in question. Under Obama, the Justice Department was unusually active in intervening in local police matters as video-recorded shootings of African-Americans spurred protests nationwide.
But President-elect Donald Trump has supported aggressive law enforcement, and his nominee for attorney general, Sen. Jeff Sessions of Alabama, has voiced skepticism toward federal intervention into local policing.
Nonetheless, Emanuel has said his commitment to reforming the 12,000-officer department remains strong.
"I want to be clear: the Chicago Police Department, the city of Chicago is already on the road to reform, and there are no U-turns on that road," Emanuel said Friday.
In issuing their report, investigators criticized several of the changes Emanuel has made in the department over the past year.
After the McDonald scandal broke, Emanuel moved to expand the department's stock of Tasers by hundreds, and a departmental spokesman said earlier this year that every patrol officer responding to calls now has one of the devices, which deliver debilitating electrical jolts. City Hall cast its Taser expansion as an effort toward de-escalating tense encounters.
The Justice Department report, however, criticized the training that went with the rollout.
"Large numbers of officers were cycled through this important training quickly in order to meet a deadline set by the City, without proper curriculum, staff, or equipment," the report says. "This left many officers who completed the training uncomfortable with how to use Tasers effectively as a less-lethal force option _ the very skill the training was supposed to teach."
Similarly, Emanuel pushed the distribution of body cameras to officers citywide, but the Justice Department wrote that the department's policies remain "insufficient." CPD's directives on cameras are "vague or confusing," the report found.
"There is no policy directing supervisors as to when or whether they regularly review recordings to ensure proper use of the cameras and identify officer training opportunities or conduct concerns," the report states. "Further, current policy does not explicitly provide that an officer who deliberately fails to use his or her assigned body-cam properly will face discipline."
Justice officials also noted a case from the summer in which an officer wearing a body camera shot an unarmed teenager but the shooting "was inexplicably not captured on audio or video."
A centerpiece of Emanuel's efforts has been the replacement of the agency's notoriously ineffective civilian oversight agency, the Independent Police Review Authority. In October, the City Council passed an ordinance that will replace the agency with the Civilian Office of Police Oversight, which is intended to have more resources and wider latitude to conduct investigations.
The Justice Department concluded, however, that "gaps also appear to remain within this entity and through all other components of Chicago's accountability systems."
The report called out the review authority for its reliance on mediation, a type of plea bargaining in which officers acknowledge some misconduct, typically in exchange for limited punishment. The Justice Department noted that the new ordinance bars mediation in cases involving death or serious injury or domestic violence allegations, but the report contends the measure stopped short.
"The ordinance ... does not provide sufficient guidance on other circumstances where mediation should not be used as a means to negotiate a plea bargain," the report states.
While Justice Department officials mentioned the city's attempts to improve its crisis intervention practices _ touted by Emanuel in 2015 and intended to aid people with mental health problems among other issues _ government investigators found the reforms weren't fully funded and staffed.
"CPD has not dedicated adequate resources to the (crisis intervention) unit, thereby limiting its effectiveness and failing to achieve the promises of effective crisis intervention," the report states.
The department's failings on that front have been costly. In 2013, the Emanuel administration agreed to the largest lawsuit settlement in Police Department history by paying $22.5 million to the family of Christina Eilman, a mentally ill California woman who was sexually assaulted and then suffered a permanent brain injury in a seven-story fall after police arrested and held her, then abandoned her in high-crime neighborhood.
Asked about the Justice Department report's findings that some of the mayor's changes have not hit the mark, Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins said, "We are proud of the reforms we have made over the past year, and we are committed to making further reforms as we move forward. So where there are opportunities to continually improve, we will seek to do so."
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(Hal Dardick and John Byrne contributed to this report.)
