Nov. 18--Confronting questions about their embattled Police Department, Waukegan officials cited changes they intend to make while defending the city's officers and the agency's current leadership.
Top city officials have stayed largely quiet as activists and some residents of the north suburb have raised questions about the department's troubles. Debate has swirled since late last month when the Tribune detailed the department's exceptional record of abuse allegations and disastrous investigations that sent innocent men to prison, some for decades. Minorities, who make up the wide majority of the city's population, have suffered the most, and the department's upper ranks were entirely white as of this summer.
Diversity training -- previously limited to a few hours per year -- will be expanded, said Chief Wayne Walles. An internal use of force review board that had consisted of white upper command officers will be expanded to include police from the more diverse lower ranks, the chief said. The department plans to reinstate a neighborhood policing squad broken up earlier this year. Plans to equip officers with body cameras have been in the works for months.
Mayor Wayne Motley, a former city police officer who took office in 2013, has noted that the department's bungled felony investigations were built in previous decades, though officers key to building some of those cases remain with the agency. Motley praised the department's current leaders, and city officials said the department has broken with the past.
"We are a very progressive Police Department," Motley said.
No city police agency in Illinois, other than Chicago's, shares responsibility for as many known wrongful convictions as the Waukegan police, according to a Tribune analysis of data from the National Registry of Exonerations. The city's police helped send six men to prison who were later cleared by DNA or medical evidence.
The collapsed cases spawned pricey lawsuits, and the city's police have also consistently attracted abuse allegations, records show. Insurers and the city paid out about $26.1 million in police cases from 2006 through this spring, outspending towns with more officers and, in certain cases, more violent crime. Experts told the Tribune that federal authorities should intervene in Waukegan to ensure that people are protected.
Charles Smith, a lawyer for the city, said citizen complaints and lawsuits have been less frequent in the most recent years. Waukegan police have repeatedly elicited false confessions that led to faulty prosecutions, but city officials noted that police -- following state mandate and the request of Lake County prosecutors -- are now recording more interrogations.
While some 70 percent of the city's population is African-American or Hispanic, most police are white, and the city had no minority officers above the rank of sergeant as of this summer, state records showed. Most people who received payouts from the city after alleging wrongdoing are black or Hispanic, and payouts went disproportionately to African-Americans, records show.
Smith noted that the department has been led by minority chiefs, and city officials said they've tried to recruit a diverse group of qualified officers. The city has no residency requirement for police, and only about 40 of some 150 officers live in the city, Walles said. The chief said the city will work to "recruit more heavily locally." City officials said the officers in the upper command staff are experienced and qualified, and the top ranks being all white is not inherently a problem.
"It's only a problem if people of a diverse background are excluded from command positions, and that doesn't happen," Smith said.
In the last month, residents have voiced concern before the city council, and members of Motley's advisory panel of African-American residents have asked pointed questions about the department's operation and urged city officials to publicly address the issue. At a meeting early this month, members of the Citizens for Progress Committee peppered city leaders with questions and expressed dismay with the limited discipline doled out to officers accused of wrongdoing and with the department's lack of diversity.
The City Council has stayed largely silent, though Ald. Sam Cunningham, who is African-American, said the aldermen have to get more involved. Cunningham said he is concerned for the city's public perception.
"This is something we will not and cannot accept or tolerate," he said. "When the city does not have a response or a plan or process in place to address these issues, then we are perceptually looked at as just as guilty."
dhinkel@tribpub.com
