POLICE UNION SKEPTICAL OF RECOMMENDATIONS
Calling it “an excellent blueprint for change,” Mayor Richard Daley on Thursday released a report on police corruption that calls for tougher hiring requirements, stricter accountability and continual ethics training for Chicago’s police force.
But some of the mayoral task force recommendations may not be implemented unless the Fraternal Order of Police, the police union, agrees to cooperate.
On Thursday–just days after 300 FOP members passed a no-confidence vote against Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez–FOP vice president Bob Podgorny said the union was willing to discuss the recommendations with police officials.
But he labeled some of the proposals “sort of knee jerk” and said the union would require major concessions in return.
“If they’re willing to sit down and talk about a new workweek, then, sure, we’ll sit down and talk,” Podgorny said, referring to one of the union’s chief requests, a four-day, 10-hour a day workweek.
The task force was appointed by Daley in February after seven Austin District tactical officers were indicted on charges of robbing and extorting money from undercover agents posing as drug dealers. Three Gresham District tactical officers were indicted in March on similar charges.
In its 38-page report, the task force did not address specific causes for the problems in the Austin and Gresham Districts, nor did it assign blame to Rodriguez or other police officials.
Instead, it focused on ways to minimize the potential for corruption. The task force reviewed what 10 other major police agencies have done to combat corruption, interviewed police executives and union leaders and surveyed more than 100 police officers.
“The whole purpose of this report was not to guarantee perfection,” said Dan Webb, a former U.S. attorney who headed the task force. “. . . If fully implemented, I think the Chicago Police Department will be on the cutting edge of dealing with his problem.”
The task force recommends that the department use polygraph tests to weed out “questionable” candidates, and it urges the police to phase in a requirement that recruits have a four-year college degree and at least one year’s worth of work experience.
Webb said he didn’t believe the college requirement would diminish the pool of minority candidates, as some have suggested. Other cities that require a four-year degree for police officers have not experienced a drop in minority hires, he said.
The task forces urges the department to extend the probationary period for new officers from one year to 18 months. It also recommends that the police force adopt “early-warning” programs designed to identify and counsel problem officers.
The police department should streamline its cumbersome disciplinary process, where a case can drag on for years, and hire more investigators for its overburdened Internal Affairs unit, the report says.
The task force also urges the department to improve its performance evaluation system, which is currently so ineffective that “almost no officer gets a bad evaluation,” the report says.
Inexperienced officers should not be allowed to join tactical units, and members of tactical units should be rotated off after several years, the report says. The report urges the department to discipline supervisors who know about wrongdoing but do little to stop it.
The task force also calls for an overhaul of the department’s field-training program, where veteran officers supervise rookies in their first weeks on the street.
Chicago’s program broke down in 1994, when 100 or so of the training officers quit the program after the department required them to do the training at night.
The task force recommends that the department triple the number of field-training officers, from 67 to more than 200, and give field training officers a pay raise.
Daley said he would forward the report to Rodriguez and urge him to implement the changes in “as timely a manner as possible.”
Rodriguez, who was not at Thursday’s news conference, later issued a statement calling the Webb report’s proposals “sound and forward-thinking.”
He said the department would implement the recommendations and already was making some of the changes. For instance, the department has a draft order to improve its in-house early warning system to identify troubled officers.
Rodriguez should be able to implement some of the changes without the union’s approval. For instance, he can require recruits to have a college degree because they aren’t yet represented by the FOP.
But other recommendations clearly fall under the FOP’s umbrella. Podgorny said the union was willing to discuss extending the rookie probationary period from one year to 18 months, but he said he was not convinced it would cut down on corruption in the department.
“Show me a guy who has gotten into trouble in the first six months and how the contract has hindered (the department) from firing them,” said Podgorny. “I don’t think that we’ve had that situation.”
