In the summer of 1996, with the Democratic National Convention just days away, then-Chicago Police Supt. Matt Rodriguez urged his officers to seize the opportunity to “redefine the public’s perception of our city and this department.”
The convention, Rodriguez said, was a shot at redemption, a chance to show the world that the Chicago police officer of the 1990s was better educated and more professional than his counterparts at the raucous 1968 convention and to prove that corruption had been thoroughly rooted out of the force.
When it was over, Rodriguez claimed victory. Dealing with the demonstrators with restraint, the department seemed to be improving its reputation–even if the protesters were a small, disorganized bunch.
But since then, that success has often been overshadowed by new scandals and fresh controversies, from Rodriguez’s departure to corruption in the Austin and Gresham Districts and charges in mid-December that a veteran gang unit officer headed a ring of drug traffickers.
As if to underscore how serious the issue has become, a recent Tribune poll shows voters rank police corruption to be as serious an issue as schools and jobs, and more serious than crime itself–a troubling finding considering that the city should be enjoying positive headlines during a time of dropping crime rates.
In fact, with so much going well for the city during these economically prosperous times–from job growth and improving test scores in schools to a construction boom and a new theater district–the Police Department represents a critical challenge for the winner of the mayoral election.
But Mayor Richard Daley has tended to avoid making tough choices with the Police Department. Though he has installed tough leaders unafraid of sweeping change in other departments, he has resisted it in the department that may well need it most, perhaps worried that he already has turned most of the department against him with his stand favoring affirmative action in police promotions.
When Daley was choosing the current superintendent, his choice, Terry Hillard, was the safe alternative to Charles Ramsey. Ramsey promised to shake up the department. Hillard offered relative stability.
But in the annals of Chicago politics, controversy seems unavoidable, and the string of embarrassments–as well as the poll numbers–suggest the time is right for the mayor’s office to address long-standing issues in the department.
Why should police be a priority? For one, no other city department is bigger, with 13,500 employees and a $1 billion budget. No other department is so visible, especially when things go wrong. Moreover, no other department, except perhaps Streets and Sanitation, has as much contact with citizens.
Which is why it is so important–practically and politically–for the department to distance itself from its oftentimes painful legacy and set a definitive course for the future.
“Chicago is a combination of the old and the new,” said Art Lurigio, a Loyola University Chicago professor of criminal justice who has followed the Police Department. “It would be hard to sweep away more than a hundred years of endemic corruption. You can’t just eradicate that legacy.”
The more recent history, though, often has been just as troubling.
Beyond the guilty verdicts of Austin and Gresham officers who allegedly have aided drug dealers or engaged in crimes themselves, there was the beating of Jeremiah Mearday by two Grand-Central District patrol officers, Rodriguez’s departure over his long friendship with a convicted felon and the mishandling of the Ryan Harris slaying investigation.
Together, these incidents show how vexing the department’s problems are, in spite of advances in policing and continuous promises to reform and professionalize. They also undermine the good work that the majority of the department’s officers do daily.
At the same time, community trust in the police is eroding in some of the city’s most troubled neighborhoods, threatening to undercut the department’s community policing program.
Daley seems to sense there is trouble but hasn’t set forth a plan of action or done much publicly to signal his dismay.
There he was a few weeks ago frowning at Hillard and demanding answers about the newest scandal: the disclosure the city had paid some $1.2 million in judgments and settlements for Rex Hayes, a South Side officer who has repeatedly been sued over brutality charges.
It was just the kind of scandal that inflames residents. Daley fumed, but he gave no indication that he would order the kind of long-term fix the department needs to wash away the suspicion that it protects bad cops.
Not that Hillard has done nothing in his first year. He has, for instance, overhauled the Office of Professional Standards, the much-maligned unit that investigates brutality charges–though it is too early to say whether the office will be more effective.
He has also begun to beef up the department’s internal affairs division, which the 1997 Webb Commission report on corruption found to be woefully understaffed and which critics say is loath to aggressively investigate its own.
And he has made some nuts-and-bolts repairs. He has put narcotics officers to work on weekends, ending their weekday-only duty, and he said he is committed to cutting the number of homicides in the city. In the latest embarrassment for the department and the city, Chicago in 1998 became the country’s murder capital, even though crime–including murder–fell by substantial margins.
Before Hillard took the job, changes had been made under Rodriguez and his predecessors. The department is becoming more diverse, its officers better educated. Recent changes call for supervisors to have college degrees, ensuring that the leadership of the future will be better schooled than ever before.
But even as there has been an evolution in professionalizing the department, there has been an erosion of trust in some minority neighborhoods.
Hillard’s toughest job may be mending fences. Even as the department preached its brand of community policing, that hand-in-hand style of crime fighting aimed at bringing officers and residents together in common cause, it has lost key neighborhood support.
Some of it evaporated with each scandal, as residents were left betrayed by the same officers who were supposed to protect them. Leola Spann, the president of the board of the Northwest Austin Council, said the scandal that broke out at Christmas 1996, with officers from the Austin and Gresham Districts arrested for shaking down drug dealers, shattered the community’s trust.
With high turnover among the precinct commanders in that troubled district on the city’s West Side, she said the relationship has yet to be repaired.
“We really haven’t gotten a chance to build the relationships we’ve had before,” said Spann, who has long been active in the neighborhood. “You’ve got to know people before you can start to trust them. And we just haven’t gotten to know these new folks yet.”
So in place of that trust is a skepticism, a world-weariness that takes into account a certain amount of corruption as part of the game.
“Those kinds of things are going to happen all over the city,” she said of the scandal, which led to convictions for seven officers. “So we have to take the `serve and protect’ stuff for what it’s worth.”
Community policing was supposed to be the bridge to improved relations. But, in the minds of some, it has fallen far short. While some neighborhoods have forged working relationships with the department, others have failed and seem even to be at odds with police leadership.
Part of the problem, according to community leaders, is that police have been reluctant to give residents a real role in decision-making, the foundation of virtually every model of community policing.
The police, after all, view almost any civilian who tries to tell them what to do as a meddler–including Daley. It is a sometimes understandable view; policing is a job unlike most others. But when that view extends to community activists and others, it can become counterproductive.
The Chicago Alliance for Neighborhood Safety recently monitored close to 50 beat meetings– the grass-roots gatherings of police and citizens–and found little real problem-solving going on, said Executive Director Warren Friedman.
“The community needs help,” Friedman said. “There needs to be training, outreach and community mobilizing, but there really isn’t.”
Indeed it sometimes seems the department acts only when pressured, just the kind of response that community policing was designed to avoid.
It was only after the department came under attack for its investigation of the slaying of 11-year-old Ryan Harris, for instance, that it agreed to place the names of convicted sex offenders on the Internet.
Residents believed the information was vital, and many police agencies across the state make it available. But Chicago police had inexplicably withheld the material, as if it somehow were dangerous.
The Harris case forced the department to accept a number of other changes as well. Because detectives charged two young boys, ages 7 and 8, and then were forced to drop the charges, it now will consult with prosecutors when considering murder charges against juveniles. Videotaping confessions of adult murder suspects also will begin, according to law enforcement officials.
But even having forced these changes, the community is still locked out of the department in many ways. Many police veterans have been reluctant to embrace community policing, a troubling fact acknowledged even by department officials.
These days, the department seems intrigued by the New York City method of policing, the statistic-driven style that holds commanders accountable for ups and downs in crime trends– something Chicago police officials have never done.
What ComStat, as it is called, might mean for the community policing program is unclear. Officials insist they remain committed to community policing, but its long-view approach to cutting crime seems at odds with the short-term focus that ComStat puts on statistics.
The department is talking with Richard Block, a Loyola sociologist, about how to adapt ComStat for Chicago.
“The New York model has worked well in New York,” he said. “But will it work here? I don’t know.”
Indeed, Chicago is different. Its gang problem, a spark for one-quarter of the city’s 700 homicides last year, is considered worse than New York’s.
And the number of murders in Chicago has fallen. The 18 percent drop since 1990–from 851 to 700– is just not as dramatic as New York’s nearly 75 percent decline or even Los Angeles’ drop of 58 percent.
Experts say it is unfair to judge a city or its police department by the murder rate alone. Murder, they say, is unpredictable, the kind of crime that cannot be prevented with any great reliability, especially with so many handguns on the street.
There must be some way to measure the effectiveness of police, though. The department needs to make commanders more accountable, whether it is for the number of murders and robberies in their district or for their participation in community policing.
At the same time, the department must decide where it wants to go with community policing. Only by making a stronger commitment to getting residents involved–and actually listening to them–will progress be made at bettering community relations.
And there must be a point where the department’s tough rhetoric about corruption and brutality is backed up by action and discipline. Beefing up OPS is fine, but dealing aggressively with officers who repeatedly abuse citizens sends a clearer message.
Other big-city departments, such as those in Los Angeles, New York and Philadelphia, have reformed how they investigate and punish brutality. Chicago has resisted such a move, even as community pressure and criticism mount.
Hillard does not seem inclined to push for major changes. After all, he got the job in large part because he offered low-key, stay-the-course leadership. He would seek to steer clear of scandal. He would avoid adverse publicity. Among his personnel decisions: keeping as his first deputy superintendent Jack Townsend, who at 67 is a symbol of the department’s older self.
“He’s going to be a quiet superintendent,” said Loyola’s Lurigio. “He’s not going to rock the boat. He’ll get the department back to basics. Ramsey could bring the credibility to CAPS that was needed. I don’t know if Hillard can do that, if he can take it to that next level.”
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THE SERIES
FEB.7: Chicago’s global role will be defined by its ability to adapt to economic change.
MONDAY: Dealing with the city’s aging infrastructure.
TUESDAY: Downtown booms, but is there a master plan?
WEDNESDAY: Changing neighborhoods and new immigrants reshape city.
THURSDAY: Crime drops, but police department corruption lingers.
FRIDAY: City schools have improved-can they be a decent place to learn?
SUNDAY: Chicago no longer dominates state politics, presenting new challenges.
