How Can Chicago Prevent Future Police Misconduct Cases?

Lisa Lavez (0:00)

What's the 411 and 312? Stay clued in to what's going on in Chicago with The Rundown. We breeze through the day's headlines and spend a little more time on One Big Story, all in 10 minutes tops. Available every weekday afternoon, wherever you get your podcasts.

Sasha-Ann Simons (0:28)

Hey, Chicago, I'm Sasha-Ann Simons, and this is In The Loop.

Be sure to listen all the way through the podcast for a breakdown of the day's top local stories. But first, Chicago just approved the largest single police misconduct settlement in US history, a whopping $260 million tied to bad behavior by former police detective Reynaldo Guevara. The cases behind the settlement stretch back decades, and for the people whose convictions were overturned, it's hard to measure the damage left behind in dollars and cents. So what is being done to keep misconduct from happening again? In today's episode of the pod, we reflect on that question with a City Hall reporter, and in a few minutes, the former leader of CPD's police reform work. Joining me from City Hall was Heather Cherone, Chicago politics reporter for WTTW.

And later you'll hear from Bob Boik, Senior Vice President of Public Safety at the Civic Committee and the Commercial Club, who led these reform efforts at the Chicago Police Department. I started off by asking Heather what the discussions are at City Hall about the cost of police misconduct cases. Here she is.

Heather Cherone (1:41)

I think older people are really overwhelmed and shocked at the sheer total that the mayor says that they have no choice but to borrow, to resolve both the lawsuits, some of the lawsuits, I should say, naming former detective Guevara and other lawsuits that are soon to be either tried or resolved with the settlement. In all, the mayor says the city must borrow $481 million now, $350 million of that would be borrowed in 2027 with the rest in 2028 And more than $260 million of that would go to resolve these cases, naming Guevara, although 25 additional cases, naming Guevara still remain pending.

Sasha-Ann Simons (2:30)

Yeah. So are they talking solutions at all? Have elected officials presented ideas for preventing new misconduct cases?

Heather Cherone (2:38)

Well, the mayor has been very clear that he sees the consent decree and its requirements as the ultimate solution to preventing something like this from happening again.

It's not the only solution because these cases also accused the Cook County State's Attorney of Misconduct, and some of these cases have received payouts from the county as well. So the state's attorney's office says something like this would never happen again. In some of these cases, Detective Guevara was the only person who spoke Spanish, who was translating both for the police and for the suspects that would be completely improper nowadays and against regulations. So they say that there are new rules, including videotaped confessions and very few murder cases now. Not none, but very few murder cases go to trial unless there is some sort of DNA evidence or some sort of corroborating evidence. In many of these cases, there were only witnesses who said later that they were forced by Chicago Police Detectives rather than any physical evidence. So that's all part of the solution, but the Consent Decree, which requires the department to really change how it operates from top to bottom, is really designed to get to the root of the problem.

Sasha-Ann Simons (4:02)

You recently reported that the city is now in full compliance with 32 percent of the Consent Decree. What are the major reforms?

Heather Cherone (4:10)

Well, it's difficult because it is a complicated, almost 700-paragraph-long document. So if you've got about the next three hours, I can take you through it all.

Sasha-Ann Simons (4:22)

I don't. Give me the 32nd version.

Heather Cherone (4:24)

The 32nd version is that even though the mayor is very proud of that progress, there are the three core tenets of what the Consent Decree is designed to do are as yet unfinished. One, the city has to create a system that will flag officers who are the subject of multiple complaints or multiple lawsuits so that supervisors can intervene before something like this happens. Two, the department has to figure out how to create a workable community policing plan that invites residents to see officers as sort of their partners in attacking public safety issues and they have to figure out how to effectively deploy officers across the city. There was a big workforce allocation study that found that too many officers are not assigned to work when and where a crime is most likely to occur. All of those are big, difficult changes.