Activists who helped craft civilian police oversight plan cheer its passage — and vow to fight for more reforms

Two days after the city’s elected leaders created a historic civilian policing oversight commission, activists and organizers celebrated the collaboration and work it took to pass the ordinance — and then quickly vowed to continue fighting for even more community control over the Chicago Police Department.

In their remarks during a Friday morning news conference, representatives of the more than 100 groups that helped craft the ordinance, which was passed Wednesday by City Council, also reiterated their previous criticism of Mayor Lori Lightfoot, saying she had delayed the process and tried to weaken the oversight.

“I want us to be very clear about who led this work. It wasn’t the mayor. It was the people,” said Jazmine Salas, a co-chair of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. “This is not a victory for her. This is a victory for the people of Chicago. This is a victory for the movement that has been in the streets since the police murder of Laquan McDonald.”

In a written statement when asked about the criticism, Lightfoot said the commission came about after the “creative collaboration of a diverse coalition of aldermen, community organizations, advocates, and other stakeholders.”

“Working in partnership and through extensive good faith negotiation, we were able to achieve a significant milestone in our mission of bringing transparency to our police department and its accountability agencies,” the statement reads. “We hope to continue working in that spirit to ensure accountability, transparency and public safety.”

Members of the organizations, which include labor and faith-based groups as well as survivors of police torture, pledged Friday to seek City Council approval for a referendum that would ask residents if they’d like to grant even more authority over policing to the commission, including, for example, removing the police superintendent.

Still, the group said the newly established seven-member Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability will be among the strongest community commissions in the country. Speakers noted the direct input and power it creates, including being able to issue a vote of no confidence in the superintendent and to set policy, which could only be reversed by a mayoral veto. Then, the commission could overcome that veto and enact the policy anyway with a two-thirds council vote.

“Keeping our city safe requires input of all the residents of Chicago. … A new and better way of policing is possible and it is within reach,” said Sarah Yousef, an organizer with the Community Renewal Society.

Yousef noted the commission will represent the whole city and provide a chance for nontraditional, more innovative policing solutions and policy to be included in the city’s public safety response.

“People who have been most impacted by policing will be able to share their experience and their expertise to create better solutions and better policy,” Yousef said.

The ordinance was some four years in the making, a process that has been mired in intense debate and numerous delays. The idea was first formally floated by former Mayor Rahm Emanuel in the wake of the Laquan McDonald scandal after the idea was endorsed by Emanuel’s own Police Accountability Task Force, which was chaired by Lightfoot before she was elected mayor.

Once in charge, Lightfoot promised to create the commission within 100 days of her administration, though that did not happen.

Meanwhile, two separate community-based grassroots coalitions crafted two distinct versions of oversight, before joining forces in recent months. Talks then stalled with Lightfoot over how to reach a compromise.

Last week, the groups worked through the weekend with the mayor’s office to work out differences, leading to the 36-13 council vote Wednesday.

The citizen panel as established by ordinance did not retain all the powers asked for by the grassroots organizers. For one, the oversight board would only have the ability to pass a nonbinding no-confidence vote on the police superintendent. That concession was decided after activists dropped their demand for a commission that could fire the superintendent. That idea failed to gain sufficient aldermanic support.

Lightfoot also walked back her competing oversight proposal, giving the final body more authority to set Chicago police policies than she would have liked. But ultimately, the proposed ordinance retains the mayor’s ability to veto such decisions.

Once in place, the commission would be able to vote to remove the chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, an office that investigates police shootings and reports of wrongdoing. If two-thirds of aldermen agreed, the chief administrator would be removed.

The commission would also be able to vote to remove the police superintendent, but the mayor could accept or reject that recommendation.

The commission could adopt new Police Department policies, but the mayor could veto those rules. A two-thirds vote of the 50-member City Council would be needed to override the mayoral policy veto.

The ordinance also creates locally elected councils in each of the city’s 22 police districts that would name a member to serve on a nominating committee, which would submit the names of nominees to the mayor to fill the seven-member Community Commission.

Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa, 35th, who helped broker the final deal, called the new commission “the nation’s strongest and most progressive” oversight board.

But he said they’d be pushing not only for the referendum, but for stronger policies, “until we get a future where our city invests more in schools, education, jobs, mental health service, health care and all the things that keep us safe, rather than police and prisons.”