Chicago police oversight compromise announced; civilian panel wouldn’t have power to remove superintendent
Grassroots police activists and Mayor Lori Lightfoot announced Monday they have reached a deal on civilian oversight of the Chicago Police Department, after seeing their separate plans fail to gain enough City Council support to pass.
The joint statement from Lightfoot and the Empowering Communities for Public Safety Coalition calls on aldermen to support the compromise.
“After a weekend of productive negotiations, we are pleased to announce that the parties have reached an agreement on a proposed substitute ordinance for civilian oversight of the Chicago Police Department, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, and the Police Board,” the statement reads in part. “If passed, this ordinance would bring an historic, transformative and balanced approach to civilian oversight.”
The Public Safety Committee is set to meet Tuesday evening to consider the plan. If a police oversight ordinance passes the committee, the full council could consider it Wednesday morning.
Under the compromise, Lightfoot would retain the power to veto police policy decisions adopted by a civilian oversight board.
Overriding the mayoral veto would require a two-thirds City Council vote, according to the compromise language, a tough hurdle to clear for members of the grassroots coalition who have wanted to give Chicago residents much more power over the department.
And the compromise would give Lightfoot much power over the appointment of a seven-person interim civilian commission, which would serve until elections are held to name district members.
The civilian board would have the power to pass votes of no-confidence against the police superintendent, and to appoint and remove the chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
But the board would not be able to remove the superintendent, a key point many activists pushed for and Lightfoot strongly opposed.
After years of often acrimonious negotiations, the two sides announced Friday, just before the city council’s public safety committee was set to again consider their competing plans, that they would instead spend the next few days trying again to agree on a single proposal.
South Side Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, a co-sponsor of the grassroots effort, struck an optimistic tone Friday in asking the committee to give them time.
“We’re going to be working through the weekend to get what we will believe to be, still, the most comprehensive ordinance in the United States of America, as relates to police oversight,” Sawyer said.
The competing ordinances the mayor and activists submitted in recent months diverged on how much power citizens would have over the department.
The Empowering Communities for Public Safety coalition plan called for a public referendum on creating a civilian board with the power to remove the police superintendent. Supporters tried unsuccessfully in the Public Safety Committee last month to remove that language to make the full package more palatable to more aldermen.
Lightfoot’s ordinance gave the civilian board much less power and more of an advisory role.
But with neither proposal gain enough support among aldermen, Lightfoot and the ECPS coalition returned to the table to work on a compromise.
The deal will face opposition in the committee, however. Southwest Side Ald. Raymond Lopez, 15th, said Friday that asking the committee to consider such a monumental ordinance within hours a possible council vote “is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”
And Northwest Side Ald. Nick Sposato, 38th, who argues there’s already enough Police Department oversight, also raised concerns that aldermen wouldn’t have sufficient time to consider any significant changes.
But a negotiated package could be the best chance to pass something after several false starts in the council.
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The proposed deal comes after both Lightfoot’s ordinance and the grassroots ordinance stalled in the Public Safety Committee last month.
Those plans were withdrawn as Sposato and other conservative, pro-police aldermen pledged to vote against both. Progressives opposed the mayor’s idea, and Lightfoot allies opposed the grassroots proposal.
Lightfoot pledged to present a civilian oversight plan within 100 days of taking office in 2019, but later said it was more important to get it right than to hit that deadline.
