City Council sides with mayor on Chicago police contract: More money for cops but disciplinary provision rebuffed
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Following Mayor Brandon Johnson’s lead, the Chicago City Council on Wednesday rejected a provision in the city’s proposed contract with Chicago police that would allow officers accused of serious misconduct to have their disciplinary cases heard behind closed doors while aldermen OK’d significant pay hikes for cops.
The 33-17 vote defeating the arbitration clause nixes a major part of a deal announced less than two months ago as a major political win by Johnson’s administration with the union representing most of Chicago’s police force.
The council’s rejection, and its reasoning for it, will now head back to arbitrator Edwin Benn, who earlier this year voted for the arbitration clause and could send that same ruling back to aldermen within weeks. The battle could ultimately end up in circuit court.
In an unusual move at Johnson’s request, the arbitration matter was voted on separately from the rest of the contract, including raises for rank-and-file officers totaling 20% over four years that was approved by the full council with no debate.
The lack of controversy over the financial aspect of the Fraternal Order of Police contract was another departure from how the council has acted in the past when arguments would often erupt about the cost of policing.
But for this contract, the arbitration issue became the main point of disagreement.
The provision would allow officers accused of misconduct to remove their cases from the Chicago Police Board docket and instead have them decided privately by an outside third party. The closed-door option was part of an arbitration award handed down earlier this year by Benn during contract negotiations between the city and FOP.
The head of the FOP, John Catanzara, argued that the arbitration provision simply gave officers the same rights as many other unions in the state. But critics — including leaders of the city’s police accountability bodies — said it subverted efforts to make police misconduct proceedings more transparent.
Given Benn’s previous ruling on arbitration, Catanzara has warned repeatedly that a rejection would be a waste of time and predicted the union would ultimately prevail in a costly court fight.
“They want war; we’ll give you war,” Catanzara said in an interview with the Tribune following the vote. He said the union’s board was set to meet Thursday morning to discuss next steps, including legal action.
But Ald. Andre Vasquez, 40th, said “there’s a fundamental difference” between other unions and the FOP.
“It isn’t about hate or love or how we view it, it’s fundamental to the role itself: A plumber doesn’t have the ability to arrest anybody,” Vasquez said. “A pipe fitter doesn’t have the ability to shoot anyone.”
His support of having police discipline cases heard at the Police Board is “not to villainize” police, Vasquez said, but because the most serious accusations of misconduct involve “nuance and … understanding.”
It is to the FOP’s benefit to “hear it publicly because there are times where officers are making the right call,” he said.
Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, said irrespective of a potential court battle, accepting the arbitration ruling was just “not right,” echoing others who said the potential cost of a court battle was far less than the sometimes millions of dollars in police settlements aldermen approve each month. The council approved more than $10 million in settlements Wednesday.
“If our rejection leads to additional back and forth, then so be it,” Ervin said. “It’s not the first fight, it won’t be the last fight. … I’m not against the FOP, I’m not against the leadership, not against the police officers. However, we have to be for what the public is calling for.”
Catanzara said the FOP more than a month ago has offered the city a compromise in which the union would make public misconduct cases that were being handled privately by detailing charges against officers, the case’s status and any final adjudication. He said the offer was rejected.
“They can shove their ‘transparency’ argument up their a—,” Catanzara said. “They wanted it their way or no way. They’re not about transparency. They’re about submission.”
During the council debate on the arbitration issue, Ald. Silvana Tabares, 23rd, agreed with Catanzara that the council’s rejection of arbitration could lose in court.
“The city’s attorney admitted — they admitted — that they are likely to be unsuccessful in court defending the blatant disregard the city has shown to the state law when it comes to how it treats Chicago Police officers,” Tabares said.
The other 16 council members who supported keeping the arbitration award in the FOP contract come from some of the city’s more conservative or pro-police wards: Ald. Brian Hopkins, 2nd; Anthony Beale, 9th; Peter Chico, 10th; Nicole Lee, 11th; Marty Quinn, 13th; Raymond Lopez, 15th; Derrick Curtis, 18th; Matt O’Shea, 19th; Felix Cardona, 31st; Gilbert Villegas, 36th; Nick Sposato, 38th; Samantha Nugent, 39th; Anthony Napolitano, 41st; Brendan Reilly, 42nd; Jim Gardiner, 45th; and Debra Silverstein, 50th.
Before the arbitration vote, Johnson briefly recessed the council after repeated outbursts from members of the public seated in the chamber and in the gallery on the third floor of City Hall. A handful of people were escorted out of the third floor after they banged their hands on the windows overlooking the chamber.
After the meeting, Johnson told reporters the City Council’s approval and rejection votes were emblematic of the city as a whole.
“There’s a way in which you can support workers and hold them accountable. That’s our responsibility,” Johnson told reporters. “It’s imperative that as a city that the people of Chicago know (their) government is working to make sure that we’re holding people accountable. And so a decision was made today to uphold the respect and regard for those who are serving on the front line with the raises that were put forth, while also making sure that we are responding to the people of Chicago who overwhelmingly want accountability.”
On the finance side of the contract OK’d by the council, language was not publicly made available until the day of the committee vote, but the agreement provides for a more than 20% raise for CPD officers, on top of a one-time $2,500 retention bonus.
Johnson administration officials estimate the new provisions — including bonuses and 5% raises this year and next — would cost an additional $60 million in 2024. Those raises went above and beyond the raises negotiated by Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration in 2021. An analysis by the Better Government Association’s policy team concluded it “would be the largest package of raises for any of the city’s employee unions in modern history.”
That vote cleared the City Council 43-7, with several of council’s more progressive members voting no.
It’s the latest chapter in the equilibrium Johnson has tried to maintain in his handling of CPD.
In his previous role as Cook County commissioner, he passed a resolution to “redirect funds from policing and incarceration to public services not administered by law enforcement.”
As a candidate for mayor, he initially promised not to increase the Police Department’s budget. But in his city budget proposal, he pitched a record $2 billion in spending for the department.
While granting raises, Johnson also reshuffled positions within the department to reflect his vision for public safety. He reduced the number of budgeted beat cops; boosted detective ranks, civilian positions and those dedicated to fulfilling the department’s requirements under the ongoing federal consent decree.
The deal also creates a new rotation of homicide detectives who, department officials have said, will have greater ownership of the cases they investigate. The new rotation — dubbed “Homicide Teams” in the new agreement — aims to raise the CPD’s clearance rate, which for years has hovered near 50%.
Detectives on the homicide teams, the first of which debuted in Area 2 on the Far South Side earlier this year, will work 10-hour shifts and will receive extra comp time for on-call hours that fall on their scheduled days off. Overtime will be available for on-call detectives, too.
And while the City Council labeled the first package it approved as “economic,” that portion of the agreement contains another provision that also directly relates to CPD officer disciplinary cases. Suspensions of less than a year are meted out internally by the CPD, and the lion’s share of those cases already result in arbitration, according to the city’s Office of Inspector General.
Another piece also creates a new “Peoples Court” that would allow accused officers to have their disciplinary cases adjudicated by an arbitrator in a single day.
In a statement, the ACLU of Illinois said it was disappointed in the council vote on the rest of the contract, saying it “weakens accountability” for officers and noted there was a lack of transparency around the contract’s details before the committee vote.
That was “especially troubling given the administration’s publicly stated support for increased accountability for police officers, in particular, and more transparency in government, in general. This contract fails to meet both aspirations, the ACLU said in the statement.
The contract lasts through the end of 2027.
“With the community’s trust in our public safety system on the line, the process deserved more transparency and discussion,” the ACLU said in its statement.
The votes were cast as the city and Police Department remain under a sweeping federal consent decree, born out of the 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald by a CPD officer, that mandates a series of reforms within the department.
The ACLU also noted the contract “reinforces the ‘code of silence’ by preventing officers from recording their conversations following shootings or other serious uses of force. Likely violating the consent decree, the contract also purports to prevent disciplinary proceedings from considering certain body-worn camera footage. Body worn cameras should be tools for increasing officer accountability — not something for officers to hide behind.”
Asked to respond to criticism the contract fell short of accountability measures and in some cases, went backward, Johnson said, “Democracy prevailed. The vote was cast … a portion of the contract that obviously this body supported. The portion of the contract that they did not support, they rejected.”
Meanwhile, aldermen finalized two large police misconduct settlements during Wednesday’s meeting. One was a $2 million award for the family of a man killed by Chicago police that failed in a close vote in City Council in July, while another focused on a $8.75 million settlement in another fatal police shooting.
Aldermen voted 31-18 on the $2 million package that stems from the 2014 CPD slaying of Darius Cole-Garrit, a 21-year-old man who officials said pulled a gun from his waistband and pointed it at officers.
When the council rejected the award this summer, it posed the body’s highest-profile rebuke of the city’s Law Department yet, but corporation counsel has maintained the case would be “difficult” to win should it go to trial given conflicting testimonies on whether Cole-Garrit actually had a gun.
The city’s Independent Police Review Authority found the shooting justified and a semi-automatic handgun was recovered 20 feet from Cole-Garrit, but fingerprint testing was inadequate.
The $8.75 million settlement will go to the family of Michael Craig, a 61-year-old man who was killed by a Chicago cop in 2021 after he called 911 to report his wife threatening him at knife point. Upon arrival, body camera footage shows, Craig was shot instead.
“I believe the justice of this settlement is unimpeachable,” Ald. Daniel La Spata, 1st, said of the $8.75 million settlement. While he noted most victims of domestic violence are women, he said “what we are spending next year on retention bonuses (for CPD) is double what we have ever spent on gender based violence in any given year.”
