Coalition of activists and lawyers calls draft of Chicago police foot-pursuit policy a disappointment
Two weeks after the Chicago Police Department released a first draft of a foot-pursuit policy, activists and attorneys with the Consent Decree Coalition called the document confusing, said it gives officers too much discretion and doesn’t require documentation of every chase.
The group held a news conference Wednesday outside police headquarters to announce its view of the new policy. Chicago civil rights attorney Sheila Bedi said the new rules still allow officers to chase people who have committed only minor offenses and do not remedy the problems caused by foot pursuits, which she said is a “deadly lethal tactic.”
Superintendent David Brown expressed optimism about the policy when a preliminary version was released on May 26. It is set to go into effect Friday, but it will be revised as it moves toward final adoption in September, police officials said.
“It fails to control for the fact that foot pursuit is a tactic where adrenaline is running high, and we know from the data that officers are disproportionately using lethal force,” Bedi said, “and remedies for that problem are just not in that policy.”
American Civil Liberties Union legal director Nusrat Choudhury said there are four main issues with the policy: It doesn’t make clear that foot pursuits are inherently dangerous and deadly; does not put enough constraint on officer discretion; is vague and self-contradictory; and does not require the documentation of every chase in a report that includes the pursuit’s justification.
“What is clearly missing from this policy is easy-to-understand guidance that officers can implement in real time in the moment,” Choudhury said. “This policy that they released is vague, it’s contradictory, it is confusing. It is difficult for lawyers to understand. It’s not clear how a police officer can actually implement it to save lives.”
Bedi cited the latest report from an independent monitor reviewing police efforts to comply with a federal consent decree, a report that said an audit identified 590 foot pursuits — between April 1, 2019, and Dec. 31, 2019 — that were described in department documentation of arrests but not counted in its data collection.
“The data we have about foot pursuits is about the foot pursuits that were actually reported by the Chicago Police Department,” Bedi said. “We have a problem with actual foot pursuits and then we have a problem of covering up foot pursuits.”
Bedi said community members put forward demands in 2018 that would’ve saved the lives of 13-year-old Adam Toledo and 22-year-old Anthony Alvarez, who were fatally shot by Chicago police officers in separate foot pursuits in March and whose deaths promoted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to publicly request the creation of a policy. Those previous demands would have eliminated foot pursuits unless there was a clear danger and would’ve required reporting.
Many of the restrictions are used by other departments, including in New Orleans and Baltimore, which also have fallen under federal consent decrees. Bedi said the restrictions they are asking for are not revolutionary — they are harm reduction.
Janet Horne, of Community Working Group, said that organization made 154 recommendations, but one of its simplest ones was to change the police label for someone being chased from “subject” to “person.”
“It was easy, but it was so important because for so many members of this community, we’re not treated like we’re people. We’re treated like we’re subjects,” she said. “We’re treated like we’re guilty before we’ve gone to trial.”
