Editorial: Question for Vallas, Johnson: How committed would your police chief be to true police reform?

Nearly three years ago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot made David Brown Chicago’s police superintendent for all the right reasons. His credentials as Dallas’ police chief were strong, and his record for dealing with crises was even stronger.

In 2016, a sniper fatally shot five Dallas officers. Brown’s team negotiated with the gunman, but when those talks failed and the sniper resumed shooting, Brown opted to rely on a remote-controlled robot equipped with explosives to kill the gunman, rather than risk the lives of any more of his officers or any civilians at the scene.

In 2020, we called Lightfoot’s appointment of Brown “an excellent choice.” We added: “His combination of skills and personal experiences give him extraordinary insight into all aspects of urban policing, community relations and trust-building.”

We saw that last element, “trust-building,” as pivotal to Brown’s chances for success in his new job. At the core of the Chicago Police Department’s failures has been the lack of trust that neighborhoods, particularly Black and brown communities on the South and West sides, put into law enforcement.

Too many times in recent decades, CPD has betrayed the credo: “To serve and protect.” The 2014 murder of Laquan McDonald, a Black teen, by a white Chicago police officer marked the capstone of that betrayal, but there were so many other instances — from the torture inflicted by then-police Cmdr. Jon Burge in the 1970s and ’80s, to the saga of now-former police Detective Reynaldo Guevara, whose alleged misconduct included claims of manipulating witnesses and fabricating evidence, which led to the overturning of 31 convictions since 2016.

Brown took over CPD in April 2020 and aimed high. “Anyone can do average. Chicagoans deserve a moonshot: The lowest murders on record, the lowest numbers of shootings on record and the highest level of trust in its officers from its residents,” Brown said after the City Council approved his appointment. “Buckle your seat belts, we’re headed to the moon.”

It’s painfully clear that Brown failed to deliver.

With Lightfoot’s historic defeat in Tuesday’s election, Brown will step down on March 16, a decision that saves him the unnecessary spectacle of being fired by the incumbent mayor’s successor — either former Chicago Public Schools CEO Paul Vallas or Cook County Commissioner Brandon Johnson, who face off in the April 4 mayoral runoff.

Like Lightfoot, Brown’s downfall has everything to do with failing to make the city safer. He vowed to bring down the number of annual homicides to fewer than 300. Instead, the city endured more than 760 homicides in 2020, more than 800 homicides in 2021 and nearly 700 in 2022. Carjackings surged. And when we spoke with aldermanic candidates during endorsement interviews, virtually every candidate said Chicagoans had told them the city’s No. 1 problem was the rising tide of violent crime.

Equally disappointing was Brown’s failure to keep pace with implementation of the consent decree, the 2019 court order that methodically and comprehensively blueprints how the city must reform its Police Department. The federal mandate was applied to Chicago following McDonald’s killing, and when Brown took over, he pledged, “We will meet this requirement of the consent decree, without question.”

Understanding that compliance is a yearslong endeavor, the department and City Hall have nonetheless consistently lagged in keeping up with the mandate’s deadlines.

We were particularly troubled by Brown’s decision last summer to fire Robert Boik, his point man for keeping the department on course with implementing the consent decree. Boik, who was CPD’s executive director of constitutional policing and reform, was let go after sending an email to Brown about the superintendent’s decision to move members of Boik’s staff to patrol duty. In the email, Boik told Brown the move would set back CPD’s crisis intervention training, an important aspect of consent decree-mandated reform.

Getting rid of Boik was a major step backward for police reform and reflected a lack of genuine commitment to the consent decree. “Over the decades,” we wrote at the time, “CPD has failed miserably in showing it can reform itself — it needs the consent decree as a blueprint, and as motivation.”

Chicago soon must decide which candidate, Vallas or Johnson, best puts the city on the path toward police reform and safer streets. The two goals are intertwined. A safer, less violent Chicago cannot happen without a reformed Police Department that engenders trust from the communities it serves, particularly minority communities. That trust proved elusive under Brown’s watch.

For either Johnson or Vallas, building that trust starts with the selection of a police superintendent who commits to police reform not just with words but also with actions, and makes timely adherence to the consent decree nonnegotiable.

As for Brown, we have never doubted his commitment to his mission, or to the city. And while we contend he faltered on police reform, in the spring of 2021, he made remarks about the consent decree that we believe were on point and relevant for whoever succeeds him. “If we achieve compliance, (department) culture should be changed,” he said. “And that should be determined by the community, not checking a box.”

He was right. The consent decree isn’t about checking boxes. It’s about trust-building and the cultural change within the department that must happen to seed that trust.

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