Franklin Paz Jr. had risen through the ranks of the Chicago Police Department for more than two decades when he was tapped to help supervise a specialized unit championed by the top cop amid the unrest that rocked the city during the summer of 2020.
But soon after Lt. Paz joined the Community Safety Team, he drew the ire of his boss, then-Deputy Chief Michael Barz. Paz said Barz started pressuring him to push the officers under his command to make at least 10 traffic stops each shift, an order that Paz saw as the imposition of an unlawful quota.
Then-Supt. David Brown, who launched the unit, had allegedly called for 10,000 such stops each week and insisted the practice would build trust, court records show.
Paz said he faced continued harassment and was “dumped” from the unit after he raised concerns about the directive to generate more traffic stops and other forms of police “activity.” He sued the city in January 2021, seeking justice and hoping to shield himself and his officers from undue blame.
On Thursday, the City Council will vote on whether to settle the case for $950,000.
“I hope it sends a clear message to any supervisors who like to bully their subordinates, or pressure them into doing things that are illegal or unethical,” Paz said in an exclusive interview.
He insisted that his crusade against Barz and the police department “was never about the money.” He said he plans to use the settlement to make charitable contributions, including to the scholarship fund honoring Officer Ella French, a member of the Community Safety Team who was fatally shot during a traffic stop.
Still, he’s troubled by the intimidation, threats and coercion that he said he endured.
“They derailed my career, caused me health challenges, I was ostracized by the bosses,” he said of department leaders. “But I firmly believe that this is the right decision that I made to come forward.”
Barz, who wasn’t named as a defendant, denied the allegations and said “they were never proven true.”
An esteemed career
Paz was raised in Little Village and followed his sister into policing, despite his own experiences being racially profiled and handcuffed by officers.
He worked a range of assignments since joining the department in 1999, earning nearly 200 awards.
He notably went undercover on federal task forces targeting gangs, seizing guns and narcotics and dismantling human trafficking operations. In one undercover operation, he rescued a 16-year-old from a brothel that was offering sex acts in a Spanish language newspaper.
He’s still haunted by some of his experiences. He saw crash victims burn to death in a car after he was unable to rescue them. And he watched a cellphone store owner pray in Arabic as he lay dying from a gunshot wound sustained during a robbery.
“The whole [post-traumatic stress disorder] thing is very real,” he said. “To this day, I have nightmares.”
His time on the Community Safety Team and the ensuing lawsuit have also been a source of continued strife. He’s remained on a medical leave of absence for years, pulling him away from his calling.
Meantime, Paz overcame multiple delays to bring his case to trial, as he sought to hold Barz accountable in open court. But as Paz drove to the Daley Center as testimony was set to begin in April, he got a heartbreaking phone call: His mother had passed away.
“She didn’t understand the entire court proceedings, and didn’t understand that I wasn’t the one that was in trouble,” he said. “And I want to say that it contributed to her dying prematurely. My mother was stressed out over this thing because she knew that I wasn’t working and she knew that I was going through all of this stuff.”
Paz said her death was a major factor in his decision to settle.
Protecting the community
Barz retired from the department in May, after being demoted from deputy chief to commander and later to captain. Days earlier, Supt. Larry Snelling sought to have Barz placed on the city’s do-not-hire list, citing two investigations in which he was accused of fostering a hostile workplace.
Barz said those complaints weren’t sustained, and he is appealing the subsequent decision to add him to the list.
Paz’s claim that Barz pushed a traffic stop quota system under Supt. Brown’s Community Safety Team came amid increased scrutiny of the department’s traffic stop practices. Concerns grew when Dexter Reed, a Black driver, was killed in a shootout with a team of tactical officers in March 2024.
State data shows that stops have overwhelmingly targeted people of color and have rarely led to the recovery of guns or drugs. A new police policy that’s in the works would specifically bar quotas for stops.
Paz said that proposal, along with prohibitions on retaliation and racial profiling that have been implemented, also contributed to his decision to settle his lawsuit, which he believes was important to protect officers — and “the community.”
“Those are the people that are being violated,” he said of city residents. “Just like I was back in the day where I was yanked out of a car, handcuffed and put on the floor and patted down by [tactical] teams, simply because I was a Hispanic kid driving in a Hispanic area.”