The former federal prosecutor overseeing the Chicago Police Department’s court-ordered overhaul warned Tuesday that budget cuts proposed by Mayor Brandon Johnson “not only risk slowing the already-behind pace of reform — the cuts risk undoing the progress the City and CPD have made.”
The stark warning from independent monitor Maggie Hickey was included in a new progress report showing the police department has reached full compliance with just 9% of a federal consent decree spurred by the police killing of Laquan McDonald.
“The City should be accelerating the pace of compliance,” Hickey said, “not just fighting to maintain it.”
Hickey’s comments came a week after she told U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer that slashing spending on offices integral to those efforts could amount to a “devastating blow to future reforms.”
That same day, Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul urged Johnson to change course while offering a stern warning.
“Adopting the currently proposed cuts would place the City at significant risk of being held in contempt of court for failing to comply with the consent decree,” Raoul wrote in a letter dated Nov. 12.
“I have copied the City’s legal counsel on this letter, which serves as notice under the consent decree of my office’s intent to seek court enforcement of the City’s obligations if the currently proposed cuts to CPD’s budget are adopted and implemented,” Raoul wrote.
The police department was placed under federal court oversight in 2019 — after a scathing report issued by the U.S. Department of Justice in the wake of McDonald’s death and a subsequent civil rights lawsuit filed by Raoul’s predecessor.
The police department has now reached preliminary compliance with 45% of consent decree requirements; secondary compliance with 37% of the requirements; and full compliance with 9%. The department hasn’t made any discernible progress complying with the remaining requirements, known as paragraphs.
To reach full compliance, the police department must first create policy in the first phase, then train officers in the second phase and finally implement the changes.
Angel Novalez, chief of the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform, said the progress made so far has been vital to changing the department’s culture.
“I know that sometimes folks hear a certain level of compliance in five years, and they may not see that as significant effort,” Novalez told reporters last week.
“But when you think of that five years, you think about … identifying the personnel to build the infrastructure so that we can move this forward. Not only identifying the right people, identifying the right processes, the ability to capture information for every level of compliance,” he said.
Meanwhile, the consent decree has continued to grow. Hickey and Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling have now indicated that they would like to expand monitoring to include the police department’s use of traffic stops, a controversial practice that has faced mounting scrutiny.
But under Johnson’s budget proposal, released late last month, the police department’s Training and Support Group and Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform would both face significant budget and personnel cuts.
Hickey on Tuesday gave credit for the department’s response to the Democratic National Convention this summer, saying “the City and CPD was better prepared for the DNC than they would have been before the Consent Decree.”
But she continued to slam Johnson’s budget plan, insisting that cutting positions integral to reform “could end up costing Chicago more in the long term while immediately stalling progress.”
“A series of significant events led to the Consent Decree, and it will take more than one successful — albeit historic — convention to rebuild community trust,” she wrote. “By design, full and effective compliance with the Consent Decree will take sustained effort and results.”
A spokesperson for the mayor didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.