University of Chicago Crime Lab gets new leader
The University of Chicago Crime Lab, a valuable resource the Chicago Police Department has used to analyze its policies and practices, is getting a new leader Monday.
Katie Hill, who previously worked as a policy adviser to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and later as a top official in Chicago’s law department, will replace Roseanna Ander as the crime lab’s executive director. Ander, who helped launch the crime lab, will transition to a new leadership role.
“What’s so exciting to me about Katie coming on board is I feel like I have a partner who can continue to sort of drive the work forward, make sure that we are on that frontier of innovation, that we are doing good work,” Ander said in an interview alongside Hill.
Hill will help oversee key initiatives, like the crime lab’s training academies for police and community violence intervention leaders that were launched with $27.5 million in funding from billionaires Ken Griffin and Michael Sacks.
But Hill said she’s acutely focused on addressing the needs of policymakers in Chicago.
“I don’t have a specific project that I’m like day one, I’m launching this,” she said. “I want to come in and learn and be thoughtful about that. But I’m really looking forward to digging in on the Chicago work.”
Researchers are already looking to tackle some of the biggest issues facing the Chicago Police Department, including how to better deploy officers in the face of a staffing crisis, solve more shootings and homicides, and proactively eliminate people as suspects in crimes — an undertaking that could help avoid wrongful convictions and the costly settlements that come with them.
Much of the work with CPD is being viewed through a lens of austerity — doing the most with the finite resources that currently exist, Ander said.
“It’s how they can be more effective with the resources that they do have," she said. "And that, I think, requires being data-driven and .. learning about what’s working so that they can scale the most effective strategies … and more effectively use technology.”
Hill’s background has largely revolved around public safety and criminal justice reform.
While working as Chicago’s first assistant corporation counsel, she helped negotiate a federal consent decree mandating sweeping police reforms in the wake of teenager Laquan McDonald’s killing. Before that, she worked as director of policy, research and development at the Cook County state’s attorney’s office, leading initiatives on bail reform and making data publicly available.
Throughout her career, Hill said the crime lab has been an important partner, and she recently worked as an instructor at its policing leadership academy.
“So when the opportunity came up to potentially work with the crime lab formally, full time, I was pretty excited,” said Hill, who most recently worked as general counsel at the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, the state Medicaid agency.
The crime lab was founded in 2008 with $100,000 from the university’s provost as a response to the murder of a UChicago doctoral student and reports about shootings impacting school-age children. But Ander said the mission has largely remained unchanged.
“We now have tremendous evidence and insight because of the work we’ve done over the last 15 years in Chicago,” she said. “But we can’t just expect that evidence to then translate into national impact. We actually have to be very intentional about how we do that.
“How do we develop federal partnerships to unlock federal dollars to scale the things that are working? How do we work with governors and other states to take the lessons learned? So what I’m excited about is having that sort of innovation.”