Chicago can't afford to shortchange policing reform with big budget cuts

Here's a reminder why Mayor Brandon Johnson's proposed cuts to the Chicago Police Department's office of reform are a bad idea:

Over the last two decades, the city has paid out nearly $700 million in lawsuit settlements for 300 cases involving people who said Chicago police framed them. That figure was from December 2023, and the city continues to shell out multi-million-dollar settlements for misconduct lawsuits nearly every month.

Taxpayers pay the price not only in lawsuit costs, but in the human toll of being victims by misconduct. Good cops pay too, in broken trust with communities they are sworn to serve.

Policing reform is essential to fixing both. Which is why, as the Chicago Police Department continues to inch forward on compliance with the 2019 reform consent decree, City Council should say no to the mayor's proposal for drastic budget cuts to the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform.

The office's budget would shrink by 45% next year — from roughly $6.7 million to $3.7 million — and the number of budgeted employees would shrink to 28 from the current 65, the Sun-Times' Tom Schuba and Fran Spielman reported last week.

Johnson's budget is "dead on arrival" because of its massive $300 million property tax hike, as one aldermanic critic said last week. The proposed cuts to policing reform, in a department that is already critically understaffed, should be off the table too.

Good public safety must come first

It's been 10 years since the fatal police shooting of Black teenager Laquan McDonald by a white police officer, a tragedy that jump-started the call for policing reform. In response to the shooting, the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation and in 2017 issued a damning report that concluded the CPD had a long history of racially discriminatory policing and abuse. In 2019, the city, then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan and the CPD negotiated a consent decree that was filed in federal court.

Reform consent decrees in big cities typically take a decade to implement. Chicago shouldn't scale back the effort after just five years — and after, as of Dec. 31, 2023, achieving full compliance with only 7% of the decree's provisions.

What a slap in the face it would be, to activists and leaders who pressed for reform and to those who are making a honest effort to bring it to fruition, to hand down drastic cuts to the reform office now.

And without rebuilding community trust, an essential part of reform, the city risks thwarting the very effort that's needed to strengthen crime-fighting by forging a stronger alliance between officers and the people they serve, especially in Black and Brown communities.

Johnson is in a tough position, no doubt, dealing with past fiscal decisions that contributed to the city's current budget woes, as he told this editorial board last week. "They are not wrong," the mayor said when asked what he would say to Chicagoans who question his proposed $300 million property tax increase.

But public safety has to come first. When Chicagoans call 911, they have every right to expect a swift response by a well-trained officer.

How to boost staffing and retention, without lowering standards

City Council members and other leaders are right to also feel unsettled by the mayor's proposal to eliminate 456 police vacancies, which would shortchange the Office of Community Policing and the counseling division.

And all of this comes at a time when CPD, like other police departments nationwide, is struggling with officer retention.

One in six cops hired by the department since 2016 is no longer with the department, with 42% landing at other Illinois law enforcement agencies or the Chicago Fire Department, Schuba and Frank Main reported in a recent series on the city's alarming police staffing crises.

Other young officers have themselves been arrested, raising the question of whether the decision to lower hiring standards in 2022 was a good idea.

Policing is a tough job. But our city needs officers who can effectively do the job without hurting themselves or anyone else, including a fellow officer.

Johnson advocates for a holistic strategy for public safety, and we're in favor of crime prevention whenever possible.

But police reform is part of that holistic strategy. "Reform doesn’t happen without investment," said Robert Boik, former executive director of the Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform.

Half of the American public does want that reform to take place, a 2022 Gallup poll found. Among Black and Hispanic Americans, the percentage who want a "major change" in policing was 72% and 54%, respectively.

Those statistics shouldn't come as a surprise.

"The demand for various forms of organizational change in American policing ... is directly related to the fear of police," as a 2024 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice pointed out.

City Council members should hold firm. Because Chicago can't afford not to invest in policing reform.

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