Reforming this city’s police force within the framework of the federally mandated consent decree should never become a second tier priority. A recent personnel move at the department suggests it already has.
Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown recently fired Robert Boik, CPD’s executive director of constitutional policing and reform. Boik was Brown’s point man for keeping the department on course with implementing the consent decree, the 2019 court order that mapped out in painstaking detail how the city must reform its Police Department.
Boik’s work was critical for two reasons. First, the consent decree isn’t a set of suggestions or guidelines. It’s a document with teeth. A federal judge enforces the consent decree’s implementation, and won’t free the city of its oversight until City Hall and CPD show they have carried out every reform.
