CHICAGO — A federal judge on Friday granted the Chicago Police Department a three-year extension to comply with the consent decree, giving the department a total of eight years to implement a series of much-anticipated court-ordered reforms.
CPD also agreed in the stipulation to allow portions of the consent decree to govern search warrants, a key area for reform advocates, particularly in light of the 2019 raid in the home of Anjanette Young and other botched police raids nationwide.
Chicago police officers wrongly raided Young’s residence, entering without warning and handcuffing her while she was undressed.
The department made the stipulations in an agreement with the Illinois attorney general’s office, which is overseeing implementation of the consent decree. The matter was addressed in a hearing Friday before U.S. District Judge Robert Dow.
The Chicago Police Department has been under the sweeping consent decree since 2019 after a U.S. Department of Justice investigation of CPD that came in the wake of the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by former Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke.
The original terms of the court order gave the department five years to complete reforms, though police departments under consent decrees generally take longer to come into full compliance. The Los Angeles Police Department fully complied with a consent decree in 12 years.
Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown pointed to a number of reasons for the extension. He said it would likely take several budget cycles to equip the department with the technology it needs to fully comply with the reforms and assess whether the fixes are working. He also noted that the consent decree requires a ratio of about one sergeant for every 10 officers, a figure the department is “way under,” he said.
Brown said the city will also need several staffing and budget cycles to bring the ratio down.
He also noted that the stipulation to add search warrants adds additional consent decree work.
CPD has received criticism in the past for moving too slowly, or failing to create a necessary culture change to make the reforms effective, but officials say 10 years is typical for complying with a consent decree.
“You’ve got to first write the policies and then develop the curriculum and train everyone and then you can have the opportunity to change the culture,” Brown said.
Regarding the search warrant addition, the Police Department agreed that warrants would apply to three paragraphs in the impartial policing section of the document. Under the sections, CPD would be required to ensure that its policies and procedures — now including but not limited to search warrants — do not discriminate against people based on race, sex, gender identify or other protected classes.
The sections prohibit police from using factors like race, sex, housing status or financial status when making “routine or spontaneous law enforcement decisions, except when such information is part of a specific subject description.”
The stipulation says that CPD must demonstrate that its search warrant process is fair and not discriminatory and implement “sufficient policies, training, data collection, supervision and accountability systems” to ensure it.
“It likely will improve trust in the way we interact with the public when we do have to search or detain people,” Brown said.
The department is regularly monitored on its reform progress by an independent body. In the most recent report from Independent Monitor Maggie Hickey, the department achieved preliminary compliance in just over 50% of the provisions that have been reviewed.
The next report is expected in the coming weeks.
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