Those are helpful, but far more frequent updates on consent decree work - in reader-friendly form - would be even more useful for Chicagoans, who otherwise may be oblivious to Hickey’s work. Hickey’s team has a website that posts periodic reports on CPD’s progress toward consent decree compliance. It can be done without stepping outside the boundaries of the consent decree. Moreover, the consent decree essentially bars Hickey and her team from making public statements.īut we agree that visibility by the Independent Monitor Team is crucial to CPD’s mission to reform and to be seen to be doing so. She doesn’t pull punches, and her evaluations of CPD implementation of the consent decree are comprehensive and fair.
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“Beyond voluminous technical reports, the (Independent Monitor Team) must be charged with conducting its work and exercising voice in a far more regular and public way than has been the case these last four plus years,” Ferguson wrote.įrom our vantage point, Hickey has performed ably. CPD established the policy only after withering criticism about police shooting deaths during foot chases, most notably the tragic killing of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a Chicago police officer in 2021.įerguson takes aim not just at City Hall and CPD, but also at Hickey, calling on her to be far more public in her assessments of consent decree progress. It took years for the department to put in place a permanent foot pursuit policy, even though the consent decree, enacted in early 2019, demanded it. Maggie Hickey, the independent monitor assigned by the federal court to evaluate the city’s progress with the consent decree, has consistently cited the city’s failure to meet implementation deadlines. His message needs to be heard.įerguson’s correct when he says progress with the consent decree has been unacceptably slow. He’s also a potential candidate for Cook County state’s attorney in 2024, and while he may be trying to ratchet up his own visibility with voters, we’re not bothered by that. He’s a trusted voice when it comes to unvarnished assessments of what’s awry with how the city’s being run.
“In the absence of a hard methodological and operational reset, I believe the Consent Decree is at high risk of failing to achieve its objectives.”įerguson was the city’s inspector general from 2009 to 2021. “Consent Decree implementation and monitoring is a faltering undertaking both in substantive accomplishment and in transparency,” Ferguson wrote. The Tribune reports that in a June 5 letter appearing in a federal court filing, Ferguson painted a bleak portrait of the city’s commitment to bringing meaningful, lasting change to a department that has seen trust from the communities it serves ebb year after year. Unfortunately, also fading fast is the city’s drive to earnestly and expeditiously carry out the consent decree’s reforms, said Joe Ferguson, the city’s former inspector general.
Since then, however, that national spotlight has faded. McDonald’s death was a driving force behind the federally mandated consent decree that requires the Chicago Police Department to overhaul its training, supervision and accountability. The needless, tragic murder of Laquan McDonald, a Black teen, by a white Chicago police officer in 2014 put the city’s Police Department, and the need to reform it, in the national spotlight.
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