Location of the Department
When it comes to local law enforcement, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is second in size in the country. With a population of over 9.5 million people, Chicago is the state’s biggest city and the third-largest metropolitan region in the United States. A Superintendent and a First Deputy Superintendent are in charge of the department, and they both answer to the Superintendent. The Chief of the CPD is appointed by the Mayor in consultation with the City Council. Patrol, Detectives, Organized Crimes, and Support Services are the four primary divisions of the CPD. Each of the city’s 22 police districts is divided into three “areas”: North, Central, and South. Each area is headed by a deputy chief who reports directly to the Bureau of Patrol’s Chief of Patrol.
Demographics of the Jurisdiction and the Department
CPD has 13,000 sworn officers as of the beginning of 2021. In 2022, the number of officers will be down to 11,900, as 720 will retire, and the rest will either resign or be transferred to another state. As of April 2020, there are 47.7 percent whites, 29.2 percent African Americans, 0.3 percent Indian Americans, and a total of 28.6 percent of Hispanics and Asians (Chicago Police Department n.d). The poverty rate in Chicago is 18.39%, with an average income of $90,713 per year. According to the OIG, just 18% of African-American applicants were admitted into the Academy, despite the fact that 37% of applicants were African-American. Nearing the conclusion of the recruiting process, the number of Asian, Hispanic, and white applicants increased. Despite submitting fewer applications, the Office of Inspector General (OIG) assessed these women formed 34% of applicants. The ratio of female applicants to the Academy’s list of finalists decreased to 27%. According to the Office of Inspector General, fewer black candidates were selected for employment as a result of the standard examination, physical fitness test, and criminal background inquiry. Black candidates, both male and female, had greater attrition rates throughout the background investigation and physical fitness test phases compared to the overall application pool. Female candidates of all races performed worse than male candidates on the physical fitness examination. The Office of Inspector General found that Black candidates had greater no-show and failure rates than other ethnic groups throughout the standard test and physical fitness test stages.
Crime in the Jurisdiction vs Similar Communities
The safety index gives Chicago a 10 out of 100. In 2021, there were 96,638 crimes in Chicago, including 26,620 violent crimes and 70,018 property crimes (Chicago Police Department n.d). Overall, the crime rate per 1000 people is 35.19, with 9.69 violent crimes and 25.49 property crimes per 1000 residents (Chicago Police Department n.d). One in 103 people in Chicago is a victim of a violent crime, and there are 418 crimes recorded per square mile in the city. The city’s property crime rate is 52% greater than the national average, putting the chance of becoming a property crime victim at 1 in 39 people (Chicago Police Department n.d). As of 2020, Chicago has a crime rate of 3926 per 100,000 residents, 67% more than the national average (D’Souza, Weitzer, & Brunson, 2018).
To begin with, the city of Chicago is an ideal location for socio-geographical study because of its large ethnic and socioeconomic variety. Chicago is one of the four most racially divided cities in the United States, with a high degree of physical segregation along racial and ethnic lines. It is also important to understand how urban areas are defined and connected to the larger context of violence in the city in order to understand the repercussions of racial segregation. There is still a lack of understanding of the underlying causes of urban crime, even though this correlation between segregation and crime has been convincingly demonstrated. As a result of this, prevalent urban ideas on race, crime, poverty, and violence need to focus more on the interaction of race and class and the distribution of opportunity and resources.
Since 2020 there has been a significant increase in Chicago’s crime rate. No other major metropolis is anticipated to suffer a rise in violence that is as dramatic as New York City, which is the highest in the nation (D’Souza, Weitzer, & Brunson, 2018). More gang activity, larger poverty concentrations, and decreased police presence are all possible explanations for the rise in crime. Only Chicago is expected to have a major increase in both violent crime and murder in the first half of the 2020s, and it will be the only city to see a year-over-year increase. However, according to studies, communities with long-term socioeconomic issues such as high poverty, unemployment, and racial segregation are more likely to see short-term surges in crime (D’Souza, Weitzer, & Brunson, 2018). Rather than a national trait, these increases are caused by local causes that have not yet been recognized. It’s also usual for crime to rise and fall throughout the course of the year in Chicago.
The rise in homicides in Chicago is a major factor in the overall increase in murders in the United States each year. Local gang involvement may be an influence, according to two recent patterns. In Chicago, the homicide rate is far lower than the national average. Because gang-related crimes are generally more difficult to investigate because witnesses are intimidated and reluctant to come forward, these decreased crime rates may also indicate an increase in gang activity. Between 2012 and 2014, the number of law enforcement personnel in the United States declined by 6% (D’Souza, Weitzer, & Brunson, 2018). Chicago’s police force has likewise seen a drop in numbers. More police officers have been thought to mean lower crime in previous studies. In addition, there might be a factor increase in Police Distrust. In the previous two years, the police and the people have had a tense relationship.
The struggle against crime cannot be won just by the efforts of police officers. A community’s help is critical to solving crimes and preventing future incidents. Police-community trust deteriorates, making it more difficult for officers to solve old crimes and prevent new ones. A rise in violence in some cities may be due to this. In the cities most affected by this trend, crime rose last year but is expected to fall through the end of 2016. In Baltimore, however, murders rose but are expected to fall through the end of 2016 (D’Souza, Weitzer, & Brunson, 2018). Meanwhile, New York City’s crime rate has remained at an all-time low. To discover if there is a connection between the two, further research and data are required. Thus, research Chicago’s history in an effort to shed light on the plight of the city’s low-income African American residents today.
The ghetto has long served as the archetypal housing arrangement for African-Americans living in metropolitan areas. Ghetto, despite it, conjures up a white-dominated image of Chicago’s ‘others and disadvantages,’ which has a very genuine historical reality. This fact does not mean that the imagined ghetto does not exist, but it does mean that we must be aware of the fact that, in the context of urban life, it is possible to conceptually place anonymous blacks in the ghetto as social residuum. The disadvantage in this urban environment is largely based on geography and race. It is a myth of the American Dream that a person can always rise out of poverty through their own initiative and hard work. In fact, it is nearly impossible to escape the tyranny of structural and compounded deprivation (D’Souza, Weitzer, & Brunson, 2018). Analysis of these processes reveals persistent criminogenic traits in U.S. urban regions, including Chicago, as a notable example of racial residential segregation, concentrated poverty, and volatile community-police ties.
Department’s Recruitment and Selection Process
To work for the Chicago Police Department, a person must be a U.S. citizen, have a valid driver’s license, have completed the hiring process, be at least 21 years old, and be a Chicago resident (Chicago Police Department n.d). Pre-POWER testing, background checks, physical tests, and psychological evaluations are all part of the selection process in Chicago’s police department throughout the recruiting process. POWER assessments are also required (Chicago Police Department n.d). Disqualification from employment by the CPD may be caused by the following factors: ensuring the confidentiality of key employment information, Convictions for perjury or false statements in the past, dishonorably dismissed from the military, domestic violence convictions, current criminal charges, failed drug tests, driving privileges revoked, and an outstanding criminal warrant are all red flags for a background check.
The Office of Inspector General (OIG) of the City of Chicago investigated the CPD’s (CPD’s) multi-stage recruiting process, including the director of diversity, equality, and inclusion. Applying to become a police officer involves many evaluations of a candidate’s cognitive capacity, physical fitness, personal history, physical and mental health, and other performance indicators (Chicago Police Department n.d). The CPD Academy accepts a limited number of applicants after a year-and-a-half-long screening procedure. In order to fulfill an 18-month probationary period, freshly minted CPD officers spend the first year as Probationary Police Officers. Additionally, women were more likely than men to miss the physical fitness test and to fail the exam overall, contributing to the high female dropout rate at this stage.
Military veterans and high school graduates of Chicago Public Schools may benefit non-White applicants, although veterans status seems to favor male candidates, which may expand the Academy’s gender gap in favor of white applicants. In addition, the OIG found that Academy applications were concentrated in a certain location. It may be required to concentrate and alter CPD recruiting efforts on underrepresented city regions. In the OIG investigation that included data from the City of Chicago Department of Human Resources (DHR) and the Chicago Police Department Human Resources (CPD HR), individual applicants were not assigned unique I.D. numbers. Throughout the recruiting process, it is hard for CPD HR and DHR to track applicant attrition rates by the degree of education or area of residency. The Office of Government Ethics revealed contradictory demographic labeling and classification.
According to the OIG, recruitment practices should be evaluated to uncover the prejudices that have resulted in the disproportionate loss of black and female candidates. If inequitable test results are not dependable indicators of excellent job performance, CPD should research further what modifications may be necessary. OIG also recommends that CPD decrease attrition by enhancing candidate readiness and decreasing no-shows. When they presented a combined response to the report, CPD unanimously approved OIG’s seventeen recommendations. According to the answer letter from CPD, candidates who fail to complete all components of the Pre-POWER test will no longer be dismissed automatically. In addition, they pledged to provide further information about the exclusion criteria utilized throughout their background investigation.
Description of the Departments Website
The CPD’s website is elaborate with existing and visible emergency contact at the top of the page. The website provides information of the Bureau of Internal Affairs which includes periodic reports and community engagement. The website also provides information about crimes such as vehicle hijacking and homicides. Additionally, there is a section for crime statistics and crime prevention interventions. More importantly there is a complaint section that residents can make grievances against the police. However, there is little other data published on the website that relates to police-community interactions.
Complaint Process
How to complain about an officer’s conduct is explained in detail on the website of the CPD. Anonymity is encouraged by the CPD. Although it claims that anonymized complaints may not provide enough information to make a judgment, it states that this is the case. A sworn affidavit confirming the truth and validity of the complainant’s accusations is needed under state law. According to CPD, you may file a complaint by contacting COPA (Civilian Office for Police Accountability) by calling one of the numbers listed on the website. Anyone with a grievance may do so in person at the COPA headquarters or by contacting the sergeant at each police station in their area. The sergeant’s desk complaints will be forwarded to the COPA headquarters for further action.
The International Public Relations Association (IPRA) procedure for dealing with accusations of police misconduct is straightforward, at least in theory. After receiving a complaint, the agency conducts an internal investigation before making a recommendation. In Municipal Ordinance 2-57-060, the method is clearly laid out. The IPRA has the authority to subpoena officers and witnesses if the allegation falls within its jurisdiction. As soon as the investigation is complete, an IPRA officer can determine whether or not the complaint was proven to be true. This suggestion is then considered by the police superintendent for 90 days, during which time he or she can decide whether or not to implement it. IPRA’s advice is assumed to have been accepted if there is no reaction. All decisions by the Superintendent that deviate from the IPRA’s advice must be documented in writing.
The IPRA’s top administrator and the school’s Superintendent must meet within ten days to resolve the disparity. If no agreement is reached, the case is handled by a three-member panel of the Chicago Police Board, an institution that is frequently criticized for making biased rulings in favor of police personnel. Hearings for disciplinary proceedings like suspensions or dismissal of police officers are one of the Board’s primary responsibilities, which includes making final decisions in disciplinary matters involving police misbehavior. As a result, the panel is vested with considerable authority when it comes to evaluating the severity of officer discipline. As a result, the panel is a major contributor to the CPD’s climate of impunity.
Complainants in Illinois must submit a sworn affidavit to the IPRA in order for their complaint to be investigated by the IPRA. 134 Affidavits were not required to file complaints with the IPRA from 2008 to the end of 2015, resulting in approximately one-third of complaints being ignored. Even though citizens can register a complaint online, they must finally visit a CPD station in order to sign sworn affidavits in order to have their claims examined. In light of the high incidence of affidavits missing, it is clear that a significant percentage of people are either unwilling or unable to comply. For the first year, police officers in Chicago earn an average pay of $48,078; after that, they get an average income of $68,000.
Internal Affairs Function
Chicago’s police accountability system consists of three investigating agencies: IPRA, the Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) of the Chicago Police Department, and CPD district offices. IPRA was founded in 2007 to assume the role of the Office of Professional Standards as a civilian disciplinary entity distinct from the CPD. According to the nature of the allegations, IPRA receives complaints against CPD officers and may assign them to the BIA. IPRA reviews certain categories of complaints and other non-compliant police events and makes punishment recommendations as necessary.
BIA investigates more than 70 percent of police occurrences, which is outside the scope of IPRA’s jurisdiction. The BIA Chief is immediately subordinate to the Police Superintendent and works out of the Superintendent’s office. The BIA investigates any operational and other violations of CPD laws, such as criminal misconduct, bribery and other types of corruption, drug or substance abuse, and DUI. An average of 4,500 IPRA complaints are received each year by the BIA, with around 40 percent of them being sent to one of the 22 local police departments for further investigation.
Analysis of Misconduct and How They Were Handled
As a result of the effectiveness of these methods inside the organizational culture of the Chicago Police Department, senior officers have demonstrated an implicit tolerance for brutality and other forms of procedural malpractice. This claim is substantiated by an examination of official complaints submitted against Chicago police officers. In 2017, an investigation by the Department of Justice found that the Chicago Police Department routinely used excessive force and that this was not an isolated incident (Rizzo, 2021). More than a third of the more than 128 accusations of misconduct lodged against “the Skullcap Crew” were based on allegations that they exercised excess violence on African-Americans during investigations.
Even though African-Americans make up just 32 percent of Chicago’s population, they accounted for 72 percent of all use-of-force deaths between 2005 and 2015, according to a 2018 analysis by the Invisible Institute (Rizzo, 2021). According to the Department of Justice, many of these instances lacked an appropriate investigation, and officers who used excessive force were rewarded for positive results by “closing” cases (Emesowum, 2016). Over the course of their employment, the Skullcap Crew allegedly garnered over 180 commendations, despite their infamous reputation for wrongdoing.
As a consequence of police brutality during the Democratic National Convention held in Chicago in 1968, both the city and its police officers acquired a terrible reputation. The extreme domestic terrorist group, the Weatherman, intended to conduct the “Days of Rage” event in Chicago the preceding year after the bombing of a Chicago police monument at Haymarket Square the year before (Emesowum, 2016). This protest was intended to provoke a violent encounter with the Chicago Police Department. During the Days of Rage, demonstrators did nothing to substantiate the claim that Chicago’s police department had a pervasive culture of brutality (Emesowum, 2016). As a result, police were able to maintain street control with little effort, calling the Days of Rage a failure that even Chicago Black Panther commander Fred Hampton termed “individualistic” and “Custeristic” on his website.
Police attempt to stop Russ, a 22-year-old student at Northwestern University, resulted in a high-speed pursuit during which he lost control of his vehicle. Russ was shot and murdered by Chicago police on June 5, 1999, amid an atmosphere of animosity and mistrust between policemen and local people (Emesowum, 2016). On the Dan Ryan Expressway, police officers had seen Russ executing an improper lane change. According to him, the cops were unable to make sensible judgments owing to their adrenaline surge, and as a consequence, the crisis became “a fast-breaking situation.” Psychological priming is more likely to occur when police are confronted with a “rapidly unfolding crisis,” in which case they will respond based on intuition and experience instead of the stringent code of ethics that controls their job (Bleakley, 2019). When cultural norms are aligned with the expectations of the broader public, the police will have a good instinctive reaction (Emesowum, 2016). This procedure had fatal repercussions in the Russ case because it was driven by an anomic culture that views procedural corruption as a means to an aim.
More recently, when Laquan McDonald was shot, and cops attempted to cover up what happened, the “blue wall” that protects officers suspected of misconduct, such as excessive force, has come under investigation inside the Chicago Police Department (CPD) as a result (Ajilore & Shirey, 2017). After he was ordered to drop his firearm, Jason van Dyke killed Laquan McDonald, 17, for reportedly slashing a police cruiser tire with a knife and then refused to do so. The Chicago Police Department had employed Van Dyke for fourteen years. As seen by dashcam footage, the police officer began firing at McDonald, who was sprinting away from the officer when he was shot. When McDonald was shot, at least eight other officers were present who did not feel the obligation to use any kind of force at the time.
Changes Recommended
Restorative and legitimate police efforts in Chicago must prioritize the city’s largely black and Latino areas, particularly ones with significant rates of violent criminality. In these areas, police is handled in a profoundly different manner from how it is handled by white people and their communities. CPD will have difficulties in reestablishing community confidence and ensuring effective law enforcement unless it removes damaging and needless inequalities in the treatment of inhabitants of these areas and takes deliberate actions to show its commitment to treating them equally. In addition, as previously said, CPD should take meaningful efforts to improve the openness of the promotion system. We should be applauding some recent initiatives such as expanding the OIG’s position and keeping it in place. We point out that past efforts to make the merit promotion process more transparent were reduced or canceled when the leadership was changed.
The systems put in place to handle police misconduct in Chicago are weak and proven ineffective. Article Six of the Chicago Police Department’s Collective Bargaining Agreement (CBA) contains a “Bill of Rights,” which outlines several “super due process” terms (Ajilore & Shirey, 2017). By using the phrase “super due process,” law enforcement agents are exempt from the same sorts of investigations that would be conducted on the average officer who has caused injury to another. According to the city of Chicago, “police officers’ lives are always on the line,” and “false and unfounded claims” are frequently leveled against them (Ajilore & Shirey, 2017). But they didn’t give evidence that cops confront a lot of false and unfounded accusations. The “Uniform Peace Officers’ Disciplinary Act” in Illinois codifies “super due process” provisions (Ajilore & Shirey, 2017). Complaints and identities of all complainants must be handed to officers in writing prior to their interrogation, making it easier for officers to make up a fake story. It is possible that these clauses infer and encourages officer to falsify statements in their favor. Instead of handling misconduct, these laws protect the police officers from allegations. Furthermore, a copy of any official report that purports to summarize an officer’s statement before the questioning is required by Sections L and M of the CBA.
Summary and Conclusion
The Chicago Police Department, the country’s second-largest police force, is faced with the difficult task of enforcing the law in a city where deep-seated social, economic, and racial disparities characterize the dynamic between residents and law enforcement. In light of these social conditions, the city’s police force is frequently forced to operate in a volatile climate that has frequently prompted them to utilize disproportionate tactics (Bleakley, 2019). A frequent aspect of most police forces is the establishment of an intra-organizational culture, and the Chicago Police Department is no different. Since the ‘war on gangs’ began in the city of Chicago in the second half of the twentieth century, the police department’s propensity to use excessive force to keep the peace has been ingrained in the department’s DNA. Since it was first established in 1835, the Chicago Police Department’s contemporary philosophy of overly harsh enforcement has been illustrated since the late 1960s. Significant contrast may be seen between individual incidents of police brutality and a generalized program of forceful detention. During the late 1960s when left-wing radicalism began to take hold in Chicago, that ultra-violence began to play a more prominent part in Chicago police culture. After a gradual rise in the 1960s, police brutality incidents peaked at the Democratic National Convention in 1968, when protestors clashed with police officers in front of the convention’s grand ballroom (Bleakley, 2019).
References
Ajilore, O., & Shirey, S. (2017). Do #alllivesmatter? an evaluation of race and excessive use of force by police. Atlantic Economic Journal, 45(2), 201-212. doi:10.1007/s11293-017-9538-6
Bleakley, P. (2019). A thin-slice of institutionalised policebrutality: A tradition of excessive force in the Chicago Police Department. Criminal Law Forum, 30(4), 425-449. doi:10.1007/s10609-019-09378-6
Chicago Police Department. (n.d). Retrieved May 17, 2022, from https://home.chicagopolice.org/
D’Souza, A., Weitzer, R., & Brunson, R. K. (2018). Federal investigations of Police Misconduct: A multi-city comparison. Crime, Law and Social Change, 71(5), 461-482. doi:10.1007/s10611-018-9797-4
Emesowum, B. (2016). Identifying cities or countries at risk for police violence. Journal of African American Studies, 21(2), 269-281. doi:10.1007/s12111-016-9335-3
Rizzo, B. (2021). Do we get the police we deserve? A historical review of police executive selection in America’s largest cities. Enhancing Police Service Delivery, 159-186. doi:10.1007/978-3-030-61452-2_11
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