CHICAGO — A coalition of Chicago police-reform groups has told a federal judge that the Chicago Police Department's refusal to let an outside agency investigate deaths caused by its own officers violates the city's federal consent decree, in a court filing made public on Tuesday, November 10. The coalition says it plans to formally ask U.S. District Judge Rebecca Pallmeyer, who oversees the decree, to order the department to comply.
Source: WTTW News, via Wisevoter
As a first step, the coalition has asked the consent decree's federal monitoring team to convene a meeting of all parties within 45 days to discuss resolving the dispute. Interim CPD Superintendent Fred Waller has said he would not oppose moving to a new law-enforcement task force model, according to the reporting — a notable position from the department's own acting head while the coalition presses its case in court.
How officer-involved deaths are investigated today
At present, every death caused by a Chicago police officer is investigated criminally by CPD's own detectives, assigned to the department's Investigative Response Team. Separately, investigators from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) examine whether officers followed department policy, and share their findings with the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, which decides on any criminal charges. The coalition's argument is that a department investigating its own officers' deadly encounters is exactly what state law was written to prevent.
What the consent decree and state law require
The consent decree states that criminal investigations into any CPD member's actions in an officer-involved death will comply with the Police and Community Relations Improvement Act (PCRIA), and that the city will use its best efforts to ensure the investigation is conducted by a law-enforcement agency with substantial experience and expertise in criminal homicide investigations.
Illinois enacted PCRIA in 2016, requiring that officer-involved deaths be investigated by an outside agency. The federal consent decree followed in 2019, after a U.S. Justice Department investigation found a pattern of unconstitutional policing in Chicago. Judge Pallmeyer has noted that the outside-investigation requirement rests not only on the consent decree but on the plain language of state law, according to earlier court reporting.
Source: Police1 / Chicago Tribune
The attorney general's push for a task force
The coalition's filing follows an October 20 status hearing at which the Illinois Attorney General's office recommended creating a new law-enforcement task force to investigate shootings by Chicago officers. Chris Wells, chief of the Attorney General's public interest division, told the court that after more than seven years of growing compliance, the city and CPD had still not delivered on what he called one of the most significant remaining projects, one that goes to the core of the consent decree. "The city of Chicago and CPD cannot achieve compliance with PCRIA on their own," Wells said.
Wells pointed to the Illinois State Police and the Cook County Sheriff's Police as possible contributors, but said the most likely option was a combination of resources from multiple law-enforcement agencies assembled into a task force. Interim Superintendent Waller welcomed the outside-task-force idea at that hearing. The Fraternal Order of Police, the union for rank-and-file officers and detectives, has long criticized COPA's civilian investigators and has raised questions in the debate over who should run criminal investigations instead.
Why this rule exists: the road from Laquan McDonald
The outside-investigation requirement traces back to the 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke, whose release of dashcam video a year later triggered national outrage and a federal civil-rights investigation of the department. Illinois lawmakers answered with PCRIA in 2016, and the consent decree — a binding court order that has since grown to more than 700 paragraphs — took effect in 2019. The monitoring team led by Maggie Hickey recently issued its 14th semi-annual report: as of June 30, the city had reached preliminary compliance on 99% of monitorable obligations, meaning policies are in place, while compliance at the next level, putting those policies into practice, stood at 78%, according to summaries of the report. The coalition argues that officer-involved-death investigations are the core promise still unkept.
What is solid
- A reform coalition's filing, made public Nov. 10, says CPD's refusal to allow outside investigations of officer-involved deaths violates the consent decree (WTTW).
- On Oct. 20 the Illinois Attorney General's office recommended a new multi-agency task force for CPD shooting investigations.
- Consent-decree Paragraph 492 requires investigations of officer-involved deaths to comply with PCRIA.
What is only claimed
- Whether CPD's current practice of investigating its own officers' deadly encounters actually violates PCRIA and the decree is the coalition's allegation; the court has not ruled on the coalition's request, and the city has not conceded a violation.
What happens next
The monitoring team is being asked to convene the parties within 45 days. If those talks do not resolve the dispute, the coalition plans to file its formal request asking Judge Pallmeyer to order compliance. Any ruling could reshape how every future officer-involved death in Chicago is investigated — by an outside task force rather than by the department itself — and how quickly families and the public learn what happened. Chicago is home to one of the largest Punjabi and South Asian communities in the Midwest, and police-accountability rules in the city are watched closely by immigrant families whose trust in reporting crime depends on believing investigations are independent.
No date has been announced for a hearing on the coalition's request. Awaaz Punjab will follow the monitoring team's response and any order from Judge Pallmeyer.