Nearly five years since the police murder of Minneapolis resident George Floyd sparked fundamental changes in the way numerous U.S. police departments operated, the Justice Department has reversed course on civil rights agreements with several U.S. cities, including Minneapolis.
Still, Chicago is not among the cities where consent decrees are being dropped.
Chicago’s civil rights reforms are now being managed by Illinois’ Attorney General, not the federal government, as is the case in Minneapolis, Memphis, Phoenix, Oklahoma City and other municipalities where there have been significant brutality complaints.
When George Floyd was killed by a police knee to the neck in Minneapolis five years ago Sunday, the Chicago Police Department was already in the throes of a civil rights and use of force reformation. That action had been announced almost five years earlier by then-U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch in the late days of the Obama administration.
“What we will be looking at again is the Chicago Police Department’s method and manner in dealing with use of force, particularly deadly force,” Lynch said at the time. “And whether or not we find racial, ethnic and other disparities in how they handle those force allegations.”
In the beginning of the first Donald Trump presidency, the DOJ tried to water down the consent decree in Chicago. That’s when the Illinois attorney general filed a state lawsuit approved in 2019, which required CPD changes in use of force policies, training and enforcement – a court-ordered movement that continues to this day.
That is why Chicago remains arguably untouchable by the Justice Department in 2025, despite DOJ dropping its efforts in many other cities.
“It’s because the Justice Department is not the party that brought the lawsuit,” said former Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson, who has been involved in police reforms since the beginning and remains so as president of the Civic Federation.
So, as Minneapolis, Louisville and other cities scramble over their own police reform programs with a Justice Department that is now abandoning federal accountability agreements, Chicago is well underway with state monitoring.
“What we’re seeing now out of Washington is really a more perfected form of the original intention, which was not to be in the police oversight game at all,” Ferguson said. “People need to understand that the work is being done and it’s important to understand both the work – it’s important in terms of ultimate objectives – but also the importance that the public keep eyes on here to make sure the proper political pressure is brought to bear on the mayor and other elected officials.”
“To make sure CPD and Supt. Snelling, who is actually moving things here, has the support that’s necessary in order to advance what the obligations of the city are towards constitutional policing” he added.
Reforming Chicago police techniques and tactics is not a quick fix.
The most recent CPD reform update filed in court shows that the police department has achieved full compliance in 16 percent of the targeted areas. Those changes span about five years. The consent decree is attempting to repair well-entrenched practices that began when the department was formed in 1855.
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