To: U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions
From: Chicago
Dear Mr. Sessions:
Thank you for your interest in Chicago’s police consent decree, now in its final stages of development. We are confident your “statement of interest” will be given due consideration by U.S. District Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., who will hold public hearings on the draft agreement later this month.
We have just one question: Where were you in early 2017, when Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel pledged to follow through on the consent decree prescribed by the U.S. Department of Justice you took over when the White House changed hands?
Oh, now we remember: You wanted no part of it. You believed then, as you do now, that worrying about the civil rights of suspects gets in the way of fighting crime. Instead of doubling down on the hard work that had been done in Chicago, you tried (unsuccessfully) to torpedo Baltimore’s consent decree, which was then at this same public hearing stage.
Baltimore’s mayor, police chief and citizens pleaded with a federal judge to disregard your last-minute interference. And he did.
Like Chicago, Baltimore had spent more than a year negotiating in good faith. Like Chicago, Baltimore had come to understand that a consent decree — a commitment to specific reforms, backed up by federal court oversight — was desperately needed to restore trust between the community and police.
Because of that broken trust, people whose neighborhoods are overrun with violence don’t call the police when they witness a crime, or when they are victims. They don’t count on the police to protect them from retaliation. They worry that police won’t treat suspects fairly. They worry about being abused themselves.
Mr. Sessions: If you’re so worried about the violence in Chicago, you’ll stop trying to sabotage efforts to repair that trust.
From afar, you blame a spike in homicides on a 2015 agreement between the city and the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois that requires police to document street stops. Its purpose is to make sure those stops are constitutional — not, as you say, to “undercut proactive policing in the city.” Yes, police have made fewer stops since then. Is that because they couldn’t justify them, or because of the extra paperwork? We wish we had an answer. We know you don’t.
That hasn’t stopped you from asserting that the ACLU agreement itself has made Chicago more dangerous, and that the consent decree would do the same. “It is critical that Chicago get this right,” you say.
Get it right? Your Justice Department should have been involved in this process all along, but you opted out. Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan had to step in to finish the job you wouldn’t. You were not helpful then. You are not being helpful now.
Chicago doesn’t need or appreciate your drive-by assessment. We can’t imagine Judge Dow, who has overseen this long and difficult process, will be impressed with it, either.
— Chicago Tribune