City ‘will suffer’ if officer disciplinary hearings are held out of public view, police board president says
The president of the Chicago Police Board on Thursday cautioned that the city “will suffer” if the City Council approves a new contract for Chicago police officers that allows them to choose to have serious misconduct cases tried behind closed doors.
Addressing a recent effort by the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 to remove 22 misconduct cases from the board’s docket, Ghian Foreman, the board’s president, said: “Police accountability and, ultimately, the people of Chicago will suffer if the most serious police disciplinary cases are removed from the police board’s jurisdiction, which is what will happen if this decision is allowed to stand.”
Foreman added that he and other members of the board were prepared to appear before the City Council to further explain the board’s role in the city’s police accountability apparatus. Foreman’s comments came during the board’s monthly meeting at Chicago Police Department headquarters.
During the meeting, board members also voted 5-4 to suspend CPD Officer Bernard Butler for one year for his role in a shooting at the CTA Grand Red Line station in 2020.
Butler and fellow Officer Melvina Bogard were involved in the arrest of Ariel Roman after struggling with him and using a Taser. Bogard, 33, was charged with aggravated battery and official misconduct in Roman’s shooting, but was acquitted in a bench trial last fall. Bogard subsequently resigned from CPD. Roman’s federal civil rights lawsuit against her, Butler and the city is still pending.
At Thursday’s meeting, Tobara Richardson, the city’s deputy inspector general for public safety, also offered board members and attendees a refresher on a 2021 Office of Inspector General report detailing the disciplinary grievance process already available to CPD officers. Richardson echoed Foreman’s plea that the process remain as public as possible.
“It is imperative that the procedure and its outcomes are transparent and accountable to CPD members as well as the public,” she said. “Failures of transparency or gaps in accountability threaten public trust and members’ confidence in the fair operation of the disciplinary system as a whole.”
The FOP, which represents rank-and-file officers, detectives and retirees, filed a motion last week seeking to pause the disciplinary proceedings of 22 CPD officers in light of a recent arbitrator’s award.
Tim Grace, a union attorney, argued earlier this week that the recent arbitration award was unequivocal: CPD officers accused of serious misconduct should be given the choice to have their cases heard by the board or by an independent third party. For those officers who choose the third party, their cases would be tried out of public view and the majority of records related to those cases would not be available to the public.
“We all know where this is going to go: Arbitration,” Grace said Monday. “The officers will have a right to choose between the police board and arbitration. I think we’ll be trying a lot of cases at the police board, still, in the future, but I think that there are going to be some officers that want arbitration.”
That interim arbitration award came earlier this summer as the city and FOP continue negotiating a new contract. The FOP contract requires approval by the City Council before it goes into effect, a point noted by city attorney Hillina Tamrat earlier this week.
“The award, the supplemental award, is not final,” Tamrat said Monday. “In addition to not being final, it is not effective until it has been approved and ratified by City Council, and none of those things have happened.”
In his weekly message to members, FOP President John Catanzara said the union and city engaged in two bargaining sessions last week, both of which, he said, were “extremely productive.”
“The city realizes (that) negotiating in good faith for a change is the best path forward as the arbitration process continues,” Catanzara said.
