Happy Saturday!

Two long-brewing topics, Chicago school debt and police reform got a little bit more tangled this week as Chicago Public School officials skipped out on a Council hearing and Chicago police officers elected a new union president who promised to fight “the anti-police movement in the city.”

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CPS Won’t Show For Council

Last week, City Council’s Education Committee attempted to hold a hearing on Chicago Public School finances. Even though it was the committee’s first scheduled meeting since August of last year, nobody from CPS showed up, causing one aldermanic staffer to claim the absences were, “because the district is on spring break.”

Alderman Rick Muñoz (22), a member of the committee, didn’t take too kindly to CPS ignoring him. He said district leadership has been unreliable when it comes to revealing their finances, saying that “One day, they say they’re $200 million short, another day they’ll say they’re $250 [million] short, another day they’ll say they’re $130 [million] short. Million. We’re talking about a lot of money. And the difference is huge.”

But City Council literally has no authority over CPS, since the general assembly restructured CPS in 1995, giving the mayor total authority over selecting the school board, as well as unlimited power over the school budget and bonding. Council has no oversight powers whatsoever. So why would CPS leaders show up for a Council hearing?

I asked Muñoz this question Thursday. “It’s because they’re going to need us later. We’re going to have to pay for everything,” he said. On Tuesday, in fact, Ald. George Cardenas’ (12) Chicago Public Education Revitalization Ordinance–creating an official mechanism for the city to direct all surplus TIF money to CPS–is on the Finance Committee agenda. He’s said a TIF surplus could “conservatively provide the school district $100-150M to help address the current crisis.”

CPS still needs to fill a $215 million gap–at least that’s the last number CPS provided in January–or else schools will close three weeks early in May. It doesn’t look like the state legislature will get the funds past Gov. Bruce Rauner. So, that leaves Chicago City Council on the hook.

But if CPS leaders even show up for a Council meeting, Mayor Rahm Emanuel might as well hoist a big white flag for everyone in Springfield. The message would be clear: “We’re giving up on state money, we’re just going to pay for everything ourselves!”

Gov. Rauner could declare victory: His obstinace made Chicagoans pay their own bills. Nevermind that the rest of the state’s schools were getting a proportionately larger state subsidy, but that’s politics.

Mayor Emanuel and his Springfield allies have to keep up the hope that as CPS’ May doomsday draws closer, pressure will mount to do a deal in the statehouse. So, Emanuel and CPS CEO Forrest Claypool are saying as little as they can about alternative solutions, while continuing to bang on the table, demanding a statehouse solution.

But in Muñoz’s mind, this is all window dressing. He figures that it’s a done deal that aldermen will to have to vote for another tax hike to pay for CPS. Expect more aldermen to get agitated in the coming weeks as they work out the political math for themselves.

The Growing Rift Between Cops And The Black Community

Everyone knows that Chicago has a crime problem, but there are two opposing camps about the cause and what to do about it. One group believes Chicago has an enforcement problem, that if more bad guys were thrown in jail, then the criminal-minded would choose not to do criminal acts, bringing peace to the city of Chicago.

Another group sees the problem as socioeconomic, starting with a lack of opportunity, and compounded by overly-aggressive policing that divides society into criminals vs. non-criminals. This arbitrary sorting out forces many otherwise good people into a lifelong “criminal” label because of one or two bad decisions.

While this is a broad characterization, and there are many nuances in between, the two different frame references essentially define the divide between Chicago’s police union leadership and its black community. Like pro-life versus pro-choice advocates, the two groups have such different worldviews, they believe compromise is not possible, only domination of one over the other.

Everything to this point has been a prelude: The Department of Justice and Police Accountability Task Force reports were just pieces of paper. Then, Donald Trump’s election made a federal consent decree a non-starter: The feds won’t force police to make changes. Instead, Mayor Emanuel has made incremental changes on the margins of police reform, addressing training and starting a long process to revamp police oversight, but the thorniest problems reside in the police union’s contract with the city.

Under another presidential administration, the Fraternal Order of Police could expect the Department of Justice to force their contract negotiations to court, if there weren’t enough big changes, but under President Donald Trump, the FOP has been emboldened.

Two items in the police contract are under particular fire. From our story on the DOJ report in January:

Requiring a signed and sworn affidavit to file a misconduct allegation against a police officer undercuts accountability. And even though the FOP contract allows for an “override”, Independent Police Review Authority investigators told DOJ it’s not encouraged and they weren’t trained on the procedure. Override was used only 17 times in the last 5 years. And of the approximately 2,400 complaints submitted a year, 40% are closed because they lack a signed affidavit. “Collectively, through this patchwork of policies and practices, the City fails to conduct any meaningful investigation of nearly half of the complaints made against officers.”

The FOP contract fosters collusion among officers. The report explicitly states that the level of “witness coaching” by union attorneys for police officers is unprecedented in DOJ’s history of conducting these types of investigations. “We have not identified any other agency that permits witness coaching to occur in the very presence of investigators, much less requires those investigators to cooperate with others in the room to conceal such efforts from the tape recorder and omit any mention of them in the investigative file. At CPD, however, the practice is institutionalized, with IPRA investigators often starting their interviews by inviting officers to use a hand signal if they want the investigator to turn off the tape recorder. Under the FOP contract, officers are allowed to have an attorney present, which is usually a lawyer provided by the union, when they are being interviewed for an investigation. Usually, the same attorney will represent all the officers involved, making collusion not only easy, but common practice.

On Wednesday, FOP members elected a new union president, Kevin Graham, who pledges to oppose these reform efforts. In an interview on WGN-TV Thursday, Graham specifically mentioned the two above issues, promising to fight for them.

Then, on Thursday, the City Council Black Caucus held a press conference, joined by county, state and federal black elected officials. Caucus leader Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6) promised that “The 18-member Black Caucus is committed to voting no on this contract if these recommendations are not publicly supported in the negotiation between the administration and the FOP,” and then they too, specifically mentioned the two above points.

As we reported in our Neighborhood Perspective series in January, there is a widespread demand for police reform in Chicago’s black community, and black leaders of all levels are cynical when asked if they believe Mayor Emanuel will be able to deliver. Meanwhile, voters in Chicago’s Northwest and Southwest Side neighborhoods share their neighborhoods with cops, and tend to share their worldviews.

Because the two communities have such divergent views, Mayor Emanuel will have to carefully negotiate this tricky political situation if he wants to remain mayor after 2019.

Budget committee spent three and a half hours Thursday considering a $160 million, four-year street light replacement plan and authorizing a much-touted new municipal ID program operated by the City Clerk’s office. While both items passed committee, opposition dug in hard, subjecting witnesses to hours of questions.

City Council License Committee speedily approved new measures Thursday to make it easier to revoke licenses for about 370 charter vehicles, or so-called “party buses”, licensed in Chicago, and to crack down on unlicensed buses operating in the city. The move comes after a series of highly-publicized shootings and violent incidents. The ordinance strengthens and increases penalties for charter operators who do not take steps to warn passengers of that unlawful weapons and substances are not allowed.

Members of the City Council Black Caucus were joined by African-American county, state and federal elected officials Thursday morning as they announced plans to vote against a future Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) contract if the contract did not include specified reforms, including removing restrictions on investigations of anonymous complaints, and removing the ban on rewards to police officers who provide information about misconduct.

The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police changed their top leadership Wednesday after members elected 19th District patrolman Kevin Graham from the Blue Voice slate as the union’s president for a three-year term. Graham, in a runoff election, defeated incumbent Dean Angelo 56.21% to 43.79%. This is the second time in a row the FOP elected their president in a close election. Angelo defeated his predecessor, Mike Shields, in a 2014 runoff election.

wHappy Saturday!

While we’ve allowed ourselves to be enchanted by warm spring weather and distracted by the Washington, D.C. soap opera, Chicago has done a few things worth noting this week.

1. Chicago’s Police Policy Reform Efforts Took One Step Forward, One Step Back

Police policy reform advanced this week when city Inspector General Joe Ferguson announced his nomination of Laura Kunard as the Deputy IG for Public Safety. Once Kunard, an accomplished criminology academic, is confirmed by City Council, she’ll be bestowed with a series of brand new powers for the IG’s office, including the authority to investigate the Chicago Police Department and IPRA/COPA. These new investigatory powers were granted as part of last October’s police reform ordinance. Reform advocates have a long list of things for her to investigate, including CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs and following up on recommendations made by last year’s Police Accountability Task Force.

Meanwhile news from Washington this week made it clear that a federal consent decree for police reform was dead, dead, dead. It was no surprise to many reform advocates, since then-Candidate Donald Trump telegraphed his displeasure with federal “interference” with local policing. “[The] DOJ consent decree was effectively dead in November,” one advocate told me earlier this week.

The loss of the consent decree removes political cover for Mayor Rahm Emanuel, says Sun-Times’ Fran Spielman in an excellent analysis of the political ramifications created by the consent decree’s death. In short: You can’t win election without the Black vote. Chicago’s black voters want police reform. But now Emanuel’s going to have to implement believable reform without the Feds playing the heavy.

Reform advocates have long anticipated and prepared for Trump and Sessions’ decision to kill federal assistance for police reform. One option, advocates say privately, is to pursue a civilian-run suit for a consent decree. In Oakland, California a group of citizens successfully sued the city in 2012, alleging years of police brutality and racial profiling. As a result, a federal judge appointed a full-time compliance director who had the power to fire the city’s police superintendent and make police policy changes without city approval.

Such a suit could be difficult and costly if the city of Chicago was not cooperative, say advocates, since it would require rounding up dozens or even hundreds of plaintiffs willing to testify they were targeted as part of long-running patterns and practices of the police department.

2. The Clock Continues To Tick For CPS

If you’ve been following this newsletter for a while, you know that Chicago Public Schools need a helping hand. With a $210 million deficit this year, unless CPS gets the money from somebody, they’re going to have to close 13 school days early. The school system can’t raise taxes, because of a state mandated property tax cap, and its credit is so bad, further borrowing isn’t realistic. Gov. Bruce Rauner has repeatedly said he won’t allow a Chicago schools bailout and sympathetic Democrats in the state legislature don’t have enough votes to override Rauner’s veto.

That leaves the City of Chicago and its taxpayers as the funder of last resort. Since The Chicago Board of Education (the official name for CPS) and the city are two separate government entities, the city could potentially buy debt from the Board, at whatever interest rate it chooses. The trouble is: Where would the city of Chicago get the money to pay for it?

As we get closer to the end of the school year, the likelihood of a Chicago-CPS bailout becomes increasingly likely, but Mayor Emanuel isn’t giving any public hint that he’s willing to consider one.

Politically, he can’t. It would be Gov. Rauner’s dream for Chicago to bailout CPS, since Rauner could then turn to the rest of the state and say, “See, I made Chicago pay its own bills!” and would set a precedent for Chicago to pick up a bigger slice of its education costs than it has in the past.

But it seems more and more likely that Chicago will have to pick up the check. While there’s still two more months of legislative session in Springfield, the town is gridlocked and the State Senate’s grand bargain on the state budget is barely limping along.

Allowing CPS schools to close three weeks early would create a cascading series of problems for Chicago. Suddenly you’d have 380,000 kids across Chicago with no day care or activities to occupy them. Unless summer jobs and day camps start early, the system would struggle to keep them engaged and out of trouble. High school juniors counting on end-of-year athletic contests that determine college scholarships would miss their shot. Not to mention three weeks of student instruction that would be cut.

And then there’s the political fallout Mayor Emanuel would have to endure. Even though Springfield won’t pick up the check, it’s the mayor who wears the jacket.

So, unless the state legislature passes a veto-proof bailout in the next six weeks or so, it seems almost a done deal that the Chicago City Council will have to take a vote to cough up the $210 million difference.

Some portion could probably come from a Tax Increment Financing (TIF) account sweep. How much, nobody outside the Mayor’s Office knows, since the state of TIF accounts are closely guarded. But then the rest, let’s say a remaining $100 million, would have to come from some sort of new tax. Creating yet another tax vote for aldermen already wondering how many more tax votes they’ll have to take between now and the 2019 elections.

3. An Important Education Advocate Steps Aside

If you’ve spent any time in the world of Chicago public education over the last few years, chance are you’ve crossed paths with advocate Wendy Katten. A North Center parent with a son in CPS, Katten founded and led the volunteer public school parent organization Raise Your Hand for seven years, acting as a moderating voice that often seemed to split a reasonable difference between the Chicago Teacher’s Union and CPS leadership.

But then this week, Katten announced that she was stepping down from Raise Your Hand leadership because her family was moving to Evanston so her son could begin high school at Evanston Township High School. It was a shocking decision for many observers, especially since Katten was so committed to Chicago public education.

When I caught up with her on Thursday afternoon, Katten expressed a combination of sorrow and relief that she’d made the decision. Her neighborhood didn’t suit her family any more and her husband was from Evanston, one important factor. But also, her son was heading into high school and the CPS high school decision process was “demoralizing” for her family.

“Part of this is really all about CPS not taking over my life. This is a good move for my family,” Katten told me.

“We have the privilege to [leave], and some people don’t. We can pick up and move. I’m aware of that,” Katten said. But she was relieved to move on because between having a kid in CPS and being a full-time advocate, CPS pervaded almost every aspect of her life.

She and her family struggled with finding a good CPS high school for her son.

“I found the school selection process demoralizing and developmentally inappropriate,” for a 13 year-old, she said. “It was a burdensome process.”

As she admitted though, Katten and her family have choices. Living in the decidedly middle-class part of North Center, but within the boundaries of a great CPS elementary school, Katten’s family will have no problem picking up and leaving the fiscal and organizational mess Chicago Public Schools have become. While many other families, have no choice but to lump it.

Taking over for Katten will be a pair of South Siders, Hyde Park resident Joy Clendenning, and Bridgeporter Jennie Biggs. Both are former teachers.

I called Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, for a simple quote on a story Thursday afternoon, but he was in a loquacious mood, and a five minute check-in turned into a half hour conversation. He’s in the middle of a tight run-off election. Mail-in ballots will be counted on Tuesday, April 12, and his union is flexing on police reform.

Inspector General Joe Ferguson announced his pick Thursday for a new public safety deputy, Laura Kunard, an academic who's done extensive research on policing issues and who once served as a court-appointed monitor for a federal consent decree in Albuquerque. The appointment comes after an exhaustive national search for the post.

Happy April Fools’ Day!

Sometimes the world’s axis seems to tilt just a bit more, and there’s a crazy confluence of events. When that happens, the steady beat of the news drums turns into a pair of rampaging kettle drums. This week, the kettle drums got walloped twice.

1. Affordable Housing, CHA’s Plan for Transformation and The Cost of Segregation

This week, a pair of reports, one that quantifies in dollars the cost of Chicago’s segregation, and a second from the Chicago Inspector General on the fiscal management of the city’s affordable housing program, piled onto another monster report last week on the poor state of the Chicago Housing Authority’s mixed-use, affordable housing program, The Plan For Transformation. Threading through all three reports and issues are the value of real estate, and how in Chicago, “the wrong side of the tracks” really means something.

The Metropolitan Planning Council and Urban Institute’s report on segregation charges that, “If the economic and the black-white segregation measures were the median amount, the associated increase in black per capita income would be 15.1 percent, or $2,982, making for an aggregate increase of $4.4 billion in black per capita income.” The report is chock-full of findings, like that the Chicago-area is the 5th most segregated region in the country.

Meanwhile, two of the vehicles meant to help unwind Chicago’s segregation, mixed-income and affordable housing, continue to have problems, according to recent reports. Last week WBEZ published the results of a study conducted with Northwestern University, finding that less than 8% of former CHA public housing residents, uprooted in the 1990’s from demolished public housing projects like Stateway Gardens and Cabrini Green, were resettled in promised mixed-income developments as part of the Plan For Transformation. CHA says it is rebooting its efforts, but for twenty years, CHA hasn’t had shown much results.

The other housing prong, affordable housing, is managed by the Chicago Department of Planning. To its credit, since 2015 DPD has created “north of 20,000” of a 41,000 unit goal of affordable housing units, however, a recent Chicago Inspector General report found $4.5 million of affordable housing funds from 2013 to 2015 was inappropriately accounted for.

2. Sanctuary Status & ICE at Odds

Incredibly, just as U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions was threatening in a press conference Monday to ‘claw back’ federal funds to Chicago law enforcement because it insisted on not assisting federal immigration officials, Chicago’s immigrant community was reeling from a dawn raid that same day by said immigration officials who shot a 53-year old man, Felix Torres Sr., in his Belmont-Cragin house.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) officials were pursuing Torres’s son, Felix Torres, Jr, who was wanted on felony weapons charges. Part of ICE’s purview, includes investigating drugs and weapons smuggling. ICE has not answered questions about whether or not immigration status was part of Torres Jr’s arrest, but they did announce later this week that they found two weapons in a search of the Torres’ home.

While it seems that ICE’s morning raid was not attempting to apprehend an undocumented immigrant, Monday’s convergence of events managed to highlight the fears of immigrant advocates, that Chicago’s sanctuary status will only make ordinary law enforcement more difficult, as immigrants of all statuses, legal and otherwise, will fear interactions with police.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded to Session’s threats, calling them “a bit of a joke” since Department of Justice funding is already scheduled to be cut in President Donald Trump’s proposed 2018 budget.

A report produced by a coalition of community organizations says interviews with more than 1,650 Chicago residents included accounts of “a long history of disrespect, abuse and humiliation that marginalized communities have suffered at the hands of police.” The “Citywide Community Conversations” report conducted by the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) collected comments from 19 meetings held across Chicago intended to “begin to develop and advocate for plans to improve police accountability and community-police relations.”

The report illustrates frustration under-privileged and minority communities have with the police. “At the end of the day community members want to be safe,” said GAPA Coordinator Mecole Jordan, who oversaw the production of the report. “They want to live and thrive and walk up and down the street in their community. Holistically.”

But, many community members feel a disconnect with police that leads to distrust. “Understand, [community members] ask for police officers to really be a part of their community, not just people who come in to do a job. To be a part, to say hello, to understand and to have relationships. Not just to come in, do a job and collect a paycheck. You protect things you care about, generally speaking. We want people to take the time to understand our culture,” said Jordan.

When there’s distrust, community members don’t feel like they can turn to the police, making the police’s job harder as well, said Jordan.

The ten-page report mirrors many suggestions made by the March 2016 Police Accountability Task Force report and January’s Department of Justice report. But perhaps because GAPA’s report is entirely made up of community comments, it puts a high priority on increasing police-community interaction. “There was an overwhelming belief that in order for police to work more effectively to keep communities safe, they need to spend substantially more time deliberately building relationships and trust with local residents,” said the report.

The GAPA organization, an umbrella group of community groups loosely organized since last summer and funded by philanthropic organizations including the Woods Fund, Chicago Community Trust, the MacArthur Foundation and others, was tapped by Mayor Rahm Emanuel last fall to conduct a survey to determine the best way to devise a community police oversight board. Emanuel had promised to create such a board when he introduced his police reform legislation last October, but held off introducing community oversight legislation so GAPA could conduct its outreach and research.

In an interview Wednesday, Jordan downplayed the imprimatur given by Emanuel last fall. “Our hope is through the community engagement process, whatever we come up with the mayor will be able to adopt. But there has been no agreement there,” Jordan said.

Last October, when GAPA announced their plan, some police reform advocates voiced concern it was just a way to sidetrack accountability efforts. But today, Frank Chapman, an organizer for the Community Police Accountability Council (CPAC) plan that was introduced in City Council last October, told The Daily Line he likes the report.

“I think it’s good. It’s very constructive. I don’t see any major points of disagreement in terms of specific ideas or policy positions,” said Chapman. “But, in terms of the policy suggestions, I have a question: How do we get to implementation?”

Black Lives Matter organizer Kofi Ademola also liked the report, but was concerned the outcome. “My concerns are around some of the ideas presented the roles of officers and what that looks like in communities and how they think they can leverage and balance the different roles of how police engage in so-called ‘fighting crime’,” Ademola said. “As police officer, I might be involved in a peace circle one day, and then the next day me pulling him over asking him to snitch on his friends about dealing drugs. I wonder how an attorney might look at that.”

Dean Angelo, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, was not supportive of the report. “This document is yet another, albeit nicely formatted, incredible approach to what a limited group of non-police continue to use a self-protecting mechanism into an arena that they have zero clue about, let alone any idea of what to offer as a solution,” he said in an emailed statement. “I would suggest they spend their time on solutions to end the non-stop killing of innocent children. Groups like GAPA continue to seek support (whether it be financial or political) to thwart proactive policing.”

Jordan says the group will begin to create a second report with specific recommendations for how police oversight might be managed in Chicago, and what responsibilities such a group should have to be effective.

Leadership of Chicago’s biggest police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, Lodge 7, is at stake this month in a runoff election for president between incumbent Dean Angelo and challenger Kevin Graham. A patrolman in the 19th District, Graham won 24% of the vote to Angelo’s 35% in the first round of voting completed last week. Runoff ballots were mailed to members Wednesday and will be tabulated on March 29.

Cook County Board lobbyists reported over $1.9 million in compensation in 2016, over half of which went to powerhouse firm All-Circo, which reported to the Cook County Clerk’s Office $736,000 in fees related to Cook County Board lobbying. The biggest issues lobbyists reported plying influence on were the County’s new Sweetened Beverage Tax and and a failed attempt to create a 50-cent rideshare tax last fall.

Three reappointments to the Community Development Commission and three applications for property tax incentives for industrial properties in the 33rd, 37th and 9th Wards are up for consideration Tuesday by the Council’s Committee on Economic, Capital and Technology Development.

Happy Saturday! While Chicago City Hall was generally quiet this week there was still plenty of big things happening in the city. Here are three big stories we think will set a trend in the coming months.

1. Chance’s Million Is Great, But Did It Do Anything?

This week started off with Chancellor Bennett, A.K.A. Chance The Rapper, giving $1 million to CPS schools, followed by another $100,000 spread out among ten individual schools. Chance’s gift was punctuated by a well-placed jab at Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner to “do his job” to fund Chicago’s schools. Students will miss 13 instructional days if CPS doesn’t fill its $129 million hole this spring.

While the big gift is great, and Chance’s taunts got a lot of play in the national press, it seemed to move Rauner a bit, who responded that he would accept a CPS funding bill right away, but also leaked a memo suggesting Chicago could pay the $129 million on its own.

The CPS funding is closely tied to the State House’s “grand bargain” to pass the first state budget in two years and as has been widely reported elsewhere, that bargain seems to be on life support since Gov. Rauner sank some promising negotiations between Democratic and GOP state senators.

The Chicago Teacher’s Union, upset that CPS hasn’t fulfilled promises to fund the full school year – either by state or city funds, they don’t care – are now threatening a one-day strike on May 1 to make their point.

But really, time is on Rauner’s side in this case, since he has a well-professed dislike of Chicago’s unionized teachers, and he’s publicly said that he thinks Chicago’s schools are over-funded. It suits his purposes either way: more of CPS’ bills to be picked up by Chicago rather than the state, or for Chicago teachers to get whacked on their salaries.

Lost in this equation, of course, are the kids going to CPS schools.

2. BLM and FOP Have Totally Different Frame References

One of the biggest struggles for law enforcement today is that often, those who work in police departments have completely different frames of reference than the people they are policing. In other words, people who choose to work in policing, have usually done so, or want to adopt a particular set of cultural values that are often different from those they police, which affects the way they make decisions. The result is that many police officers see the world in terms of peaceful citizens and law breakers. Many of those policed, see more grey, since some of those law breakers might also be friends, family members, and neighbors.

Those two different frames of reference couldn’t be more clear than in the back to back interviews we released this week of my sit-downs with Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo and Black Lives Matter lead organizer Kofi Ademola. If you haven’t listened, both of these men are thoughtful, rational people who deeply care about the missions of their organizations, which sometimes seem diametrically opposed to one another. But the astonishing thing: they both seem to believe they are serving the same community.

[Note: Last night, we reported FOP union election results that will put Angelo in a runoff for reelection in the next 30 days.]

In our interviews, both Angelo and Ademola talk about how Chicago’s crime-afflicted neighborhoods are vastly underserved, lack opportunity and have not gotten the attention they need from government. Angelo believes the police are just trying to get the “bad guys” out so citizens can live good lives. Ademola believes the police’s presence and methods have corrupted the neighborhood, making it impossible for citizens to live good lives.

If you haven’t listened to these two interviews, please do. They are both remarkable people, and actually much more complex thinkers than past sound bites would lead us to believe. They are each good representations of how two important sectors of Chicago approach crime.  It would seem that if there’s any kind of solution all of Chicago can move forward with, the conversation would start between Angelo and Ademola.

3. Use of Force and No DOJ

Feeding right into our “frame of reference” problem is a new draft use of force model released by the Chicago Police Department earlier this week. The proposal requires police officers  to consider “sanctity of life” when using force, putting a priority on civilian safety, but it also requires officers to use de-escalation tactics only when it does not put the officer’s personal safety at risk.

Needless to say, this has been controversial. But not entirely in the way you might think.

No surprise, people like Kofi Ademola believe Chicago police already use too much force, and he would prefer a police force like in London, he says, where most beat cops don’t even carry guns, and are instructed to use de-escalation methods whenever possible. But on the flip side, police leaders like Dean Angelo, believe cops on the beat need more freedom to use force when necessary. Police advocates complain that the new proposed model still doesn’t give officers enough force and is written to, “pander to outside pressure from the media and special interest groups”.

And left in the dust of this controversy are the results of the U.S. Department of Justice’s report on CPD, which found Chicago police officers were already poorly trained in use of force models, and as a result used too much force too often. There was no mention of the DOJ report in CPD’s release of the new draft use of force model. And since U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions announcement that “we're going to pull back on this” so police departments are unfettered by federal oversight, it seems that Chicago is already interpreting that to mean the DOJ report no longer requires consideration.

What exactly happens with the proposed use of force model at CPD will be a pretty good indication of whether or not Mayor Rahm Emanuel has shelved the DOJ report permanently.

The question of how and why Chicago Public Schools are not fully funded was laid at Gov. Bruce Rauner’s feet Monday afternoon by a newly-minted Grammy winner, Chancellor Bennett, more widely known as Chance The Rapper.

Happy Saturday!

We’re trying something new this week: an overview of the five biggest things that happened in Chicago and Cook County over the last week. Like it or don’t like it? Drop me a note: [email protected] I’ll read it personally and pledge my undying gratefulness to you.

Chicago Clerk Anna Valencia told The Daily Line in its weekly podcast interview Wednesday that the city is pressing forward with its municipal identification program despite concerns from immigrant advocates that the data collected could be a honeypot for federal immigration officers.

[Subscribe on iTunes, Soundcloud, Google Play and WGNPlus to hear the interview Friday morning.]

Mayor Rahm Emanuel plans to appoint Walter Katz as his lead policy advisor on public safety this week, according to multiple sources that have spoken to The Daily Line. Katz is currently the Independent Police Auditor for San Jose, California and has been serving there since his appointment in November 2015. Previously Katz had served as the Deputy Inspector General for Los Angeles County overseeing the L.A. County Sheriff’s Department.

This video includes an interview with Katz talking about his agency and job.

His predecessor, Deputy Chief of Staff Janey Rountree, left the Mayor’s office last month, on the same day the Department of Justice’s report on Chicago policing was released. Rountree had overseen policymaking for Police, Fire, OEMC, IPRA and 911 services.

Katz comes with high praise from Chicago’s police reform community. “When we started doing research for the Task Force, we spoke to a lot of people to get a sense of who around the country was doing the best work on police accountability and Walter was on almost everybody’s short list,” said Adam Gross from Business and Professional People for The Public Interest.

Indeed, Katz, who also served as a public defender for fifteen years in Los Angeles has earned a national reputation for his work on police oversight. He is a board member of the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement and has directed multiple training panels for police oversight professionals, including one on investigating police shootings of unarmed persons. Katz is also well written, with an article published in the Harvard Law Review and an opinion in The New York Times.

Last fall, Katz was flown in to Chicago for a special City Council hearing on police reform. Katz discussed San Jose’s process for hiring a police oversight head, which included a detailed interview process with community oversight panels. None of his advice was heeded for the hiring of Chicago’s current Independent Police Review Authority head, Sharon Fairley.

“The primary currency when you’re involved in oversight is credibility, and that’s having credibility with all stakeholders,” Katz told a joint Council Committee on Budget and Public Safety. “You hear the word credibility and trust coming up time and time again. Those two things cannot be legislated.”

During his testimony last September, Katz told Council members that he oversees a staff of six with a $1.25 million budget. San Jose’s police force is about a tenth the size of Chicago’s with approximately 1,400 sworn and non-sworn personnel.

Katz has overseen a number of investigations in San Jose that mirror some of the problems discussed in reports from the Department of Justice and the Police Accountability Task Force. This month a study requested by his office found African-American drivers in San Jose are about one-and-a-half times more likely than whites to be pulled over by police for a traffic stop. Also last month, Katz kicked off a series of community forums meant to bolster relationships between San Jose minority residents and the city’s police force. Last year San Jose rolled out police body cameras.

“There is a definite gap in perceptions of reality. It’s important to have conversations so they can learn about how police do their work, and also for police to get a better understanding of how the public perceives their work,” Katz told the San Jose Mercury News this week.

Katz is also a member of the police oversight consulting firm, OIR Group, which has filed to serve as the monitor for federal consent decrees with the New Orleans Police Department and the Cleveland Police Department. Chicago contract records show no city relationship with OIR Group.

Mayor Emanuel's office was contacted by The Daily Line but did not provide comment by publication.

A plan to reappropriate $14.7 million of city funds originally designated for property tax rebates was passed by Council Budget Committee in an early morning vote Wednesday by a tally of 20 to 4. The vote came after protests from some minority aldermen that not enough of the funds were devoted to violence interruption groups like Ceasefire. The measure later passed in the full Council meeting later that day.

A pair of new guidance letters from the Chicago Board of Ethics clarifies for city and City Council employees limitations on lobbying work following their employment with the city.