Here’s a reminder why Mayor Brandon Johnson’s proposed cuts to the Chicago Police Department’s office of reform are a bad idea:

Over the past two decades, the city has paid up almost 700 million dollars in lawsuit settlements of 300 cases involving people who said Chicago police framed them. That figure was as of December 2023, and the city continues to do so payment multi-million dollar malpractice lawsuit awards almost every month.

Taxpayers pay the price not only in litigation costs, but also in the human toll of being victims of wrongdoing. Good cops pay too, with broken trust with the communities they’re sworn to serve.

Police reform is essential to fix both. Which is why, while the Chicago Police Department continues to move forward on complying with the 2019 reform consent decree, the City Council should say no to the mayor’s proposal for drastic budget cuts to the Office of Police and Constitutional Reform.

The office’s budget would shrink by 45 percent next year — from about $6.7 million to $3.7 million — and the number of budgeted employees would shrink to 28 from the current 65, Tom Schuba reported and Fran Spielman of the Sun-Times last week.

Johnson’s budget is “dead on arrival” because of a massive $300 million property tax hike, as one councilor critic put it last week. Proposed cuts to police reform, in an already understaffed department, should also be ruled out.

Good public safety must come first

It’s been 10 years since the fatal police shooting of black teenager Laquan McDonald by a white police officer, a tragedy that sparked calls for police reform. In response to the shooting, the US Department of Justice launched an investigation and in 2017 issued a damning report that concluded CPD had a long history of racially discriminatory policing and abuse. In 2019, the city, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan, and CPD negotiated a consent decree that was filed in federal court.

Consent decrees for reforms in major cities typically take a decade to implement. Chicago should not scale back the effort after just five years — and after achieving full compliance with only 7 percent of the decree’s provisions as of December 31, 2023.

What a slap in the face it would be to the activists and leaders who have pushed for reform and to those who are making an honest effort to see it through, to now make drastic cuts to the reform office.

And without rebuilding community trust, a critical part of reform, the city risks thwarting the very effort needed to strengthen the fight against crime by building a stronger alliance between officers and the people they serve, particularly in Black and Brown communities.

Johnson is undoubtedly in a difficult position, dealing with past fiscal decisions that have contributed to the city’s current budget woes, as he told this editorial board last week. “I’m not wrong,” the mayor said when asked what he would say to Chicagoans who question him proposed a $300 million property tax increase.

But public safety must come first. When Chicagoans call 911, they have every right to expect a quick response from a well-trained officer.

How to increase staffing and retention without lowering standards

City Council members and other leaders are right to be upset about the mayor’s proposal to eliminate 456 vacant police positions, which would cut the Community Policing Bureau and counseling division.

And all of this comes at a time when CPD, like other police departments across the country, is struggling with officer retention.

One in six cops department employee since 2016 is no longer with the department, with 42 percent landing at other Illinois law enforcement agencies or the Chicago Fire Department, Schuba and Frank Main reported in a recent series on alarming police staffing crises from the city.

Other the young officers were themselves arrestedraising the question of whether the decision to lower hiring standards in 2022 was a good idea.

Policing is hard work. But our city needs officers who can do the job effectively without hurting themselves or anyone else, including a fellow officer.

Johnson advocates for a holistic strategy for public safety, and we are in favor of crime prevention whenever possible.

But police reform is part of this holistic strategy. “Reform doesn’t happen without investment,” said Robert Boik, former executive director of the Office of Policing and Constitutional Reform.

Half of the American public wants this reform to happen, a Gallup Poll 2022 found. Among black and Hispanic Americans, 72 percent and 54 percent want a “major change” in policing, respectively.

These statistics should come as no surprise.

“The demand for various forms of organizational change in American policing … is directly related to fear of the police,” as a 2024 study published in the Journal of Criminal Justice he pointed out.

City Council members should hold firm. Because Chicago can’t afford it not to invest in police reform.

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