CHICAGO (CN) — After 26-year-year-old Dexter Reed fired at Chicago police officers during a traffic stop and hit one in the forearm on March 21, police responded by firing 96 times in the span of 41 seconds, and killing him, according to footage released by Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability on Tuesday.
The officers who fatally shot Reed could now be investigated by a police union-backed arbitrator rather than the city’s appointed civilian board, thanks to a March 2024 ruling from Cook County Judge Michael Mullen.
Since Mullen issued his ruling, a dozen cases have requested to appear before an arbitrator. Though Mullen’s ruling also stipulated that those arbitration proceedings would be open to the public — over the Fraternal Order of Police's arguments to keep those hearing private — academics and activist still have concerns about true accountability.
“We risk a return to a state of police impunity,” said Craig Futterman, director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic at the University of Chicago’s law school.
David Harris, a law professor at the University of Pittsburgh who specializes in police reform, echoed Futterman’s sentiments about the importance of a civilian police board.
“Citizen oversight itself, as an idea, is kind of hard to argue with, in the sense that if you have a government in a democracy, you should have citizen oversight of important government functions,” he said.
Thus far, neither the city nor the police union have challenged Mullen’s ruling. Many have been left wondering what this means for the future of the civilian police board, which ultimately does not have the power to fire police officers, but can make recommendations to Police Superintendent Larry Snelling.
The police union maintains that arbitration is the proper manner for disciplinary proceedings, because civilians don’t have the expertise to adjudicate these cases.
Mullen's ruling stems from a January lawsuit, where the union argued that the city council overstepped its authority when it voted down an ordinance that would have sent all instances of police misconduct to private arbitration rather than the city’s review board.
The ordinance, in part, derives from an October ruling from independent Illinois labor arbitrator Edwin Benn. He argued that unionized police officers have a right to arbitration under the 1984 Illinois Public Labor Relation Act.
Wayne Beyer, an attorney who served as lead counsel in over 300 police misconduct cases recognized the problems with arbitration, but wasn’t entirely in favor of civilians making disciplinary decisions because he said that process could easily become politicized.
“There ought to be a lot of feedback and interaction [with citizens], but whether they should be deciding the future employment of individual police officers, I think is something else, and I'm not really in favor of it,” he said.
Harris said the biggest issue with arbitration is that officers often don't face real consequences for misconduct.
"In an uncomfortable number of cases, serious cases, a police officer who was fired goes back on the job," he said.
The civilian board won’t simply dissolve due to the arbitration option, however.
According to Cara Hendrickson, the executive director for nonprofit Impact for Equity, the civilian board — which reviewed cases of police misconduct for decades — still has many functions outside of disciplinary proceedings,
Representatives from the civilian police board could not be immediately reached for comment.
Hendrickson noted that the police board is not made up of any civilian who wants to be on it; rather, members are appointed based on their experience. For example, she added, there’s a set number of people on the board who have to be attorneys.
“The composition of the police board is designed to ensure that the kind of experience and expertise needed to thoughtfully consider police misconduct cases is present in their proceedings,” she said.
Futterman said he fears that the arbitration change could create a vicious cycle for cases like Dexter Reed's.
“This risk could put us back to the state of affairs that led to the consent decree in the first place,” he said.
He added that there are many avenues to restore the full power of the civilian police board, but the future of it very much remains in limbo.
The Chicago Police Department began enacting more transparency and accountability reforms after a 2019 federal consent decree found the department had a history of violating Constitutional rights and using excessive force, in a manner that disproportionately harms Black and Latino Chicagoans.
The decree called for widespread reforms for Chicago police, but it was not limited to just the police department itself, said Hendrickson, who had a hand in drafting the consent decree.
“While the police board is an important part of the accountability infrastructure in the city of Chicago, it is certainly not the only city agency that is responsible for accountability,” Hendrickson said.
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