CBA Record July-August 2019

STATE OF ILLINOIS v. CITY OF CHICAGO How DidWe Get Here &What DoWe Do Now? By Kathryn C. Liss, Director of the Schiller DuCanto & Fleck Family Law Center and an Academic Advisor at DePaul University College of Law and CBA Editorial Board Member

Robert Kreisman of Kreisman Law Offices is Chair of the CBA’s Public Affairs Committee and served as moderator for the wide- ranging panel discussion that explored how the Consent Decree was implemented and what the impacts of police reform in Chicago will look like in the future. Seated (left to right) are panelists Linda Greene, Professor of Law at the University of Wisconsin-Madison; Cara Hendrickson, former Chief of the Public Interest Bureau of the Illinois Attorney General’s Office and now a partner at Massey & Gail LLP; and Karen Sheley, Director of the Police Practices Project at the American Civil Liberties Union. T he City of Chicago spent approxi- mately $662 million on settle- ments, judgments, and outside City is an initial attempt to make these changes and to move Chicago forward for the betterment of everyone living here. cago Police Department’s policies and practices as well as the appointment of an independent monitor.

legal fees for police misconduct cases between 2004 and early 2016. From a fiscal perspective, this exorbitant expense is evidence of a system that needs imme- diate change. From a humanitarian per- spective, the expense is evidence that the system needs to change to ensure dignity for Chicagoans and to provide proper training to and support for Chicago police officers. The recently approved consent decree between the State of Illinois and the

In March 2018, the State and City reached a Memorandum of Agreement with a coalition of community groups after lengthy in-person negotiations between the State and City, and more than a dozen settlement conferences with the Court. There was also substantial public outreach to community groups and other stakeholders: through 14 consent decree community roundtables, the State received over 6,000 comments

Background In August 2017, the State filed a four- count lawsuit against the City pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983, the U.S .Constitu- tion, the Illinois Constitution, the Illinois Civil Rights Act of 2003, the Illinois Human Rights Act, and the parens patria doctrine. The State sought a Consent Decree incorporating significant reforms addressing deficiencies within the Chi-

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