This is an incomplete list of the things, people, and groups of people who influenced my work on this project, aside from the many interview participants who generously donated their time to speak about their experiences with the CPD.
People.
Philip O'Sullivan, fourth-year history major at the College. He helped me learn about police misconduct in the federal judicial system when we went to the National Archives branch in Chicago to look at historical dockets from the district court for the Northern District of Illinois.
Chad Broughton, taught Interview Project on Gun Violence in 2019. One of the guest speakers he brought to his class, Demeatreas Whatley, introduced me to the idea of overpolicing and under-protection in Woodlawn. And doing my own interview project for this class gave me some practice talking to people from the neighborhood about police.
Professor Robert Vargas, University of Chicago sociologist and my faculty adviser. He read many of my drafts and encouraged me to keep my interviews open-ended.
Maddie Anderson, A.B. Public Policy Studies '18, 2018 Taub Thesis Prize Winner for her BA thesis, "What Makes an Ideal Reparations Package?" Her thesis shed some light on an important chapter in the history of the CPD on the South Side, and she gave great tips on who to talk to if I wanted to learn more about Chicago policing.
Professor Craig B. Futterman, civil rights lawyer, law professor, former member of the Police Accountability Task Force, and my second reader. He gave me invaluable background information on the recent history of police accountability in Chicago, as well as an idea of the current landscape.
Professor Sharon Fairley, law professor and former head of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). She helped me understand COPA's history and its role in the Chicago police accountability system.
Bocar Ba, University of Pennsylvania postdoc. Talking to him about his research on CPD complaints helped me understand City Hall's role in the problem of police misconduct.
Organizations.
The University Community Service Center. I spent the winter of 2017 preparing for their Alternative Spring Break program, where a cohort of students and I were introduced to Woodlawn through community service. It was one of the first times I seriously thought about what life was like for people on South Side outside Hyde Park.
UChicago Common Cause. Working with the student chapter of Common Cause Illinois gave me my knowledge of local politics and community organizing. The community organizing bit I got mainly from working with the Lift the Ban Coalition to fight the state ban on rent control.
Cabrini Green Legal Aid. I interned as a paralegal for CGLA in the summer of 2019, working on criminal records relief and post-conviction filings. I picked up a lot of legal knowledge that way, and when I needed to refer my interviewees to legal resources, I knew just where to point them to.
The Invisible Institute. Kahari Blackburn and Maira Khwaja from the Institute introduced me to the Citizens Police Data Project, and were always willing to listen to me talk through my ideas about what I was going to write in my thesis. They also pointed me to The Intercept's article on Harith Augustus' 2018 killing.
The Pozen Family Center for Human Rights. Through their BA lab fellowship, the Pozen Center underwrote some of my research expenses as well as a trip to Oxford, Mississippi for the 2019 Making and Unmaking Mass Incarceration conference and a ticket to see "Dead Man Walking" at the Lyric Opera, both of which greatly deepened my understanding of the criminal justice system, especially police/prison abolitionism. Pozen Center staff Roy Kimmey and Alice Kim gave me writing tips and found me research participants, and the eight other student researchers in my cohort made me smarter whenever I talked to them.
Books and other resources.
Balto, Simon. Occupied Territory: Policing Black Chicago from Red Summer to Black Power. Justice, Power, and Politics. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2019. A detailed history of the relationship between the Chicago Police Department and Chicago's black community. An important theme Balto touched on was the unique aggression of Chicago policing compared to other cities and the rest of the country.
City of Chicago Department of Law. "Quarterly Police Case Dispositions." FOIA request responded to on March 9, 2020. A spreadsheet of Chicago police misconduct lawsuits between 2009 and 2019. The most striking information I discovered from crunching the numbers was that the plaintiff received no money in almost half of these lawsuits.
City of Chicago Office of Inspector General. Office of Inspector General Information Portal. https://informationportal.igchicago.org/. This online source got me all kinds of data on police complaints in the City, including where complaints were being filed and whether they were being resolved.
Hirschman, Albert O. Exit, Voice, and Loyalty: Responses to Decline in Firms, Organizations, and States. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1970. This book set up the framework for my thesis. Hirschman's idea was that when people are part of a group, but they don't get as much value out of being a member as they used to, they either abandon the organization (exit), urge the organization to change course (voice), or remain in the organization and hope it will improve (loyalty). My thesis was all about applying those ideas to residents of Chicago's South Side.
Schwartz, Joanna C. “Police Indemnification.” New York University Law Review 89 (June 2014): 885–1005. Schwartz revealed that almost every time a police officer is sued, anywhere in the country, and has to pay money to the victim, the local government covers the cost. She rightly pointed out that this practice defies the basic legal concept of the threat of having to pay damages deterring people from being sued.
Soss, Joe, and Vesla Weaver. “Police Are Our Government: Politics, Political Science, and the Policing of Race–Class Subjugated Communities.” Annual
Review of Political Science 20, no. 1 (May 11, 2017): 565–91. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-polisci-060415-093825. Soss and Weaver called out political scientists for ignoring the role of policing in American governance, particularly in low-income minority communities. The antidemocratic nature of police departments not only contradicts the way scholars usually think about the government, but also formed the basis of many criticisms of the CPD I heard from the people I interviewed.
Toyama, Kentaro. “Technology Is Not the Answer.” The Atlantic (blog), March 28, 2011. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2011/03/technology-is-not-the-answer/73065/. I read this article for a computer science class taught by Professor Marshini Chetty. Toyama reflected on his experience working for a tech company that tried to help a rural sugarcane cooperative in India report sales to its farmers, concluding that technical approaches to problem solving can't get rid of larger underlying non-technical problems. Reading this, I thought of the City of Chicago, which has gone through three iterations of one police accountability agency, and how City Hall might be wise to take Toyama's advice.
Weitzer, Ronald, and Rod K. Brunson. “Strategic Responses to the Police Among Inner-City Youth.” The Sociological Quarterly 50, no. 2 (2009): 235–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1533-8525.2009.01139.x. These researchers took Hirschman's exit, voice, and loyalty framework and used it to analyze the relationship between young St. Louis residents and their police department. They inspired me to do the same for Chicago, but with a focus on local politics.