Each form of response to police misconduct represented a potential solution to the problem of police misconduct on the South Side of Chicago. But many research participants noted that the city government was not only the root of that problem, but the largest obstacle standing in the way of that solution. An effective plan for addressing police misconduct would therefore have to address the reality that City Hall and the South Side may have different preferences for how CPD officers operate in South Side neighborhoods.
Chicago’s City Council is made up of representatives from all parts of the city, so understandably the policies it passes and implements are supposed to represent the will of the people in all regions of Chicago, not just on the South Side. But it is also understandable how South Side residents can feel that the City Hall is biased against them, considering the vastly superior economic power of Chicago’s North Side.
The idea of community control of the CPD, which motivates the current campaign for a Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), seeks to resolve this issue. Instead of City Council controlling the CPD, South Side residents would be able to leverage control of the CPD through CPAC. But it is unclear how CPAC, an elected body of representatives from all parts of the city, would run the CPD much differently from City Council, which is also an elected body of representatives from all parts of the city. From the current text of the bill, the only differences between a qualified candidate for City Council and a qualified candidate for CPAC are that CPAC candidates must have done some form of community advocacy for two years, must not have ties to law enforcement, and must only accept campaign contributions from within their district. It is unlikely a political candidate who met those three qualifications would have a radically different approach to police administration than any of the fourteen City Council members who currently represent black wards on the South Side. If the South Side’s current elected representatives have not forced changes to the CPD, neither would these new ones.
At the heart of community control of the police is the principle that regular citizens should be allowed to make decisions about how the police operate in their neighborhoods. But as long as one institution sets policy for the entire city, different neighborhoods with different views of law enforcement are going to have policy disagreements. A CPAC bill that acknowledged the different needs of different parts of the city could still divide Chicago along police district borders, but instead of each CPAC district voting to elect one representative to a citywide council, voters could elect officials to manage law enforcement exclusively in their part of the city.
This hyper-local approach to police administration, led by not one, but eleven CPACs, addresses a central concern about policing: that the police treat people differently in different neighborhoods. Within individual CPAC districts, which would account for relatively small areas of the city, voters would live in more similar neighborhoods that have more cohesive views of the police. If these voters’ shared attributes lead to fewer policy disagreements, each district would see its law enforcement improve for the people who lived there. Under this system, there would be at least three CPAC districts located entirely on the South Side whose police would be accountable only to South Side residents.
Decentralizing any public service makes it more difficult for different jurisdictions to coordinate, as is the case when police departments from different cities need to work together. None of these issues would be unique to decentralizing the CPD, but CPAC districts could still decide when it was best to share resources like equipment or data with other districts. They could also continue to receive funds from City Hall, provided there were no strings attached. For the purposes of preventing police misconduct, South Side CPAC districts would most benefit from not coordinating with other districts when they decided how many officers they hired, where they would hire them from, what weapons they used, and their disciplinary procedures.
Short of City Council passing an ordinance to formally decentralize the CPD, concerned citizens inside and outside the police department can still work to give their communities the final say in how they keep themselves safe, with or without police. Civil disobedience, for instance, cannot singlehandedly usurp the mayor’s control over the police department, but it can show lower-level officials like aldermen that CPD policy approved by City Hall does not have the approval of all the city. Aldermen who do not appreciate that distinction must still face reelection every four years, at which point their constituents can replace them with people who understand their needs and will vote for a CPD that is responsive to them.
To an extent, City Hall already knows that one size of policing does not fit all, given that Chicago has twenty-two police districts. Since voters have no formal political control over these districts, each one follows the same rules, but that can change. The district where non-activist research participants were recruited, for instance, has monthly meetings that are open to the public. Perhaps if more people came to those meetings with their concerns about the CPD and more officers listened to them, Chicago would be closer to having a citizen-run police department.