Chicago Police unveil new foot pursuit policy: chases will no longer be acceptable just because someone runs
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Two high-profile police shootings that started with foot chases have prompted big changes to Chicago Police policy.
After working with a draft for more than a year, the Chicago Police Department on Tuesday unveiled its new guidelines for foot pursuits.
As CBS 2's Charlie De Mar reported, one of the biggest changes to the policy is that Chicago Police officers will no longer be able to chase after someone just because they run away. Instead, officers will now have to conduct a balancing test, and there also will now be accountability and data on foot chases.
A chase through a Little Village alley on March 29 of last year ended with a Chicago police officer shooting and killing 13-year-old Adam Toledo.
In a separate foot chase in Portage Park on March 31 of last year, an officer shot and killed Anthony Alvarez.
Both were armed during the pursuits.
"As mayor, I'm directing that a new policy be in place before the summer," Mayor Lori Lightfoot said in April of last year.
We have been covering controversial police pursuits for years. On Tuesday, the new foot pursuit policy was finally unveiled.
"The impacts on crime have been studied, and we can look back and foot pursuit policies," said police Supt. David Brown. "It's made officers safer, and it's made communities safer."
The new policy requires:
• Enhanced supervision;
• Officers must file a report if they start a chase;
• Foot chase reviews - and foot chases will be reviewed;
• Officers must weigh the seriousness of the offense against the need to make an arrest.
Officers may not start a chase if:
• They are hurt;
• They are unaware of their current location;
• They unable to communicate;
• They lose their radio or gun.
"There are a lot of reasons why a person may not want to interact with the law enforcement officers, and so just because someone walks away or runs away when they see an officer coming onto the scene, that's not enough to justify a pursuit," said Sharon Fairley, a professor at the University of Chicago Law School.
Fairley used to oversee independent misconduct investigations of Chicago Police officers. She now focuses on police reform at the U of C Law School.
"What we have here is a balancing test kind of that that officers are constantly being asked to do," Fairley said.
In Little Village, community activist Baltazar Enriquez has been vocal about police reforms after the deaths of Toledo and Alvarez.
"They should have been implemented a long time ago," said Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council, "and if they would have been implemented, Anthony Alvarez would be alive. Adam Toledo would be alive."
A 2019 federal consent decree required the CPD to implement a written foot pursuit policy - but that didn't happen until now.
"I'm happy, but not excited because, we don't know if the department is going to follow the policies," Enriquez said.
"It has taken a while for police departments to try to recognize that this is an important policy to have on the books, and so I think we are getting there now," Fairley added.
Mayor Lightfoot weighed in on the policy Tuesday afternoon.
"Fundamentally, whatever the policy is, and this is something that I've been talking about really since 2018 when I ran, it's one of the most dangerous activities that our officers engage in. It's dangerous for them, it's dangerous for the person who is being pursued, and it's dangerous for the public," Lightfoot said. "But fundamentally what this comes down to is having a policy that makes sense. This has now been signed off on by the judge, by the monitor, by the attorney general, so I think it's a very solid plan."
The mayor continued: "But really, the devil's going to be in the details of the training. We've got to make sure that our officers understand what the rules of the road are, and that we're providing them with the proper training to protect themselves, protect the person that they're pursuing, and importantly to protect the public."
Some critics say the new reforms only restrict what police officers can do and would embolden criminals.
Every officer will go through extensive training on these new policies, which are not expected to be in place until the end of the summer.