Mayor Lori Lightfoot Vows To Present Her Long-Stalled Plan For Civilian Police Oversight By Next Week
CHICAGO (CBS) -- With a coalition of aldermen preparing to formally introduce a civilian police oversight plan Mayor Lori Lightfoot vehemently opposes tomorrow, the mayor said she will finally introducing her own plan next week, after months of delays.
The City Council Public Safety Committee is scheduled to meet Friday afternoon, when supporters of a proposal to create a civilian police oversight commission will formally introduce their proposed ordinance. No vote will be held, but sponsors will be given the opportunity to discuss the latest version of their plan.
Lightfoot has voiced opposition to that ordinance, in part over a dispute about whether the board or the mayor would have the final say in policy disputes between the board and the department.
According to published reports, the proposal – endorsed by the council's Black, Latino, and Progressive caucuses, if not necessarily every alderman in those groups – would give the civilian oversight board final say in policy disputes unless two-thirds of the City Council votes otherwise. The board also would have the power to issue a "no confidence" vote in the superintendent, and the authority to hire and fire the leader of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.
If that ordinance were to pass, voters also would be asked to approve a binding referendum in 2022 to empower a civilian police oversight board to hire and fire the police superintendent, negotiate contracts with unions representing officers, and set the department's budget.
That ordinance is the result of a compromise reached between the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) and the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), which for years had been pushing competing plans for civilian oversight of CPD.
GAPA and CPAC joined forces earlier this year after Lightfoot pulled her previous support from GAPA's plan, and both ideas stalled in City Council.
The mayor has said, because she "wears the jacket" for crime in Chicago, she's not willing to essentially hand over control of CPD to a civilian oversight board.
Lightfoot has said she still believes a civilian oversight board should have a say on CPD policy, and for months has said she plans to introduce her own citizen oversight plan, though she has yet to unveil one.
On Thursday, the mayor said she will be filing her plan with the City Clerk's office by Monday.
The mayor did not offer any specifics on what her plan would entail, but said she dropped her support for the original GAPA plan because it "didn't solve a couple of key issues," and said the compromise ordinance she opposes "significant gaps that have not been filled."
"What you'll see in the proposal that we put forward is really kind of taking the best of both GAPA and CPAC, and trying to move that forward," she said.
