Civil Rights & Police Accountability Clinic—Significant Achievements for 2019-20
Even in the time of the pandemic, the work of the Clinic has not slowed down. Indeed, there has been world-wide attention to the urgency of police accountability as hundreds of thousands of people around the globe have raised their voices in protest of systemic, discriminatory police violence and to affirm that Black Lives Matter. After winning an historic federal consent decree over the Chicago Police Department (CPD), the Clinic has continued to represent Black Lives Matter Chicago, as part of a broad community-based coalition, in our ongoing efforts to end the Chicago Police Department’s pattern and practice of illegal violence and discrimination targeted at Black, Brown, and poor communities. As a part of our monitoring and enforcement efforts, the Clinic has: (a) documented hundreds of instances of CPD violence against people who participated in protests after Officer Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis and won the right to an investigation by the Independent Court Monitor and public hearings on CPD violence during the protests; (b) triggered enforcement efforts (led by Silver Lin) to challenge the CPD’s machinery of denial, secrecy, and code of silence, as starkly illustrated by the City’s conduct in the aftermath of the CPD killing of Harith Augustus, a barber in Chicago’s South Shore neighborhood who was walking home from work when accosted by a group of officers; (c) initiated enforcement measures (led by Marie Plecha) related to CPD’s practice of raiding the homes of innocent families in Black and Brown neighborhoods, pointing guns at children, and traumatizing children and their caretakers; and (d) participated in the formation of a community chaired body as a part of the consent decree to assess whether police officers should continue to work inside Chicago Public Schools. We have also begun work on a city-wide working group to develop and recommend policies to govern Chicago police officers’ use of force.
And that is far from all. Graduating Clinic students Rebecca Boorstein, Christine Liu, and Carly Owens contributed to a victorious effort before the Illinois Supreme Court on the behalf of more than forty organizations who represent victims of police abuse, to prevent the destruction of hundreds of thousands of Chicago police misconduct records. In June, the Clinic won a Supreme Court ruling that affirmed the principle that police misconduct records belong to and must be used the benefit of the people of Illinois. The Supreme Court held that provisions of a collective bargaining agreement between the Fraternal Order of Police and the City of Chicago that required the destruction of police misconduct records were void and unenforceable, as contrary to fundamental state public policy. In related advocacy, the Clinic is building upon its legal and public advocacy that created the Citizens Police Data Project, a massive public database of Chicago police misconduct records that has informed local, national, and international police reform efforts, advocacy, and research, and forced the release of the video of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke’s murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Through these victories, the Clinic is working to obtain and curate thousands of first hand narratives of CPD abuse and their investigations and make them accessible to the public through the Citizens Police Data Project.
David Raban, Arielle Yoon, Marie Plecha, Vatsala Kumar, and Erik Zimmerman performed the ground work that resulted in the Clinic’s emergency mandamus action, on behalf of #LetusBreathe Collective, other Chicago organizations led by Black youth, the Cook County Public Defender, and National Lawyers Guild, challenging the CPD’s ongoing practice of incommunicado detention. The Clinic seeks a permanent injunction force the CPD to stop holding people in the bowels of police stations vulnerable to abuse without access to a phone or their lawyers.
In a federal civil rights case on behalf of a man who when just 19-years-old was coerced by Chicago police to falsely confess to a crime that he did not commit and then wrongfully convicted of that crime, Clinic students Lee Stark, Laura Herrera, Harsha Tolappa, and clinic alum Aaron Tucek defeated the police defendants’ motion to dismiss, fending off a complex set of procedural challenges that relate to the accrual of constitutional claims arising from wrongful convictions. Laura Herrera continues to lead the Clinic’s efforts to win the right to litigate direct municipal liability for our client’s abuse and wrongful conviction, based on policies and practices of the City of Chicago that facilitated the abuse.
Graduating Clinic students Morgan Gehrls and Rebecca Boorstein, and clinic alum Sarah Kinter, drafted an ordinance and have engaged in outstanding advocacy to create the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC), a body made up of representatives of communities most impacted by police abuse who would have the power to oversee the Chicago Police Department. If passed, the ordinance would represent the most powerful example of direct community oversight in the United States.
Finally, Amiri Lampley, Arielle Yoon, Ellen Goff, and Christine Liu investigated claims of Chicago police torture before the Illinois Torture and Inquiry Relief Commission, and together, building from the work of Clinic Graduate Whittney Barth, have developed a handbook for attorneys and law students investigating and adjudicating cases with the Commission.
The Clinic’s pursuit of justice continues…