Mayor Rahm Emanuel has backed off his commitment to enter a court-enforced agreement with the federal government to reform the Chicago Police Department, his administration confirmed late Friday.

Instead, Emanuel's administration is seeking a solution outside of court, one that drew criticism from criminal justice experts, reform advocates and the former federal official who oversaw the yearlong civil rights investigation into the police force that led to a damning report on the department's problems.

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Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and frequent critic of the Police Department, lamented that Emanuel had not sought a court-overseen agreement with community groups involving those who've been harmed by police.

"This is the thing I feared most, because this creates the veneer of, 'Look, we are doing something. We entered into this agreement,' " Futterman said. "The memorandum, in many ways, is far worse than just doing nothing, because it is an agreement (with) someone who is not committed to doing anything. It is part of a strategy to avoid doing something real."

Read more at The Chicago Tribune