Today, Mayor Lori E. Lightfoot, Chicago Police Department Superintendent David O. Brown, and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul entered into a joint agreement to extend the date by which the City of Chicago will endeavor to achieve full and effective compliance with the consent decree and to submit CPD’s search warrant policies and practices to consent decree oversight. Below is a joint statement from Mayor Lightfoot, Superintendent Brown, and Attorney General Raoul regarding today’s motion.  

“We are committed to not just reforming the Chicago Police Department (CPD), but to fundamentally transforming it. To do this right will take time. The City of Chicago initially agreed to “endeavor to achieve” full compliance with the requirements in the Consent Decree within five years. This timeline must be extended to achieve the operational and technological goals of the CPD that will lead to true cultural change within the CPD.  

Under the new joint motion filed in court today, the City will work toward achieving full and effective compliance by the end of the 16^th reporting period, approximately eight years after the consent decree went into effect. There are several components to realizing full and effective compliance including creating and revising policy, devising, and instituting related training, and integrating those policies and trainings into the culture of the organization.  Simply put, changing the way things have been done.  

As part of the joint motion of stipulations, search warrant policies and practices will be part of the consent decree. CPD, the Independent Monitoring Team (IMT), and the Office of the Illinois Attorney General (OAG) will review search warrant policies, training, data collection, and supervision and accountability systems. This addition to the stipulation is paramount to the legitimacy of CPD’s recent search warrant reforms. The power to search a person, to detain a person, and to search a home or a car, is critical in modern law enforcement, but ultimately must be done with close attention to constitutional and human rights. Holding CPD’s search warrant practices to the highest standards is essential to restoring trust in law enforcement. We are committed to ensuring that our law enforcement officers continue to police without bias and treat all individuals with dignity and respect. 

Chicago’s residents deserve a police department that they trust wholeheartedly. Though we have laid the foundation for police reform within CPD and the City, we know that there remains much to be done. The way we build trust is by ensuring every officer is equipped with the tools to do their job constitutionally, effectively, and equitably. That is how we’re striving to become a better police department and in turn, to build a better and safer city for all. 

The people of Chicago deserve nothing less.” 

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