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Committee on Public Safety City Council Meeting July 25, 2017
ORDINANCE
BE IT ORDAINED BY THE CITY COUNCIL OF THE CITY OF CHICAGO:
SECTION 1. The Municipal Code of the City of Chicago is hereby amended adding a new Chapter 2-179, which shall be known as the Police Settlement Transparency and Accountability Ordinance.
2-179-010 Purpose and Intent
The purpose of this legislation is to help empower aldermen in their work to oversee the operation of city agencies and help them minimize the City's exposure to risk from police officer misconduct. Currently there is a disconnect between the City's efforts to limit its exposure to large civil judgments and the police accountability system in Chicago. This legislation seeks to address this by requiring that the police accountability system and the City's Law Department provide relevant information to the City Council in conjunction with the Council's request for approval of any civil settlement or any civil court judgment. This is being done in an effort to mitigate future civil liability costs for the City by requiring the police accountability system to not only investigate the incident in question but to determine whether or not the incident in question fits a pattern of conduct by the involved officers, officers within a particular unit or district, or even more broadly across the department. This proactive review should allow the police accountability system to reduce expenses by minimizing risk through uncovering patterns of misconduct and finding remedies to prevent future instances. This mitigation of risk and increase in transparency and accountability should result in reduced numbers of misconduct incidents, a reduction in civil liability expenditures, and thus a positive impact on police and community relations.
This ordinance sets the parameters for monthly meetings of the Committee of Public Safety with mandatory attendance by leaders from the police department and the police accountability departments.
It fur...
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