The American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts (ACLU) is suing the Boston Police Department after their request for public records on “street-level encounters” has gone unanswered for over 300 days, the group says.
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Despite the deal, a lawsuit unrelated to the ACLU is still pending against the police department in federal court over its stop-and-frisk practices. Judge Keys will produce public reports twice each year on investigatory stops and pat downs by Chicago police, assessing whether the CPD is complying with its legal requirements, including the Fourth Amendment requirement that there be reasonable suspicion of criminal conduct as a basis for a stop or search and that the stops do not have an impermissible racially-disparate impact prohibited by the Illinois Civil Rights Act.
Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy says the agreement shows the department’s “commitment to fairness”.
The agreement comes after months of negotiations between the city, the department and the ACLU that aimed to avoid expensive and time-consuming litigation, the parties said in a news release.
At a information convention on the O’Hare Hilton, the place he’s attending a gathering of police chiefs from across the nation, McCarthy defended the constitutionality of the tons of of hundreds of road stops his officers make.
“Just think about it – if an officer is spending more time doing paperwork, he’s spending less time doing police work”, McCarthy said. “Chicago stops a shocking number of people”, the ACLU report said, pointing to more than 250,000 stops without arrests in the summer of 2014 alone. Judge Keys also is authorized to make recommendations for changes to CPD policies.
The ACLU says it has been waiting 11 months for Boston Police to hand over the information, including the race of people stopped by police. According to The Boston Globe, the police department updated its policies to prohibit stops based on race, gender or personal characteristics. It goes into effect immediately.
McCarthy has been a proponent of stop-and-frisk and, in fact, he worked at two police departments that came under fire for their use of the tactic – the New York City Police Department, where McCarthy was once a high-ranking member and Newark, New Jersey, which he headed before coming to Chicago. Last August, the city dropped its appeals of the decision after a new mayor took over who was elected, in part, on an anti-stop-and-frisk campaign.
When police departments face criticism, they tend to dig in their heels, deny any wrongdoing, and accuse those who dare to point out their flaws of being crime-humping gang-lovers.
It said black Chicagoans constitute 32 percent of the city’s population but were subjected to 72 percent of all stops. In that lawsuit filed in federal court, six African-American residents of Chicago claim the street stops have led to constitutional abuses, including unlawful searches and seizures as well as excessive force. African Americans were stopped at a disproportionately higher rate than Hispanics or whites.
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“I certainly think that it does add a lot of credibility to the lawsuit”, said Antonio Romanucci, an attorney handling the lawsuit.
