The Use of Statistical Evidence to Address Police Supervisory and
Disciplinary Practices: The Chicago Police Department’s Broken System*
By Craig B. Futterman, H. Melissa Mather, and Melanie Miles 1
Introduction
In 2003 and 2004, Diane, a fifty year old African-American school janitor and mother of
three, was subjected to multiple acts of abuse by a group of Chicago police officers. These
officers were members of an elite tactical team that patrolled public housing on Chicago’s south
side. Known as the “Skullcap Crew” to local residents, they had a reputation for racist and
sadistic behavior. Over the course of the year that they targeted Diane for abuse, they forced
her, on two separate occasions, to disrobe and bare the most private parts of her body. They
threatened her with a loaded gun, needle-nosed pliers, and a screwdriver, leaving her convinced
that they planned to rape and kill her. They beat and choked her. They hurled racial and
gender-based epithets toward her. They tore up her home. They desecrated religious objects
sacred to her. They threatened to plant drugs on her and to falsely arrest her. They beat her
teenage son. They brought a middle-aged African-American neighbor into her home and forced
her son to beat the older man for their amusement. Diane was subjected to these assaults on
multiple occasions, despite initiating complaints with the Chicago Police Department (CPD).

*Preliminary Draft. All Rights Reserved. Article will be reprinted in Volume 23 of Civil Rights Litigation and
Attorney Fees Annual Handbook, Thomson West. Please do not reprint or disseminate without permission.
1

Craig Futterman, a Clinical Professor of Law at the University of Chicago Law School, Melissa Mather, a Clinical
Lecturer, and Melanie Miles, a recent law graduate, worked together with a team of University of Chicago Law
students to represent Diane in her constitutional challenge of the City of Chicago’s practices for supervising and
controlling its rogue police officers. The authors wish to acknowledge Diane Bond for her courage in her efforts to
prevent other women from suffering similar abuse at the hands of law enforcement. The authors also wish to thank
Jamie Kalven (our partner on the ground), the entire Stateway community (which generously welcomed us and
provided the true knowledge and inspiration for this article), Steve Whitman and Jade Dell (our mathematical
guides), Emma Rodriguez-Ayala, a dedicated team of University of Chicago Law students (now graduates) (you
know who you are); and G. Flint Taylor (who paved the way for Monell police reform litigation).

1

The officers denied any contact whatsoever with Diane, and the CPD failed to sustain any of her
complaints. 2
Over the past six years, the Edwin F. Mandel Legal Aid Clinic of the University of
Chicago Law School collaborated with activist and author, Jamie Kalven, and residents of the
Stateway Gardens, the public housing community where Diane lived, on a human rights
documentation, advocacy, and self-help program focused on issues of police accountability.
Together we documented instances of police misconduct on the ground.
When we began this initiative, Stateway Gardens, together with the Robert Taylor Homes
to the south, constituted the largest concentration of public housing—and poverty—in the nation.
In the course of our involvement there, community members were relocated and the high-rises in
which they lived were demolished as part of the Chicago Housing Authority’s “Plan for
Transformation.” Today the site is being redeveloped into a mixed income community.
In our years working at Stateway Gardens, we experienced the operation of a different
constitution from that which we studied in our class rooms at the University of Chicago.
Aggressive stop and frisks, street interrogations, and the searches of community members’
homes associated with the war on drugs in the inner city created the context for human rights
abuses on a grander scale, committed by groups of officers like the Skullcap Crew against people
like Diane. 3 The expected rules were simply different in this community. Whenever police cars
pulled into a public housing development, the young Black men outside expected to be searched

2

A full account of Diane’s story appears in a series of articles by Jamie Kalven, published online under the title
“Kicking the Pigeon” (http://www.viewfromtheground.com/wp-content/media/ktp/kicking_the_pigeon.pdf). The
lawsuit that arose out of this abuse is Bond v. Utreras, et al., No. 04-cv-2617 (N.D. Ill.) (dismissed with prejudice
pursuant to a settlement agreement with the City of Chicago on March 23, 2007).

3

See Bernard Harcourt, Unconstitutional Police Searches and Collective Responsibility, 3 Criminology and Public
Policy 363 (2004), for a thoughtful essay raising fundamental questions about the implications of aggressive
policing strategies associated with the war on drugs.

2

and treated with the suspicion of being a criminal. 4 Police misconduct that would constitute a
dramatic and newsworthy event in our university community and in many of the communities
from which we came was a routine reality at Stateway.
The Skullcap Crew’s abuse of Diane occurred in this context.
A team of University of Chicago law students investigated the officers who abused
Diane. Our investigation revealed that these five officers were well-known to public housing
residents on the south side of Chicago, for their physical brutality, their casual acts of cruelty,
and their overt racism. We heard multiple first-hand reports of their years-long reign of terror
and racial abuse of African-Americans in public housing communities: stories of lining up a
group of young Black men and kicking them in their testicles; ordering African-American men to
strike Black women at the threat of arrest; strip searching African-American women and
ridiculing their bodies; planting illegal drugs on innocent people; stealing money from and
protecting drug dealers.
What distinguished them, above all, reported residents, was their racism and the
particular pleasure they took in their racist acts. “They get their jollies humiliating Black folks,”
a former resident reported. “They get off on it.” 5
How could the Skullcap Crew be so confident they could use their police powers to abuse
African-Americans in public housing with impunity?
Over the past three years, that question has been at the center of our work—what
conditions were necessary to allow this small band of officers to engage in a pattern of abuse of
African-Americans without fear of consequence? Accordingly, we brought suit not only against
4

See Terry v. Ohio, 392 U.S. 1 (1968) (requires that the police must have reasonable and articulable belief that a
particular individual is armed and dangerous in order to conduct a stop and frisk).

3

the individual officers for their violations of Diane’s constitutional rights, but also later filed a
Monell 6 claim against the City of Chicago, charging that the City has a policy and practice of
failing to adequately supervise, monitor, discipline, and otherwise control its police officers. 7
This article summarizes our statistical analyses and findings about the Chicago Police
Department’s broken supervisory and disciplinary systems. The purpose of the article is
threefold. First, we aim to demonstrate the fundamental and systemic nature of the problems
with the Chicago Police Department’s disciplinary and supervisory systems. An accurate
assessment of these systems is a necessary condition for meaningful reform. Second, we seek to
illustrate how statistical analysis, an often underused tool in Monell claims, can provide powerful
evidence of deficiencies in a municipality’s practices of supervising and disciplining its police
officers. We hope to encourage advocates, reformers, and policymakers around the nation to
undertake similar analyses to improve police accountability in other law enforcement agencies.
Finally, we hope to engage the reader around a series of fundamental questions that arise from
our findings about the impunity with which we have allowed abuse to occur in certain
communities. 8
Part I of the article provides a brief legal background about civil rights litigation against
municipalities, through which individuals may act as “private attorney generals,” by bringing

5

Jamie Kalven, Kicking the Pigeon, THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND (2005), http://www.viewfromtheground.com/wpcontent/media/ktp/kicking_the_pigeon.pdf, at 14.
6

Monell v. New York City Dept. of Social Servs., 436 U.S. 658 (1978); 42 U.S.C. § 1983 (2007).

7

Bond v. Utreras, et al., No. 04 C 2617 (N.D. Ill.).

8

This article also emerged from an academic conference that grew out of our collaborative work, titled: The View
From The Ground: Issues and Inquiries Arising from Eight Square Blocks of Chicago’s South Side, held at the
University of Chicago Law School last Spring. A number of questions raised in this article were explored in depth
at the conference. We hope that this article encourages others to take on these questions—to take seriously a view
from the ground. A webcast of conference highlights and other information about the conference is available at
http://invisibleinstitute.com/conference.

4

systemic constitutional challenges to widespread but unwritten municipal police practices that
operate with the force of law. Part II summarizes our findings from our analysis of Chicago
police data about the problems with its practices for supervising and disciplining police officers.
Part III seeks to initiate a conversation about the broader implications of those findings.
I.

Legal Backdrop
A.

The Promise and Peril of Bringing Monell claims.

Monell v. Dep’t of Social Servs. 9 is one of the landmark civil rights cases of the past
century. On the one hand, it opened up the possibility for true systemic reform by providing an
avenue for litigants to hold local municipalities, rather than simply individuals, liable for
unconstitutional policies. 10 On the other hand, it severely restricted the circumstances under
which municipalities could be held liable, foreclosing the possibility of straight-forward
respondeat superior liability and instead setting barriers to municipal liability higher than those
necessary to recover punitive damages against private individuals. 11 Particularly in light of what
one commentator has called the “de facto prohibition on injunctions in police abuse cases” 12
enshrined by the Supreme Court in City of Los Angeles v. Lyons, 13 Monell claims represent one
of the last permissible avenues for private parties to obtain meaningful reform of unconstitutional
local policies through the federal courts.

9

See supra n. 6.

10

Monell, 436 U.S. at 690.

11

See David Jacks Achtenburg, Taking History Seriously: Municipal Liability Under 42 U.S.C. § 1983 and the
Debate Over Respondeat Superior, 73 Fordham L. Rev. 2183, 2191 (2005).

12

See G. Flint Taylor, A Litigator’s View of Discovery and Proof in Police Misconduct Policy and Practice Cases,
48 DePaul L. Rev. 747, 772 (1999).
13

461 U.S. 95 (1983).

5

In order to recover under Monell, however, a plaintiff must show not only that she
suffered a deprivation of her rights under the Constitution, and that this injury was caused by
some policy-level decision of the municipality to act, or fail to act, but also that the
municipality’s action or failure to act was a result of deliberate indifference to the rights of the
plaintiff. 14 Within each of these elements – proof of policy or custom, causation, and deliberate
indifference – lie additional hurdles to liability. A policy or custom, for example, must be a
practice or custom so widespread and ingrained as to “have the force of law.” 15 Causation also
must be specific to the violation alleged, meaning that merely proving an unconstitutional policy,
practice, or custom, however loathsome, will not ensure liability unless the specific injury
alleged relates to the specific unconstitutional policy proved. 16 Once each of these elements are
met, a plaintiff must further prove that the unconstitutional policy that caused her injury was the
result of something more than mere negligence on the part of the City, and was instead the result
of “deliberate indifference” – a state of mind that requires a heightened level of culpability, even
more than mere “indifference.” 17 In fact, the Monell standard for municipal liability has been

14

Several different avenues are available to demonstrate municipal liability under Monell. See Jessica R. Manley, A
Common Field of Vision: Municipal Liability for State Law Enforcement and Principles of Federalism in Section
1983 Actions, 100 NW. U. L. Rev. 967, 971-78 (describing the history of municipal liability under § 1983).
Describing each of these avenues in any detail is beyond the scope of this article. Here, we focus on the basic
elements of liability when the policy involved is a “practice or custom,” rather than a straight-forward expression of
policy, as for example, when municipal policy appears in writing, or is expressed through a final policy maker for
the municipality. In those circumstances, the requirements for Monell liability are somewhat less restrictive. Id. at
974 n. 55 (noting that in Monell itself the policy at issue was a “written, formal policy requiring pregnant employees
to stop working at a certain time, even if it was not medically necessary”) (quoting Karen M. Blum, Municipal
Liability Under § 1983, 15 Touro L. Rev. 1535, 1535 (1999)).
15

See, e.g., Board of County Com’rs of Bryan Cty., Okl. v. Brown, 520 U.S. 397, 404 (1997).

16

Id. at 414 (describing how a sheriff’s decision to hire a member of his family onto the police force, despite a
background of known criminal convictions, including assault and battery, cannot form a basis for municipal liability
because nothing about the convictions suggested that the officer would engage in the precise constitutional
violations alleged by the plaintiff).
17

Id. at 411 (“Only where adequate scrutiny of an applicant’s background would lead a reasonable policymaker to
conclude that the plainly obvious consequence of the decision to hire the applicant would be the deprivation of a

6

interpreted as more restrictive than “common law restrict[ions] [on] private employers’ liability
for punitive damages.” 18
In addition, merely raising a Monell claim invites a storm of motions from the City,
designed to whittle away at the plaintiff’s right to pursue such claims until such time as they
become so old, and so divorced from the remainder of the case, that they are ultimately
dismissed without the City having to respond substantively at all. The City’s legal strategy is
designed to prevent any public or judicial scrutiny of its practices—to prevent its practices and
their implications from ever becoming visible.
This strategy typically begins with a motion to bifurcate discovery of Monell claims from
discovery related to the “underlying Constitutional violation,” which is then followed by a
motion to bifurcate the trial of these issues, or, in some cases, dismiss the Monell claims outright
before trial, because there has been no discovery and the claims would overly complicate the
trial. The City of Chicago has recently augmented this strategy with an additional tool, which it
refers to as a “stipulation,” but in reality functions only as an agreement to fulfill its statutory
duty to indemnify its employees for damages incurred as a result of actions taken in the course of
their employment. Upon filing this “stipulation,” the City typically moves to block discovery
and trial of its practices, ensuring that its policies will remain unexamined. 19

third party’s federally protected right can the official’s failure to adequately scrutinize the applicant’s background
constitute ‘deliberate indifference.’”).
18

See Achtenburg, supra note 11; see also generally Kevin R. Vodak, A Plainly Obvious Need for New-Fashioned
Municipal Liability: The Deliberate Indifference Standard and Board of County Commissioners of Bryan County v.
Brown, 48 DePaul L. Rev. 785, 800-07 (Spring 1999), for a discussion of the difficulties of showing deliberate
indifference.

19

The propriety of the City’s Motion has been questioned by a number of federal judges. See, e.g., G. Flint Taylor,
Defending Against Municipal Attempts to Nullify Monell Pattern and Practice Claims: Sample Pleadings, Police
Misconduct and Civil Rights Law Report, Thomson/West (September/October 2006).

7

B.

Statistical Analysis as a Useful Tool in Overcoming Barriers to Monell
Liability.

In the face of such obstacles, how can litigants respond? One method that we found
particularly valuable in the Bond case, was to use statistical analysis of data obtained from the
City itself. As we explore in more detail below, statistics can be used not only to prove that the
City had a policy of failing to supervise and discipline its officers, but also to prove theories of
causation and deliberate indifference. With regard to causation, our analysis demonstrated that
had the City had an effective system, it would have flagged the particular defendants at issue
before they had a chance to abuse Diane, and also that the City’s system was so obviously
toothless and ineffective that it actually encouraged these officers in the belief that they could
abuse African-Americans with impunity. With regard to deliberate indifference, our analysis
was actually based on data coming from the City, and so the City could hardly say that it was not
aware, or could not have, with due diligence, become aware of how ineffective its policies were
in deterring abuse.
While we are certainly not the first lawyers to use this type of analysis in proving a
Monell claim, 20 statistical analysis is not as prevalent in police misconduct litigation as it is in
other areas of the law, such as employment discrimination, trademark infringement, and
antitrust. 21 The reasons for this reluctance to use statistical tools are undoubtedly varied, but
20

Flint Taylor authored an excellent article on the litigation of policy and practice cases. See supra n. 12. Much of
the advice given by Taylor reflects discovery strategies that we used in Bond. For example, Taylor suggests
obtaining sustained rates and comparing them to other jurisdictions, breaking down sustained rates within relevant
categories of misconduct, examining ways in which sustained rates may be inflated, and obtaining a list of "repeater
beaters." Id. at 754-55, 760.
21

See, e.g,, Intl. Bd. of Teamsters v. United States, 431 U.S. 324, 339 (1977) (“[O]ur cases make it unmistakably
clear that ‘statistical analyses have served and will continue to serve an important role’ in cases in which the
existence of discrimination is a disputed issue.” (quoting Mayor of Philadelphia v. Educational Equality League,
415 U.S. 605, 620 (1974))); Mobil Oil Corp. v. Pegasus Petroleum Corp., 818 F.2d 254, 259 (2d Cir. 1987) (“Both
Mobil and Pegasus Petroleum offered surveys of consumers and of members of the oil trading industry as evidence
relating to the existence of actual confusion between the two marks. The district court properly admitted these
surveys into evidence, despite claims of statistical imperfections by both sides, as those criticisms affected the

8

may be rooted in the fact that law schools generally do not stress quantitative skills, and
engaging a statistician or qualified mathematical analyst may seem beyond the reach of an
attorney independently financing litigation, in the hope of recovering a fee at the end of the case.
Again, our hope is to persuade practitioners and policy-makers alike that accurate analysis of a
city’s own data is invaluable in assessing the state of its policies and practices.
Before we discuss what we found from our analysis of data from the City of Chicago,
however, we should add a few caveats, related to the limits of statistics-based evidence in civil
rights cases. First, many federal courts have expressed the view that statistics “alone” will not
suffice to prove a Monell claim. 22 While this view may be less related to the strength of the

weight accorded to the evidence rather than its admissibility.” (citing Grotrian, Helfferich, Schulz, Th. Steinweg
Nachf. v. Steinway & Sons, 523 F.2d 1331, 1341 (2d Cir. 1975))); In re Independent Gasoline Antitrust Litigation,
79 F.R.D. 552, 561 (D. Md. 1978) (granting class certification because “plaintiffs have produced some documentary
evidence supporting their assertions that proof of impact on all class members is capable of common proof by
statistical and economic analyses of the gasoline market”).
22

See generally Stephen M. Ryals, Proof of Municipal Liability in Police Misconduct Cases, 596 PLI/Lit 7, at *2122 (1998). See also Strauss v. City of Chicago, 760 F.2d 765, 766 (7th Cir. 1985) (dismissing Monell claim under
the now-defunct “heightened pleading” standard for such claims, because the plaintiff’s citation of low sustained
rates from the Office of Professional Standards [the City agency charged with investigating police abuse] “without
more, indicate[d] nothing” because “[p]eople may file a complaint for many reasons, or for no reason at all”);
Woods v. Clay, 2005 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 343, at *61 (D. Ill. Jan. 10, 2005) (granting summary judgment because “by
itself, the fact that the City did not sustain more citizen complaints against its police officers did not establish a
widespread custom of ignoring or improperly disposing of complaints, and plaintiffs have not shown that the City
should have punished more police officers or that it ignored complaints . . . .”); Glinski v. Chicago, 2001 U.S. Dist.
LEXIS 20324, at *8-10 (D. Ill. Dec. 7, 2001) (granting summary judgment despite plaintiff’s evidence that the City
only sustained 0.011% of civil rights violation claims because plaintiff did not offer any evidence that the not
sustained complaints were meritorious); Brooks v. Scheib, 813 F.2d 1191, 1193 (11th Cir. 1987) (reversing
judgment in favor of plaintiff on Monell claim, in part because the “number of complaints [cited by plaintiff] bears
no relation to their validity”); but see Kerr v. West Palm Beach, 875 F.2d 1546, 1551 (11th Cir. 1989) (citing
statistics on dog bites in addition to other policy evidence in determining that the City failed to adequately train
canine units). The Second Circuit, in contrast, has at least held statistical evidence probative of notice. See Fiacco v.
Rensselaer, 783 F.2d 319, 328 (2d Cir. 1986) (“Whether or not the claims had validity, the very assertion of a
number of such claims put the City on notice that there was a possibility that its police officers had used excessive
force. The City's knowledge of these allegations and the nature and extent of its efforts to investigate and record the
claims were pertinent to Fiacco's contention that the City had a policy of nonsupervision of its policemen that
reflected a deliberate indifference to their use of excessive force.”) On the other hand, courts, when presented with
statistical analysis, in addition to other evidence, often respond positively. See Beck v. City of Pittsburgh, 89 F. 3d
966, 975 (3d Cir. 1996) (reversing judgment as a matter of law in favor of the city. The court explained that
“Bryant, even if it were precedential and/or persuasive, is distinguishable from the instant case. Beck presented
considerably more than mere statistics. He also presented evidence of actual written civilian complaints. Further,
he presented evidence that the City of Pittsburgh has no formal system in place for tracking complaints against its
officers and that the citizen complaints were not isolated incidents”); Chew v. Gates, 27 F. 3d 1432, 1445 (9th Cir.

9

conclusions one can make based on a particular set of data, and more related to the general
aversion of judges, much like lawyers, to quantitative analysis, 23 the fact remains that this view
is entrenched in the case law, and is not likely to be shaken. Second, even when courts do
consider a statistical analysis on its merits in assessing a Monell claim, certain barriers to
admission of the evidence must be overcome. Among these are challenges to the relevance of
the statistical analysis, based on how closely the particular analysis tracks the problem raised in
the lawsuit, 24 how many variables the analysis attempted to account for, 25 and whether the
analysis used an appropriate baseline or benchmark in assessing the data in question. 26
1994) (holding that evidence that dogs bit suspects in 40% of cases, coupled with lack of department policies
regarding the use of canine force, could be used to show deliberate indifference); Watson v. Kansas City, 857 F. 2d
690, 696 (10th Cir. 1988) (reversing summary judgment in favor of defendant on plaintiff’s claim that the city had a
custom of failing to protect domestic abuse victims where the arrest rate for nondomestic assault cases was 31% and
the arrest rate for domestic assault cases was 16%. The court expressly refused to decide whether statistics are
sufficient because “the plaintiff has also presented evidence that . . . the training encourages officers to attempt to
‘defuse’ the situation and to use arrest as a last resort”); Webster v Houston, 689 F.2d 1220, 1222 (5th Cir. 1982)
(testimony that 75-80% of officers carried “throw down guns” was used along with other evidence to prove
existence of unconstitutional custom), rev’d after rehearing en banc on other grounds, 735 F.2d 838 (5th Cir. 1984).
23

See, e.g., McCleskey v.Kemp, 481 U.S. 279, 286 (1987), in which the statistical evidence of bias in the application
of the death penalty was overwhelming, yet a majority of the justices could not bring themselves to rely on this
evidence as a basis to find the death penalty unconstitutional.

24

In Carter v. District of Columbia, 795 F.2d 116, 124 (D.C. Cir. 1986), the D.C. Circuit upheld a directed verdict
in favor of the municipal defendant despite the following evidence: 92% of officers were exonerated in misconduct
investigations over a five year period, the police chief only disciplined one of twenty-six officers cited by a review
board for unjustifiably using their weapons, and the chief only took adverse action against five of twenty-one
officers recommended for discipline by a civilian review board. The court explained that “[t]hese statistics are
conspicuously wanting in detail. They do not speak for themselves. The first item, for example, lumps together all
investigations of whatever kind; it tells us nothing separately or specifically about excessive force complaints.” Id.
at 124-25.
25

See Watson, 857 F.2d at 695-96 (finding statistical evidence persuasive despite a failure to control for the relevant
factor of probable cause, noting that while “[g]enerally a failure to account for every variable will affect the weight
rather than the admissibility of the statistics . . . in some cases, the statistics may be so defective as to be
inadmissible as irrelevant”).
26

See, e.g., People Who Care v. Rockford Bd. Of Educ., 246 F.3d 1073, 1076-77 (7th Cir. 2001) (“No effort has been
made by the plaintiffs, despite our warnings, to partition, however crudely, the lag in achievement that is due to the
school board's past illegalities and the lag that is due to other factors, factors for which the school board bears no
federal legal responsibility. The partition could be made by comparing minority academic performance in Rockford
with the performance of minority students in other school districts after adjusting for the various factors that are not
the school board's legal responsibility yet might be thought to influence the academic performance of Rockford's
minority students, such as poverty, family stability, health, class size, and quality of teachers. There are statistical
methods for holding these factors constant in order to isolate the influence, if any, of the board's illegal conduct on

10

With these cautions in mind, we turn to what we learned about the City of Chicago’s
policies and practices from a mathematical analysis of its own data.
II.

The Chicago Police Department’s Broken Disciplinary and Supervisory Systems-- A
“Portrait of Impunity” 27
During the late 1970’s through the ‘80s, there were numerous complaints by African-

Americans about brutal techniques used by police from a certain command area of the Chicago
Police Department. Techniques involving a cattle prod, a black box generating electricity with
wires attached to a man’s ears or genitalia, handcuffing to burning-hot radiators, suffocating with
plastic bags, sadistic games of Russian Roulette, savage beatings, etc.—the infamous and widely
acknowledged torture committed by former police Commander Jon Burge and his henchmen. 28
The Mayor and high level police officials have offered repeated statements of reassurance. That
was then. This is now. That could never happen today, in part due to the Police Department’s
improved supervisory and monitoring systems. 29
But is that really true? In light of our experiences on the ground and the credible reports
of rampant abuse by the Skullcap Crew, have the underlying conditions that allowed Burge and

the academic performance of Rockford's minority students. No such scientific comparison has been attempted--nor
even anything cruder.”).
27

Kalven, supra n. 5.

28

John Conroy has written a series of important and thoughtful articles on police torture in Chicago, which have
been published in the Chicago Reader. His articles can be accessed from
http://www.chicagoreader.com/policetorture. See also U.S. ex. rel. Maxwell v. Gilmore, 37 F. Supp. 2d 1078, 1094
(N.D. Ill. 1999) (“It is now common knowledge that in the early to mid 1980’s Jon Burge and many officers
working under him regularly engaged in the physical abuse and torture of prisoners to extract confessions. Both
internal police accounts and numerous lawsuits and appeals brought by suspects alleging such abuse substantiate
that those beatings and other means of torture occurred as an established practice, not just on an isolated basis.”);
see also People v. Patterson, 192 Ill.2d 93, (Ill. 2000); Wilson v. City of Chicago, 6 F.3d 1233 (7th Cir. 1993);
Wilson v. Chicago, 120 F.3d 681 (7th Cir. 1997); People v. Cannon, 293 Ill.App.3d 634, 688 (1st Dist. 1997).
29

See, e.g., Jamie Kalven, Portrait of Impunity-- Part II, THE VIEW FROM THE GROUND (2006), which can be
accessed at http://www.viewfromtheground.com/archive/2006/09/portrait-of-impunity-part2.html (quoting Chicago
Mayor Richard Daley and Police Superintendent Phil Cline about the series of safeguards that have been put in place
since the Burge era to prevent police torture).

11

his henchmen to torture Black men with impunity really been remedied? Are the Skullcap Crew
and other groups that operate in similar neighborhoods modern day Burges-- the inevitable result
of persistent fundamental problems? We analyze the Chicago Police Department’s data below to
shed some light on possible answers to these questions.

A.

The CPD Data Sets

Our analysis in this article draws primarily from three statistical data sets, each
originating from the Chicago Police Department.
First, we studied a series of Chicago disciplinary data. The CPD produced disciplinary
data related to all civilian abuse complaints over a six-year period (1999-2004) in each of the
following categories—excessive force/brutality, illegal searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse, and
false arrests (e.g., planting evidence). We highlight the three-year period surrounding the
charged abuse of Diane (2002—04). By organizing the data in this way, we were able to break
down the data by type of charged abuse, as well as to aggregate the information to look at the
most serious forms of civilian abuse as a whole.
Second, we examined a random sample of the investigative files from the same five
categories of civilian abuse complaints and examined every available investigative file relating to
misconduct charges brought against the five officers charged with abusing Diane.
Third, we analyzed the distribution of misconduct complaints among Chicago police
officers. We paid special attention to the data regarding Chicago police officers who amassed
eleven or more official misconduct complaints in a five-year period from 2001-2006. 30 We call

30

While there is no consensus among police practices experts about the number of citizen complaints that ought to
trigger intervention or special monitoring by a department, we chose the arbitrarily high number of 11 or more
complaints over five years, because there would be little controversy that any Department that is competently
monitoring its personnel would have flagged an officer with more than 10 official misconduct complaints in that
time span.

12

this the “repeater” data set. The repeater data listed the complaints against those officers and
noted each officer’s unit of assignment, designating where they worked. For each complaint, we
considered the date of the complaint, the results of the City’s internal investigation, and the
nature of any discipline recommended by the arm of the Department that investigated the charge.
We also evaluated data concerning the Chicago Police Department’s Early Warning programs.
Our analysis below is also informed by years of work with people in the Stateway
Gardens public housing community. This ethnographic work—our observations and interviews
over years at Stateway—provided additional information which gave fuller meaning to the
statistics.
B.

CPD Disciplinary Rates

CPD’s own data make clear that Chicago police officers can perpetrate abuse without
fear of consequence. Chicago data reveal that discipline for the abuse of a civilian is rare. The
odds are two in a thousand that a Chicago police officer will receive any meaningful discipline as
a result of being charged with abusing a civilian. Two in a thousand.
Between 2002 and 2004, civilians filed 10,149 complaints of excessive force, illegal
searches, racial abuse, sexual abuse, and false arrests. We limited the disciplinary data set to
those five categories, because they encompass the most serious forms of civilian abuse and
correspond to the types of abuse endured by Diane. Only 19 of the 10,149 complaints led to a
suspension of a week or more.
•

The chance of meaningful abuse for a police brutality complaint was less than 3 in 1,000.

•

Only 1 of 3,837 charged illegal searches led to meaningful discipline.

•

Not a single charge of false arrest (planting drugs, guns, etc.) over this three-year period
led to an incident of meaningful discipline.

13

Table 1, Meaningfully Sustained Rates of C.R. Investigations from 2002 to 2004, by Type of
Offense, illustrates the probability of meaningful discipline for each category of civilian abuse. 31
In reality, the odds are much lower than two in a thousand. Only a small fraction of
people who believe that they have been abused by the police actually file a complaint with the
Chicago Police Department. Among the reasons for not reporting are fear of reprisal and distrust
of the investigatory process. Abuse victims realize that there is only a slim chance their
complaint will be sustained and so they are understandably reluctant to risk retaliation. These
fears are exacerbated by the vulnerability of victims of police abuse.
A national survey of police contacts conducted by the United States Department of
Justice found that only one in ten people who believe that they have been abused by the police
ever report the abuse. 32 Applying the Department of Justice research to the Chicago data,
meaningful discipline results in only 2 out of every 10,000 incidents in which civilians believe
that they have been abused. As Dr. Whitman summarized, “This is pretty close to never.” 33
C.

Sustained Rates

We then examined the 2002-04 “sustained rates,” the percentage of cases where the CPD
found that sufficient evidence exists to believe that the charged abuse occurred. We obtained
data for each of the five categories of civilian abuse noted in Section A, above.

31

Dr. Steven Whitman worked with us as a mathematical expert in the Bond case. He collaborated with us in
developing the statistical analyses, tables, and graphs in this article. As a part of his consultation, he authored a
statistical report, parts of which are subject to a protective order, and are thus not available to the public. Judge Joan
Humphrey Lefkow, the federal judge who oversaw the Bond case, lifted the Protective Order over the City of
Chicago’s objection, because the court found that information about charges of official misconduct against police
officers were matters of public concern. The City of Chicago has appealed the court’s release of the information.
See Bond v. Utreras, 2007 WL 2003085 (ND.Ill. July 2, 2007).
32

Mathew J. Hickman, BUREAU OF JUSTICE STATISTICS SPECIAL REPORT, U.S. DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE, NCJ
210296, COMPLAINTS ABOUT POLICE USE OF FORCE 1 (June 2006).
33

See Whitman, supra n. 31.

14

The overall sustained rate, for all categories of civilian abuse charges was only one percent
(124 sustained cases out of 10,149 charges of abuse).
•

Brutality cases were also reportedly sustained at the rate of 1%.

•

Illegal search charges were sustained at the rate of 0.3%, or 3 in a thousand.

•

False arrest charges were sustained at the rate of 0.6%

•

Race abuse cases were sustained a little more than 1% of the time.

•

Sexual abuse charges were sustained at the rate of nearly 20%. 34

Chicago’s reported sustained rates are detailed in Table 2: Sustained Rates of C.R. Investigations
from 2002 to 2004, by Type of Offense.
While these rates are certainly low, we wanted to compare them to certain benchmarks in
order to better assess whether the City’s rates had improved over time, as implied by the City’s
assurances that the Burge torture chamber could not exist today, and how Chicago compared
with other large U.S. cities. When we looked at Chicago’s sustained rates over time, we found
that, in contrast to the claims of the Mayor and Superintendent that the CPD disciplinary systems
have been cured since the Burge torture era, sustained rates for brutality and other serious
charges of civilian abuse dramatically dropped by 90% from 1999 to 2004. Over that six year
period, CPD’s reported sustained rate in brutality cases declined from about five percent in 1999
to less than one half of one percent by 2004, with incremental decreases each year. The
sustained rate for all serious civilian abuse charges dropped by about the same amount. Figures
1 and 2 provide graphic illustrations of this precipitous downward trend. 35

34

While the sex abuse numbers were based on a relatively small sample, the higher rate appears to hold true over
time. We did not have the opportunity to test various hypotheses which may explain the higher sustained rate for
this category of abuse. This statistic invites further study.
35

A confidential source shared the Chicago disciplinary data for 2006 with the authors. The downward spiral
appears to have continued.

15

After examining Chicago data over time, we then compared Chicago to other major
metropolitan police departments. The Bureau of Justice Statistics, as a part of the Department of
Justice’s obligations under the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 36
collected excessive force complaint numbers and sustained rates from police departments
comprised of 100 or more sworn police officers. While few police departments are known for
effectively policing themselves, Chicago is, on a number of accountability measures,
significantly worse than the norm. As Dr. Whitman observed, “Chicago force complaint data
seem out of line with the national profile with sustained rates, being far lower than for the
country as a whole.” 37 The average sustained rate for excessive force cases in major
metropolitan police departments was 8 percent, compared to Chicago’s 0.48% in 2004, the most
recent year in our data set. 38 A brutality complaint is thus 94% less likely to be sustained in
Chicago than in the nation as a whole. See Figure 3, Sustained Excessive Force Complaints in
U.S. and Chicago.
Comparisons with federal Department of Justice statistics also showed that the Chicago
Police Department received substantially more brutality complaints per officer than the national
average. The national average among “large municipal police departments” (1,000 or more
officers) was 9.5 excessive force complaints per 100 full-time sworn officers. 39 We would
therefore expect 1,283 complaints per year against Chicago’s 13,500 officers. However, from

36

42 U.S.C.A. § 14142.

37

Whitman, supra n.31.

38

Hickman, supra n. 32.

39

Id.

16

1999 to 2004, citizens filed approximately 1,774 brutality complaints per year against Chicago
police officers.
We then attempted a comparison of CPD excessive force and sustained rate data with that
of law enforcement agencies that the U.S. Department of Justice found, pursuant to 42 U.S.C. δ
14141, to have engaged in a pattern and practice of excessive force and had deficient disciplinary
systems for addressing brutality complaints. 40 These agencies include Detroit, Los Angeles,
Washington, D.C., Miami, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh. We obtained 2002 force and sustained
rate data for each of these agencies, as reported to the Bureau of Justice Statistics. Some of the
agencies listed above had begun to remediate their systems under federal consent decrees by
2002, complicating our attempts to make good comparisons. Albeit imperfect, our preliminary
review showed that Chicago’s internal brutality and disciplinary data were substantially worse
than cities where the Department of Justice had already concluded there were serious problems. 41
As infinitesimal as the CPD’s reported sustained and disciplinary rates are, there are
strong reasons to believe that the actual rates are even lower.
First, in our review of random samples of excessive force complaints, we discovered that
the City counts complaints that were sustained for administrative violations (but not brutality) as
sustained force complaints for statistical purposes. This tendentious reporting method accounted
for approximately half of the sustained force complaints in the sample, grossly inflating CPD’s
“sustained” numbers. In other words, the CPD failed to sustain excessive force charges in about
half of the cases that it reports as “sustained.”

40

The Department of Justice’s findings are available at http://www.usdoj.gov/crt/split/police.htm.

41

The one exception was Cleveland where not one of nearly 5,000 brutality complaints was sustained over a fouryear period. Gabriel Baird, “Cleveland Police Always Justify Using Force,” The Plain Dealer (January 17, 2007).

17

Second, multiple layers of review occur after the investigative arms of the CPD
recommend discipline. Disciplinary findings may be overturned or reduced by police
supervisors up the chain of command. In addition, the Chicago Police Board, a group of
individuals appointed by the Mayor to review sustained complaints of police misconduct,
reversed sustained findings or reduced discipline in nearly 50% of the cases that it reviewed. 42
Thus, the real sustained and disciplinary rates appear to be far lower than reported in this article.
D.

Shoddy Investigations
“If the Chicago Police Department investigated street crime the way that it investigates
police abuse, it would never solve a case.” --Joseph Stine, former Executive Officer of
the Police Training Bureau for the City of Philadelphia.43
We studied a sample of investigative files of Chicago civilian abuse complaints, to examine

the Department’s investigative procedures in practice and to gain a better understanding of why
only two in a thousand charges of civilian abuse result in meaningful discipline. Are there
systemic problems with the manner in which police misconduct complaints are investigated in
Chicago?
We found that standard CPD police abuse investigations violate virtually every canon of
professional investigation. For example, professional investigations demand that investigators
promptly respond to the scene. When investigators arrive, they protect the scene, seeking to
preserve all physical evidence to avoid contamination. They collect and test the evidence. They
thoroughly canvass the area, and attempt to identify witnesses and potential suspects. They

42

Legal Defense Handbook, Fraternal Order of Police Chicago Lodge No. 7 (August 2005),
http://www.chicagofop.org/Legal_Defense/LD_Book_090105.pdf, at pp. 11-12.
43

Joseph Stine also consulted with us as a police practices and investigations expert in the Bond case. He provided
invaluable insights around the CPD’s practices for investigating police abuse in Chicago, which are also reflected in
this article. Like Dr. Whitman, Mr. Stine drafted an expert report pursuant to Rule 26(a)(2) of the Federal Rules of
Civil Procedure. Aspects of Stine’s report are also unavailable due to the protective order, currently being reviewed
by the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. See supra n. 31.

18

conduct face-to-face interviews with persons who may have pertinent information related to the
crime. It is universally accepted that investigators should try to interview witnesses separately,
as soon as possible after the incident, to avoid the tainting of memories (innocent or otherwise)
and opportunities for collusion. Face-to-face interviews are also essential to observe the
subject’s demeanor and to allow opportunities to ask follow-up questions that arise from witness
narratives, as well as from comparisons to the stories of other witnesses/suspects and physical
evidence in the case. 44
Imagine a rape or beating takes place. The victim identifies her attacker. Detectives wait
weeks if not months before they even attempt to contact the suspect. When they do, they send
the alleged perpetrator a written form informing him the substance of the allegations, the names
of the witnesses, and the time, place, and circumstances of the crime. The Department then tells
the accused to take a week, sometimes two, three or even more weeks, to file a one-paragraph
denial of the charges, which is then accepted without question as to whether the accused has
talked to any other witnesses or colluded with any other suspects in drafting the denial.
These are not hypothetical or aberrational practices. These are CPD’s standard
procedures when it comes to investigating police misconduct. In more than 85% of the CPD
police abuse investigations analyzed, the accused officer was never even interviewed. In many
of the remaining 15% of the investigations, the Department determined that the complaint was
“not sustained” without ever requesting any information from any of the officers on the scene.
In the instances in which the charged officer was contacted by an investigator, the contact
usually occurred months after the incident. The officer was then provided with the specifics of
the charges, including the name of the complainant and victims, and given, on average, an
44

See Paul B. Weston and Kenneth M. Wells, CRIMINAL INVESTIGATIONS BASIC PERSPECTIVES, New
Jersey, Prentice-Hall, Inc. (1970).

19

additional seven to ten days to return a brief “To/From” report, generally denying the allegations.
In some cases, the charged officer took longer than a month to respond to the charges. The
months-long delay between the incident and required response from the accused creates
opportunities for collusion. It was not uncommon to see a group of officers submit nearly
verbatim responses, even mimicking the same typographical errors. Following the receipt of
these form denials, the complaints were almost invariably “not sustained” by the Department.
Canvasses were rarely conducted. Investigators rarely even visited the scene of the
incident. Physical evidence was not preserved, much less tested. Recordings of “911” calls of
police abuse were routinely destroyed. Police and civilian witnesses were rarely interviewed in
person. While investigators frequently ran background checks on civilian complainants and
witnesses who corroborated police abuse, they did not consider the complaint histories of any
Chicago police officer involved in the investigation. 45
In view of CPD’s standard practices in official misconduct investigations, it is no wonder
that 998 out of 1,000 charges of police abuse in Chicago never lead to any real discipline.
E.

A Few Bad Apples?

Big city mayors and law enforcement officials tend to describe the problem of police
abuse as one of a “few bad apples.” Authors of a recent a research paper for the National
Institute of Justice observed, “It has become a truism among police chiefs that 10 percent of their
officers cause 90 percent of their problems.” 46 Chicago is no exception. 47

45

We will address the Department’s failures to address patterns of abuse more fully in Section II.D, infra.

46

Samuel Walker, Geoffrey Alpert, and Dennis Kenney, Early Warning Systems: Responding to the Problem
Police Officer, National Institute of Justice (July 2001).

47

See Kalven, supra n. 5 (quoting Superintendent Cline: “We’ll use all our resources to go after police officers who
engage in misconduct. They are giving a black eye to the majority, the ninety percent of the cops that go out there
every day and put their life on the line to keep this city safe.”).

20

Our research supports the proposition that the vast majority of Chicago police officers are
not abusive. It also lends credence to the “truisim” that a small percentage of the force is
responsible for most of the reported abuse in the City. The data, however, do not support the
assertion that the problem is simply attributable to a few bad apples. The data instead paint a
picture of an institution with a deeply ingrained culture of denial that enables certain officers to
operate with impunity in certain communities of the City. The CPD goes to great lengths not to
know about or address its “bad apples” and the harm that they inflict on the police, public, and
justice system.
While the vast majority of the force has not collected an extraordinary number of
complaints, this does not mean that it bears no responsibility for the state of police impunity in
Chicago. The police code of silence contributes to the machinery of denial. Veteran Chicago
police abuse investigators and officers consistently report that they are not aware of a single
instance in which a Chicago police officer reported having observed a fellow officer abuse a
civilian. While there may be a number of good reasons while good officers fail to report abuse
(including the risk to their personal safety and careers), it is an inescapable fact that this type of
whistleblowing is virtually nonexistent in Chicago. The Department further contributes to this
phenomenon by its refusal to transfer and protect whistleblowers as a matter of policy. 48
1.

The CPD Fails to Address Patterns of Abuse

We found that the vast majority of Chicago police officers are not abusive.
Approximately 80% of the force received three or fewer complaints in the five year period

48

An in depth analysis of the police code of silence is beyond the scope of this article. See Myriam E. Gilles,
Breaking the Code of Silence: Rediscovering “Custom” in Section 1983 Municipal Liability, 80 B.U.L.Rev. 17
(Feb. 2000); Jerome H. Skolnick, Prosecuting Police Brutality Requires Penetrating the Blue Wall of Silence,
American Prospect (March 27, 2000); Jeffes v. Barnes, 208 F.3d 49 (2d Cir. 2000); Sharp v. City of Houston, 164
F.3d 923 (5th Cir. 1999), for commentary and examples of cases on the subject.

21

examined. It appears that many officers have zero or one complaint throughout the bulk of their
careers. The expected median is 1.5 complaints.
Less than five percent of the Department account for nearly half of all abuse complaints
against the CPD. Indeed, 662 Chicago police officers, a little less than 5% of the CPD’s 13,500
member force, amassed 11 or more official misconduct complaints between 2001 and 2006.
Because the vast majority of officers get only a few complaints in their entire careers, it is easy
to identify those who may be engaged in a pattern of abusive behavior. They literally jump off
the page. Figure 4, Complaints Against Chicago Police Officers, 2001-2006, illustrates the
distribution of complaints among Chicago police officers. 49
Yet, the CPD refuses to look or allow others to look at its “repeater” data. 50 It chooses
not to know—avoiding critical self-examination and fighting public and judicial scrutiny of its
practices. 51
Once the veil is lifted, the Department’s own data make clear that the CPD lacks any
effective system to address patterns of abuse. A complaint against a repeater officer is no more
likely to lead to meaningful discipline than a complaint against the 80% of Chicago officers who
do not accumulate abuse complaints. A repeater can be 99.8% confident that no meaningful
discipline will result from being charged with the abuse of a civilian. In other words, the

49

We believe that many of the officers in the second category (4-10 complaints) should have been flagged for
watchful monitoring. Heightened scrutiny, monitoring, and intervention ought to occur long before an officer has
accumulated eleven or more abuse complaints.
50

The Department is currently engaged in a court battle to prevent members of the press or public from learning the
identities of the officers who have been charged with the most abuse in Chicago. The City is also fighting the
release of the complaint histories and redacted investigative files of the five officers charged with abusing Diane.
See supra n. 31; Frank Main and Abdon M. Pallasch, “What are they hiding? Chicago Police List of officers with
more than 10 complaints remains a secret,” Chicago Sun-Times (July 17, 2007).
51

The City’s primary legal strategy in Monell policy cases has been to use any means at its disposal to avoid
discovery or litigation of its policies and practices, thereby averting any scrutiny of it practices. See Section I.B. and
Taylor, supra n. 19, for a fuller discussion of the City’s legal tactics.

22

probability is just 0.2% that reported abuse will lead to meaningful discipline of an officer who
has earned eleven or more abuse complaints in the last five years. 52 75% of the repeaters have
not received discipline of any kind whatsoever.
The City’s early warning programs demonstrate a dismal record of identifying repeat
abusers. While the City represents that it has long had in place an early warning system to
identify officers who may be engaged in problematic behavior, only 13% of the repeaters have
enrolled in its early warning programs. Nearly 90% have never even been flagged. There are
officers who have amassed more than 50 abuse complaints within five years who had not, as of
the time the data was obtained, been flagged by any of the CPD’s early warning programs, much
less disciplined in any fashion.
There were thirty-three Chicago police officers with 30 or more complaints between 2001
and 2006. Only one of the thousand plus charges of abuse against those thirty-three officers ever
led to meaningful discipline. Figure 5 illustrates the number of sustained charges against officers
with 30 complaints within the recent five year period. More than half of these officers with more
than 30 abuse complaints had never even been flagged for “early” intervention or monitoring.
Police officials have to work incredibly hard not to know about repeat offenders. While
the generation of this “repeater” data requires only a few key strokes from a police computer, no
one is looking at the data. The only reason that the repeater data exists is due to our discovery
requests in the Bond litigation and court orders to enforce those requests. No one in the CPD
ever sought to generate this information. The police officer in charge of the CPD complaint
database reported that neither the Superintendent nor any other police official had ever asked for
or received “repeater” data, identifying the officers who have earned the most abuse charges in
Chicago. While it is standard practice to run a background check of individuals in minor traffic
52

There were only 22 incidents of meaningful discipline out of 10,733 abuse charges against these “repeaters.”
23

stops, the acting Chief Administrator of the CPD’s Office of Professional Standards, a man with
a quarter century of experience investigating police abuse misconduct in Chicago, reported only
five or fewer occasions in which the CPD ever looked up the complaint history of an individual
officer as part of an official police misconduct investigation.
2.

CPD’s “Early” Interventions with Repeaters Are Ineffective.

CPD early warning interventions appear to have little if any effect on the behavior of
officers who have accumulated eleven or more misconduct charges within five years. Drawing
on the rare occasions when the City actually flagged a repeater for intervention, we conducted a
statistical analysis to assess the efficacy of the CPD’s early warning programs. We analyzed the
repeaters’ complaint patterns before and after the intervention to determine whether the CPD’s
interventions were making any difference in behavior.
Many of the repeaters collected more abuse complaints after having participated in the
City’s programs. Officers who were flagged by the City as needing intervention averaged 2.6
complaints per year after they completed their program or class. If their post-intervention
behavior remained consistent, they would average 13 abuse complaints over five years. Fourteen
officers averaged more than five complaints per year; four averaged more than seven and one
averaged 9.3 complaints per year. As Dr. Whitman observed, “[T]hese programs not only appear
ineffective but also appear not to produce results better than having no programs.” 53
Equally problematic, the Department’s early warning programs are not designed to
protect the public. The Police Commander who oversaw the CPD programs explained that the
motivation for the placement of officers in these programs is to preserve the Department’s
investment in these officers. While rehabilitation of officers is undoubtedly a worthy goal, the

53

Whitman, supra n. 31.

24

Department should also be concerned with identifying and weeding out officers who routinely
abuse the public. None of the CPD’s current or contemplated early warning programs, however,
incorporate any investigatory or disciplinary component. Indeed, the CPD has repeatedly
emphasized that the Department will not use its early identification system as an investigative or
disciplinary tool. 54 In other words, a pattern of abuse complaints cannot, under CPD procedures,
lead to an investigation into an officer’s conduct. Thus, if CPD were somehow successful in
identifying an individual or group of officers who were engaged in a pattern of brutality or
corruption, it would not deploy any resources to investigate those patterns, much less anything
resembling a sting or undercover operation that has proven effective in federal investigations of
police misconduct. 55 The CPD would simply offer the suspect brutal or corrupt officer
counseling or a class, putting him on notice that he needs to cover his tracks. While such
interventions may make sense in response to other problematic behavior (e.g., substance abuse,
attendance problems, complaints of verbal abuse, etc.), they are inappropriate to address
potential patterns of serious abuse or other criminal conduct. It makes little sense to offer
counseling to an officer that the CPD has reason to believe is stealing money, engaged in a drug
conspiracy, or beating innocent people. These patterns require aggressive, proactive
investigations, followed by meaningful action in meritorious cases.

54

See Andrew Hermann, “Computer system to track cops’ performance,” Chicago Sun-Times, (Apr. 15, 2006),
quoting police Superintendent Phil Cline that (early) warnings will not trigger disciplinary action but instead
counseling and perhaps additional training. As an aside, the long announced computer system to monitor police
performance referred to in the title has never been implemented.

55

See Jeff Coen and David Heinzmann, “Retrial bid pinned on cops’ misconduct,” Chicago Tribune (July 17, 2005);
Rudolph Bush, “Officer pleads guilty in fake raids,” Chicago Tribune, (Aug. 22, 2006), for examples of federal
investigations of police misconduct in Chicago.

25

3.

CPD Refuses to Examine Group Patterns

CPD complaint data confirm that police abuse is a highly concentrated and patterned
phenomenon. Abuse is not evenly (or randomly) distributed throughout the city. In addition to
individual patterns, there are patterns of abuse committed by groups of officers. And these
patterns don’t just involve particular groups of officers; they focus on particular victims. Abuse
is concentrated among certain officers who work together in particular units or teams and who
police certain parts of the City—generally lower-income African-American and Latino
communities.
Chicago police officers usually work as partners and with a team of officers who report to a
sergeant. In addition to the maxim about “birds of a feather,” good officers do not generally
want to work with officers who abuse their power. Moreover, it is difficult for a repeater to
perpetrate abuse without at least the silent complicity of his or her partner and other team
members. Yet, the CPD has no system for tracking abuse complaints among groups of officers.
Again, the Department and City officials choose not to know.
We analyzed the repeater data to see how various CPD units compared. 56 Two units, in
particular, jumped off the page as housing a disproportionate share of repeaters—the Special
Operations Section and Public Housing South Unit of the CPD. Both units policed
predominantly in low-income minority communities in Chicago.
Special Operations is an elite unit of officers deployed in “hot spots” or high crime,
economically depressed communities, such as Chicago public housing developments. The
Special Operations Section contained 64 repeaters who collectively attracted 1,343 abuse
56

The CPD documents containing the repeater lists and units of assignment (with names redacted) are available at
http://www.viewfromtheground.com/wp-content/media/police-docs/sustained-penalty-codes.pdf and
http://www.viewfromtheground.com/wp-content/media/police-docs/police-officers-more-than-10-crs-unit-175.pdf
(visited Aug. 14, 2007).

26

complaints over five years. It should have come as no surprise to the CPD that seven members
of the Special Operations Section were recently indicted for a years-long pattern of criminal
abuse and more are currently under investigation. 57 However, the conduct of the S.O.S. offices
did not come to light as a result of the analysis or identification of a pattern of abuse complaints
against them. 58 They were instead identified virtually by happenstance when members of the
local prosecutor’s office noticed that they were failing to come to court as witnesses in criminal
drug prosecutions. While officers have reported in confidence that the reputations of many of
the indicted officers were well known among Chicago police officers and supervisors for years,
no one took any action to stop them. And the CPD’s monitoring and disciplinary systems
ensured that their crimes would go unaddressed.
Public Housing South (PHS) officers policed public housing developments on the south
side of Chicago. Even though PHS was one of the smaller units of the CPD, consisting of a little
more than half the number of police officers as most geographically-bounded units (known in
Chicago as districts), it was home to 50 repeaters with 834 abuse complaints within the same five
year period. Those 50 repeaters made up 18% of the entire PHS unit.
To put this in perspective, we compared the number of PHS repeaters to the number of
repeaters assigned to the Second District, a large geographically-based police station that
contained a significant portion of the public housing communities that made up Public Housing
South. After eliminating the “repeaters” that transferred to the Second District when the PHS
unit was disbanded, there were 4 repeaters in the unit, making up 0.9% of the Second District.
PHS, therefore, was 20 times more likely to have repeaters than the Second District, even though

57

See David Heinzmann, Anglea Rozas, and Gary Washburn, “Elite cops rack up complaints,” Chicago Tribune,
(July 18, 2007).

27

the units policed many of the same communities. By comparison, most CPD units housed just
one to two repeaters in the entire unit. There is virtually no statistical chance that the Public
Housing (or Special Operations) repeater distributions were caused by random occurrence.
We then examined the abuse complaints against the group of five PHS officers who were
charged with the repeated abuse of Diane, described in the Introduction to this piece. There were
obvious patterns among the complaints levied against the team. Moreover, thirty-three entire
units of the CPD had fewer complaints among repeaters than the five officers accumulated
together. The probability that five officers selected at random would each have amassed the
number of complaints as the individual members of the Skullcap Crew was less than one in two
billion. And these five officers worked together. It was essentially impossible for such a
grouping of multiple complaints per officer to occur by chance. Yet, because the CPD did not
perform any pattern analysis by group, Diane’s charged tormentors were never identified or
stopped. Once again, it required the operation of the machinery of denial not to know about the
Skullcap Crew.
The necessity to track potential group patterns of abuse is old news to the CPD. These
patterns have been apparent in every major police scandal over the past few decades. It was
apparent in the infamous torture of African-Americans in the 1970’s and ‘80s by Commander
Burge and his fellow detectives at Area Two Headquarters—scores of torture complaints without
any attempt to connect the dots. It was also the subject of the Mayor’s Commission Report on
Police Integrity in Chicago, authored a decade ago, in the wake of the federal indictment and
later conviction of ten police officers for having engaged in years of corruption and abuse. The
Mayor’s Report observed that the police scandals that animated the study did not involve ten

58

See David Heinzmann, Todd Lightly, and Jeff Coen, “Feds join in probe of city’s elite police,” Chicago Tribune
(Aug. 16, 2007).

28

officers from ten different units randomly distributed throughout the City. The Austin/Gresham
scandals involved groups of officers from two gang and drug tactical units on the City’s south
and west sides. The Mayor’s Commission admonished that the CPD must monitor misconduct
complaints by groups if it hoped to avert similar patterns of abuse in the future. 59 Like Burge
and his crew, the Austin/Gresham officers attracted eye-popping numbers of complaints, but
were never identified by CPD’s disciplinary or supervisory systems. 60
Similar patterns hold for the later high profile federal prosecutions of a crime ring led by
Chicago police sergeant Joe Miedzenowski, whom the United States Attorney called “the most
corrupt cop” in Chicago history. 61 The team of officers led by Miedzenowski was never
identified by CPD’s procedures, prior to the federal sting. 62 Nor was a group of tactical officers
from the Englewood district on Chicago’s south side who are now doing federal prison time for
years of civilian abuse. They had similarly accumulated a shocking number of complaints
without any repercussions. 63

59

Report of the Commission on Police Integrity, p. 21, presented to the City of Chicago, Richard M. Daley
(November 1997), available at http://www.viewfromtheground.com/wp-content/media/kirby-letter/police-integrityreport-1997.pdf.
60

See David Jackson, “Problems plague Internal Affairs Division: Forbidden friendships between cops and
criminals,” Chicago Tribune (Oct. 24, 2000).

61

Todd Lightly and Matt O’Connor, “Rogue cop gets life, Drug ring leader called betrayer of society, honest
police,” Chicago Tribune (Jan. 23, 2003); Carol Marin and Frank Main, “Honored cop among 8 tied to thefts,”
Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 31, 2006).
62

Federal law enforcement agents attempted to report Miedzenowski’s abuse. Rather than punish Miedzenowski,
the CPD deployed its investigative machinery to retaliate against the agents for reporting the abuse. See Jeff Coen,
“$10 million dollar reward in cop case: ATF agents sued city, corrupt officer over retaliation, harassing,” Chicago
Tribune (Feb. 23, 2007).

63

Coen and Heinzmann, supra n. 55; Frank Main, “Crooked Cops’ Reign of Terror,” Chicago Sun-Times (Aug. 23,
2007).

29

Despite decades of known patterns among groups of officers, the CPD lacks any system
to address group patterns of abuse. 64
4.

The Costs of a Few Bad Apples

Make no mistake. A “few bad apples” can do untold damage to a community. It may
also be a gross misnomer. Indeed, as demonstrated by the figures above, there are far more than
a “few” bad apples clustered in certain neighborhoods. Indeed, fifty repeaters made up nearly 20
percent of the primary unit that policed public housing communities on Chicago’s south side.
Assuming that any officer, no matter what his or her outlook on the job, would prefer to work
with partners or team members who share that outlook, we can surmise that officers who engage
in routine abuse likewise seek out and often work together with like-minded officers. Together
these teams of “repeaters” and their enablers become the cruel and corrupt face of law
enforcement for an entire community. 65
Recall that just the first four indicted Special Operations officers alone were responsible
for hundreds of arrests. Consider the number of African-Americans wasting away in prison
based on the testimony and abusive practices of these four officers. Families made homeless by
One Strike evictions from public housing; 66 the human suffering from the brutality at the hands

64

The CPD has been praised for developing technology to track patterns of civilian crime. See Richard Pastore,
“Grand Award Winner Chicago Police Department Using I.T. to Fight Crime,” CIO (Feb. 15, 2004). The irony in
CPD’s recognition of the value of tracking patterns in civilian crime, but refusal to look at patterns of police
misconduct cannot be ignored.
65

Equally important, the abuse of a few undermine the effectiveness and jobs of the thousands of honorable officers
in Chicago who want nothing more than to protect and serve the people of Chicago. Public safety suffers as well.
See Tracey L. Meares, Norms, Legitimacy, and Law Enforcement, 79 Or.L.Rev. 391 (Summer 2000) (the
willingness of the public to conform to law depends in large part on public perception of governmental legitimacy,
respect, and courtesy vis-à-vis citizens); see also Jeffrey Fagan and Garth Davies, Street Stops and Broken
Windows: Terry, Race, and Disorder in New York City, 2 Fordham Urb. L.J. 457 (Dec. 2000) (abusive policing and
unfair procedures raise concerns about the legitimacy of the law, weakening public participation in the joint
enterprise of public safety).
66

Congress passed the so-called, “One Strike and You’re Out” policy as a part of the Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1988.
Under “One Strike,” a family living in public housing may be evicted if any member of the family or a guest is

30

of those four men; the loss of faith in the police and our criminal justice system; the costs of civil
lawsuits to taxpayers—the staggering costs of a few bad apples. The harm caused by these four
officers continues to accumulate. The county prosecutor recently dismissed more than 100
pending felony criminal cases that relied on the word of these officers. Additional felony
prosecutions will certainly need to be abandoned. 67
Now consider what it would feel like to live in a community in which 20 percent the
police are repeaters—a public housing community on the south side of Chicago.
III.

Concluding Questions: Apartheid Justice?
The numbers don’t lie. The statistical analysis described in Part II above demonstrates

that Chicago has a broken system for monitoring and disciplining its police officers, satisfying
each of the elements of Monell liability outlined in Part I. This analysis (1) demonstrates the
existence of deficient disciplinary and supervisory policies; (2) provides powerful evidence of
deliberate indifference—the affirmative efforts that policymakers must make not to know about
individual and group patterns of abuse and the egregious harm caused by such abuse; and (3)
supports several theories of causation, including demonstrating that minimally effective practices
would have identified and stopped the Skullcap Crew long before they had the chance to hurt
Diane, and that the City’s practices were so patently deficient that the officers in question were
encouraged in their patterns of abuse, knowing that they operated with impunity.
Author Jamie Kalven aptly described the CPD’s practices for investigating police abuse,
the police code of silence, and the Department’s supervisory and monitoring systems (including

arrested for drug-related activity. A conviction is not necessary. See Dept. of Housing and Urban Development v.
Rucker, 535 U.S. 125 (2002).
67

Maurice Possley, “When cops go bad, everyone pays,” Chicago Tribune (Oct. 22, 2006).

31

its refusal to examine patterns) collectively as a “regime of not knowing.” 68 As the numbers
detailed above illustrate plainly, “not knowing” about police abuse in Chicago requires a great
deal of active effort. It requires a deep commitment to the machinery of denial, including
denying incidents of brutality, turning a blind eye to patterns of abuse, refusing to look at data
that is just a key stroke or two away, and passively encouraging a culture of silence in the face of
abuse perpetrated by fellow officers.
Given the lengths to which the City has gone to not know what truths are revealed by its
own data, the statistical findings we outline above raise a series of fundamental questions. States
of impunity do not exist in every community in Chicago. Most neighborhood districts house few
if any repeaters. Just as our students have experienced a “different” Constitution on the ground
in Stateway, the data show that abuse complaints tend to be concentrated among officers who
work in lower income communities of color.
In exploring why this concentration exists, the impact of race is impossible to ignore, and
hard to discount. The people most impacted by these law enforcement policies in the context of
the War on Drugs are African-Americans and other members of minority communities. Thus, all
the effort invested in not knowing implies something more than simple indifference to Black and
Brown people who live in the inner city.
Does a different Constitution apply in inner city minority communities? And if so, what
are its implications? 69 Have we really assessed the true impact of this division—the true human

68

Kalven, supra n. 5.

69

See, e.g., David Cole, Race, Policing, and the Future of the Criminal Law, 26-SUM Hum. Rts. 2 (Summer 1999)
(“Absent race and class disparities, the privileged among us could not enjoy substantial constitutional protection of
our liberties as we do; and without those disparities, we could not afford the policy of mass incarceration that we
have pursued over the past two decades.”); see also Harcourt, supra n. 3 (discusses our deliberate decisions not to
know about the human costs of aggressive, discretionary policing strategies associated with the war on drugs: “The
most important thing in the public policy debates, then, is to decide with eyes wide open and brutal honesty, how

32

cost of abusive police officers operating with impunity within an African-American community?
How great is the loss of life, liberty, and property? The loss of hope and opportunity? The loss
of family? Loss of justice? Loss of faith in our political institutions? Does institutional denial
work to disguise the true nature of what we are doing from ourselves? 70

***
While we do not attempt in this article to answer each of these questions, we do assert
that whatever the answer, we cannot afford not to know. The Stateway Gardens community in
which we performed our work has now been razed. Like the physical structures that once
dominated miles of the State Street corridor, Diane and her former neighbors have also
“disappeared” from this place. And with the residents, so vanished the Skullcap Crew. Most of
its members, like many former Stateway residents, moved their base of operation to public
housing communities located elsewhere on the south side of Chicago. A newly named
community (“Park Boulevard”), with the new eye-catching developments and stores that are
popping up, attracting the more well-to-do, complete the erasure of all that came before. But like
the vibrant spirit of the Stateway Gardens community, these questions persist and demand our
attention.

much unconstitutionality we are prepared to live with—how many sexual batteries of black suspects we are willing
to perform. We get to decide.”).
70

Richard Wright asked many of these same questions in his classic novel, Native Son, set in the south side of
Chicago, more than 60 years ago.

33

Table 1. Meaningfully Sustained Rates of C.R. Investigations
from 2002 to 2004, by Type of Offense
2002-2004
Brutality
Illegal Search
Sexual Harassment, Abuse, Rape
Racial Abuse
Planting Evidence, False Arrest
Total

Meaningfully
Sustained
15
1
2
1
0
19

Total

MS Rate

5,357
3,837
111
183
661
10,149

0.0028
0.0003
0.0180
0.0055
0
0.0019

95% CI for Meaningful Sustained Total Rate (0.0019) = (0.001031, 0.002713)

Table 2. Sustained Rates of C.R. Investigations from 2002 to
2004, by Type of Offense
2002-2004
Brutality
Illegal Search
Sexual Harassment, Abuse, Rape
Racial Abuse
Planting Evidence, False Arrest
Total

Sustained
82
13
22
3
4
124

Total
5,357
3,837
111
183
661
10,149

95% CI for Sustained Total Rate (0.0122) = (0.0101, 0.0144)

SU Rate
0.0153
0.0034
0.1982
0.0164
0.0061
0.0122

Figure 1. Percent Sustained Complaints by Year:
Brutality
6

5

4.84
4.16

% Sustained

4

3.00

3

2.25
2

1.92

1
0.48
0
1999

2000

2001

2002

Year

2003

2004

Figure 2. Percent Sustained Complaints by Year:
Total
4

3.74
3.48

3.5
3

% Sustained

2.5
2.23
2
1.65
1.5

1.42

1
0.64
0.5
0
1999

2000

2001

2002

Year

2003

2004

Figure 3

Figure 4. Complaints Against
Chicago Police Officers, 2001-2006
12,000
10,387
10,000

Number of Officers

8,000
6,000
4,000
2,451
2,000
662
0
0 to 3

4 to 10
Number of Complaints

Note: Median is 1.5 complaints per officer

11 or more