With CPD reform seeing only slow progress, bills for consent decree monitor pile up

As the scope of the consent decree that governs Chicago’s public safety reforms has grown, so, too, has the city’s legal tab.

From 2019 through 2023 — the first five years of the consent decree — the independent monitoring team responsible for assessing compliance billed the city 35% more than was initially quoted. The nearly $5 million in extra bills came while the Chicago Police Department continued its slow pace toward compliance, a Tribune data analysis found.

Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor and partner at the law firm ArentFox Schiff, was selected in 2019 to lead the independent monitoring team. Before she was chosen, in a proposal submitted to the city and the Illinois attorney general’s office, the law firm said the first five years of monitoring would cost city taxpayers $13,990,700.

In that time, ArentFox Schiff actually billed the city $18,979,213.47, according to a review of submitted invoices.

More than half of that sum — about $11 million — was to pay for work performed by Hickey and other ArentFox Schiff attorneys, whose rates can exceed $400 per hour. The other $8 million was needed to cover other charges and disbursements owed to other subject matter experts contracted by the monitoring team, the documents show.

Billing made public by the monitoring team also show ArentFox Schiff billed the city another $3,145,700.99 in the first seven months of 2024.

At last check, CPD was within operational compliance with 9% of its consent decree obligations. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, Office of Inspector General and Chicago Police Board have largely adhered to their own consent decree mandates.

Twice a year, the independent monitoring team publishes a review of the agencies’ compliance. During the consent decree’s infancy, CPD was graded on just 215 “monitorable” paragraphs. The forthcoming report, to be released in the first half of 2025, will assess more than 600 paragraphs.

What’s more, the range of the consent decree has grown since it was first entered in 2019, and it now covers search warrants and investigatory stop reports. Traffic stops may soon be added, too.

“The workload increases with each level of compliance,” Laura McElroy, a spokesperson for the independent monitoring team, told the Tribune.

“It’s a better police department,” McElroy added. “When you’re policing in a constitutional manner, you’re saving tax dollars.”

The monitoring team also conducted an unplanned review of CPD’s response to the riots and unrest of summer 2020, and the team was also involved in the preparation for the 2024 Democratic National Convention.

Despite the initial five-year cost projections, the consent decree itself contains a carve-out that allows for the IMT’s annual budget to change as needed.

“The Parties recognize the importance of ensuring that the fees and costs borne by the City are reasonable,” paragraph 618 of the consent decree reads. “… the Court may revise the Monitor’s annual budget consistent with the terms of this Agreement if it finds that the increase is necessary for the Monitor to fulfill its duties under the Agreement and the increase is not due to a failure in planning, budgeting, or performance by the Monitor.”

In 2022, CPD’s compliance deadline was extended to 2027.

In years past, consent decree monitoring teams reportedly have cost most municipalities between $800,000 and $2 million per year, depending on the size of a city, its police department and the scope of reforms.

In 2012, New Orleans budgeted $1 million for its consent decree monitoring team, according to media reports there. More recently, Minneapolis capped monitoring spending at $1.5 million annually.

Los Angeles entered into a consent decree in 2001, and research published by Harvard University in 2009 found that “simply monitoring the City’s compliance has cost tens of millions of dollars.”

A memo from the U.S. Department of Justice, released in 2021, urged monitoring teams to be wary of even the appearance of negligent spending.

“Though the cost of a monitorship ultimately depends on how swiftly a jurisdiction comes into compliance, monitorships must nonetheless be designed and administered with awareness that every dollar spent on a monitorship is a dollar that cannot be spent on other policy priorities,” the memo stated.

McElroy said the 2025 budget for Chicago’s IMT will be $4.74 million. Chicago’s consent decree is believed to be the largest ever entered.

The budget for the team, though, is a drop in the bucket when compared with the city’s yearly spending on the Chicago Police Department, which in 2025 will top $2 billion. Hickey’s bill to the city also doesn’t come close to the amount approved annually by the Chicago City Council to settle lawsuits that stem from alleged CPD officer wrongdoing.

In 2023, records show, the City Council approved more than $55 million in settlement payments related to CPD misconduct lawsuits.

CPD’s overall compliance with the consent decree — spurred by the 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a former CPD officer — again ticked up in the first six months of 2024, according to the IMT’s latest assessment report, released in November.

CPD was found to be at some level of compliance with 504 of the 552 “monitorable” paragraphs in the consent decree, Hickey and company found. The department now is at full compliance with 9% of its requirements, up from 7% in the previous monitoring period. Secondary compliance was reached in 37% of monitorable paragraphs in the first half of this year, up from 35% in the last period.

Preliminary compliance, though, fell from 46% in the last monitoring period of 2023 to 45% in the first period of 2024, the monitoring team found.

Federal consent decrees — and the monitoring teams assigned to them — have long drawn ire from police officers and their unions. The Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the union representing rank-and-file CPD officers, is no different.

During a consent decree status hearing earlier this month, FOP President John Catanzara called for greater scrutiny of the IMT’s spending.

“I’m just urging the court to have a little more consideration about the taxpayers’ dollars being spent here,” Catanzara told Hickey and Rebecca Pallmeyer, the chief judge of the Northern District of Illinois who oversees the monitoring team and consent decree.

“I would hope the attorney general would look into it, too,” Catanzara added. “This is not supposed to be a blank checkbook for the monitoring team to just come and go and travel and eat at the taxpayers’ expense, and just shuffle a report on without anything really being done.”