Yahoo Finance City Council to vote on police arbitration again after committee opposes private disciplinary hearings
The future of police discipline in Chicago is scheduled for a City Council vote for the third time Wednesday after a committee voted to reject a Fraternal Order of Police contract measure that would allow officers accused of serious misconduct to have their disciplinary cases heard behind closed doors.
The committee’s 10-5 vote tees up another chapter in the back and forth between City Hall and the union over the contract provision that would let officers seek a ruling in private from an independent arbitrator rather than through the public Chicago Police Board.
The high stakes for the police misconduct process — and potentially for Chicago taxpayers — were underscored last week, when the full City Council deferred voting on the contract measure, instead sending it back to committee.
That unexpected move caused Chicago FOP President John Catanzara to stand up in the City Council chambers and shout, “Get your checkbooks ready,” an apparent nod to what he said will be an expensive court fight over the dispute.
Catanzara repeated the phrase Tuesday as he spoke during a public comment period and criticized committee chair Ald. Michael Rodriguez, 22nd, for not inviting him to join the panel that testified at the meeting.
“Our path is very clear going forward,” Catanzara said. “We are literally going to sue the hell out of this body.”
Several aldermen backing the private disciplinary hearings echoed Cantazara, calling the committee unfair for not including the FOP’s viewpoint and wrong for making the city vulnerable to lawsuits.
“I believe in transparency. I believe in openness. But the law is a law,” said Ald. Anthony Beale, 9th. “This is a political stunt.”
But Beale’s position is far from universal.
Kyle Cooper, president of the Police Board, and Anthony Driver Jr., president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, urged aldermen to vote down the arbitration process.
And city attorneys on Tuesday contradicted arbitrator Edwin Benn, who set off the controversy last year when he awarded officers accused of misconduct the choice to remove their cases from the Police Board’s docket and instead have them decided privately by an outside third party.
Benn has said it’s futile for the council to try to fight his decision.
But the attorneys said the city still has a chance at significantly altering the disciplinary process the contract creates.
While it’s unclear whether the aldermen opposed to the private disciplinary hearings will get their way even if they win the vote Wednesday, they have a responsibility to try, Rodriguez said after the hearing.
“The court will probably ultimately decide,” he said. “But we’re going to go to each one of these processes and fight for Chicagoans.”
The conflict began when Benn first ruled on the issue as part of a dispute during broader contact negotiations between the city and the FOP.
Aldermen narrowly voted down the contract’s arbitration language in December by a vote of 33-17, sending their decision back to Benn. That vote required a three-fifths majority to concur with the committee’s rejection, as does Wednesday’s.
That same meeting, the council approved an economic package giving rank-and-file officers 20% raises over four years.
Benn rejected the decision, saying the vote amounted to a violation of the council’s oath of office that could open the city up to expensive litigation and warning the city “cannot prevail” if the matter ends up in court.
“Please don’t throw away potentially large sums of taxpayer money that could be used better elsewhere than on a legal fight you cannot win, which you are undertaking to make a point that you have already made,” he said.
