Civil Rights & Police Accountability Clinic—Significant Achievements for 2023-24
Our Clinic students continue to make a difference in the community, while learning all that it means to be a lawyer.
The Federal Civil Rights Consent Decree Governing the Chicago Police Department
Years of advocacy by Clinic students and our clients resulted in the 2019 federal civil rights Consent Decree that seeks to remedy the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD’s) pattern and practice of excessive and discriminatory violence targeted disproportionately against Black people. Highlights from our Consent Decree work during the 2023-24 academic year include: (1) our success in remedying CPD’s practice of violent, dehumanizing, and discriminatory home raids that have targeted and traumatized Black and Brown children and families in Chicago; (2) the relief that we won in emergency proceedings that we initiated to prevent unlawful mass arrests and First Amendment violations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago; (3) our progress toward remedying racially discriminatory practices of targeting Black people for unlawful stop-and-frisks and pretextual traffic stops; and (4) advocacy for critical modifications to strengthen and improve the Decree.
Ending Illegal and Discriminatory Home Raids
Clinic students and our community-based clients won a complete overhaul of the policies that govern residential search warrants in Chicago in months-long court supervised multi-party negotiations, briefs, and court proceedings. CPD’s new policies will seek to restrict home raids to circumstances in which they are necessary and forbid raids whenever the potential harms outweigh the expected benefits. CPD will be required to develop a written plan for the execution of every residential warrant to minimize the harm, trauma, and intrusion to families and their homes. Officers will be evaluated for their success in mitigating harm when executing search warrants. The new policies will protect children and vulnerable people from unnecessary harm, including requiring police to schedule raids at times when they are least likely to be home. They ban high-risk nighttime raids and limit no-knock warrants to circumstances in which people’s lives and physical safety are in jeopardy. They prohibit police from leaving families with broken doors and locks vulnerable to crime. And they will require police to thoroughly document and publicly report on each raid to enhance transparency and accountability. In addition, we won measures that will prevent wrong raids, including requiring CPD to independently investigate and corroborate tips, maintain records of any instance in which the informant provided false or inaccurate information, and provide the prosecutor and court with any information that may undermine the credibility of the informant and tip before seeking a warrant. The proposed new policies will soon be subject to public review and comment in anticipation of full implementation. The public and judicial scrutiny that we brought to bear during our enforcement proceedings has already resulted in a tenfold reduction of home raids and prevented the traumatization of thousands of children.
Protecting First Amendment Rights to Protest and the DNC
In spring 2023, we learned that the CPD intended to implement a new policy to facilitate mass arrests during protests and other First Amendment activities in anticipation of the Democratic National Convention. The proposed new policy would have eviscerated relief that we had won in 2021 that fundamentally transformed Chicago police policies governing the policing of First Amendment activities—relief that requires CPD to protect the rights of people to engage in public protest and dissent rather than to stamp out protests. The Clinic filed an emergency enforcement action to enjoin the proposed mass arrest policy. In the proceedings that followed, we succeeded in preventing the parts of the policy that threatened people’s First Amendment rights from taking effect. The First Amendment policy that we had won in 2021 continues to govern during the DNC and all public demonstrations now and in the future. For example, the revised policy on mass arrests will now prohibit police from arresting people engaged in First Amendment conduct for minor offenses unless they pose an immediate threat to the physical safety or property of others. It also explicitly bans retaliation against people for exercising their First Amendment rights.
Strengthening the Consent Decree and Advancing Racial Justice
Having won our community-based clients’ historic power to enforce the Decree, Clinic students continue to fight to strengthen the Decree to make our clients—people who have been most impacted by CPD’s civil rights violations—full and equal partners in the process. As a result of our advocacy, throughout the 2023-24 academic year, the federal court ordered the City to engage with community representatives when developing policies, procedures, and training—including the recent mass arrests policy that the CPD had initially sought to impose without any meaningful community engagement. Clinic students participated in five full-day public hearings in federal court focusing on potential modifications to the Decree and issues of racial justice. Students presented powerful testimony and legal memoranda that advocated for Consent Decree revisions that (a) require de-escalation and reductions in CPD violence; (b) divert people from the criminal legal system through alternatives to arrest and the elimination of unnecessary negative interactions with police; (c) develop non-criminal responses to people experiencing mental health crises (we won implementation of an historic pilot program on this); (d) prohibit police from pointing guns at people unless they present an immediate threat to serious injury or death to another person; (e) require officers to file a written report each time they point a gun at a community member; (f) provide services to survivors of CPD violence and their family members; and (g) address barriers to police accountability that were erected in the new collective bargaining agreements with the unions representing Chicago police officers. We also succeeded in subjecting CPD’s racially discriminatory stop-and-frisk practices to federal court supervision.
The court is currently deciding whether to also subject CPD traffic stops to federal court oversight under the Consent Decree, as traffic stops have become a flashpoint for unnecessary police violence in Chicago as they have skyrocketed in Black and Brown communities. Eighty-five percent of the instances in which Chicago police used force in traffic stops have been directed at Black people. We presented testimony and briefs that seek to outlaw CPD’s practice of using pretextual stops to harass Black and Brown people, disband police tactical units that have been responsible for unnecessary and disproportionate violence directed toward Black and Brown people, and limit CPD traffic stops to violations that pose genuine threats to public safety.
Ending Incommunicado Detention—A Second Consent Decree
The Clinic continues to advance its historic work in making real the fifty-eight-year-old promise of Miranda v. Arizona in Chicago. Tyler Lawson, ’24, and Katherine Stanton, ’25, led a team of Clinic students that did outstanding advocacy work with our community-based clients and the Office of the Cook County Public Defender after having won a second consent decree that went into effect in February 2023 in Cook County Circuit Court—a decree that is designed to end the decades-long practice of incommunicado detention in CPD stations that has facilitated torture, coerced confessions, and wrongful convictions. Clinic students produced an empirical report with Professor Kyle Rozema that analyzed data from every arrest in Chicago that took place during the first year of the Decree. The Report found ninety-nine percent of people in CPD custody did not access an attorney and more than half of the people most vulnerable to interrogation did not get prompt access to a phone. Inspections by Clinic students inside Chicago police stations revealed that legible signs required by the Consent Decree that inform people in custody of their rights under the Decree and the Public Defender’s free 24-hour hotline number for legal assistance were routinely missing in the places where CPD detains people who may be subject to interrogation. Clinic students also documented that contrary to the Decree, many of the visiting rooms that CPD is required to maintain in every police station did not allow for private and confidential meetings between people in custody and their attorneys. The Clinic presented the Report and our findings to the court. In response, the Honorable Judge Neil H. Cohen directed CPD to work with the Clinic to ensure the installation of appropriate signs and remedy the documented deficiencies with respect to privacy. We are administering a survey to people at their first court appearance to provide the court with additional information about the reasons why people in CPD custody have not promptly accessed phones and counsel. Our preliminary findings indicate that CPD has failed to offer phones or provided the Public Defender’s 24-hour number to people subject to police interrogation. A quarter of the people surveyed report that CPD interrogated them without access to counsel. In addition, Clinic students have engaged in targeted outreach to people at risk of arrest and criminal defense attorneys in Chicago, created fantastic flyers, social media, and written material to educate people about their rights under the Decree, and developed a long-form interview tool to gain additional insight about barriers to access to counsel and phones.
Individual Cases
While we fight for systemic change, the Clinic has continued its tradition of excellence in serving individuals and families in need.
Clinic students won a stage three post-conviction hearing with our client Christopher Ellis before the Honorable Carol Howard in Cook County Circuit Court that can result in vacating Mr. Ellis’s conviction. Two Chicago police officers pulled Mr. Ellis out of his car, beat and tased him, and then falsely accused Mr. Ellis of aggravated battery against the police officers to cover up their abuse. Mr. Ellis was convicted and sentenced to six years in prison. Based on a phenomenal set of briefs written by Clinic students Hannah V.L. George, ’24, and Becky Marvin, ’24, and Professor Herschella Conyers’ students Amara Shaikh, ’24, and Liam Grah, ’25, in the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Clinic and Becky Marvin’s outstanding oral argument, Judge Howard found that the Clinic has made a substantial showing of Mr. Ellis’s innocence and the ineffective assistance of his trial counsel. Judge Howard offered the highest praise to the students’ work. We expect Mr. Ellis’s case to go to trial in the fall.
Erin Yonchak,’24, presented Clifton Young’s case before the Illinois Torture and Inquiry Relief Commission. Erin’s presentation and supporting written memorandum were nothing short of superb. As a result of Erin’s scrupulous investigation, factual and legal determinations, and recommendations, the Torture Commission found credible evidence that Mr. Young was tortured by Chicago police and ordered a full evidentiary hearing in Cook County Circuit Court that may result in his freedom after having served more than twenty years in prison.
Amrita Krishnan, ’25, is investigating a novel claim of police torture before the Illinois Torture Commission that is based on Chicago police detectives’ exploitation of a person’s withdrawal symptoms from heroin and denial of medical treatment to obtain a confession. This is the first of a series of claims of torture before the Commission based on deliberate indifference to a person in custody’s severe physical and psychological pain associated with drug withdrawal to leverage an incriminating statement. Amrita’s legal and medical research into whether and under what circumstances drug withdrawal can form a basis for a torture claim is precedential. It has the power to establish the governing legal standards in Illinois for assessing torture claims involving withdrawal.
Gabbie Zook, ’24, Hannah V.L. George, ’24, and Becky Marvin, ’24, led an investigation with a client who was repeatedly sexually assaulted by a Chicago police officer in public housing when she was a mere teenager. The Clinic helped to connect our client with the Chicago Torture Justice Center to provide her with critical support as she continues to work through her trauma from the repeated assaults. We face a myriad of legal challenges because of the years that have passed since the assaults and Illinois law that protects municipalities from liability when police officers abuse their state power to sexually assault people, but we remain committed to supporting our client in her fight for a measure of justice and healing. Our students’ work has shined a light on a path forward.
Policy Projects
Chicago Police Transparency
Natalie Cohn-Aronoff, ’24, and Amber Hunter, ’25, have led a critical project to prevent the return to a state of police impunity in Chicago. The Clinic is responding to the Fraternal Order of Police’s (FOP’s) efforts to shroud in secrecy the adjudication of cases in which Chicago police officers have been found to have committed the most serious forms of misconduct to warrant firing or suspension of more than a year. After the FOP won an arbitration award that sought to end a sixty-year history of public hearings before a neutral body to be replaced by secret hearings behind closed doors by a handful of handpicked arbitrators who have a long track record of protecting Chicago police officers from accountability, the Clinic began work with a coalition of community, civil rights, and good government groups organized to stop the FOP from turning back the clock on our progress. We drafted press releases and an op-ed that lifted the threat of Chicago police impunity to visibility. We drafted policy and legal material for City Council to provide the basis for challenging the arbitrator’s award. We provided testimony in public hearings that was widely cited in the media. Our work supporting the organization of community members persuaded the Mayor and City Council to reject the Arbitrator’s award by a 3/5 vote in City Council and challenge the award in court. The Cook County Circuit Court then ruled that the Arbitrator’s award violated fundamental state policy in Chicago police transparency and accountability and ordered that the Chicago police disciplinary cases must remain open to the public. The FOP has filed a notice of appeal. A team of Clinic students led by Ben Postone, ’24, is drafting an amicus brief before the Illinois Court of Appeals on behalf of the broad community-based coalition that will explain the nature and strength of the public interest at stake.
At the same time, Clinic students have conducted extensive research and consulted experts in labor law to draft proposed state legislation that requires the public adjudication of Chicago police misconduct cases. The Clinic is collaborating with stakeholders to devise a path to establish law that will guarantee public transparency on CPD misconduct now and in the future. The Clinic has also drafted potential municipal legislation that would enhance Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s (COPA’s) efforts to promote greater transparency and accountability by enabling COPA to promptly publicly release summaries of completed misconduct investigations, prosecute disciplinary proceedings that result from COPA investigations, and restrict the Police Department’s power to overturn misconduct findings only for clear error and disciplinary recommendations only for abuse of discretion.
Sam Hallam, ’25, and Katherine Stanton, ’25, are leading efforts to remedy other aspects of FOP’s new collective bargaining contract that thwart police accountability and transparency in Chicago, including a provision that prohibits the videotaping of conversations between officers and supervisors after a police officer shoots a community member. The recording and use of such conversations are critical tools to remedy the longstanding code of silence in the CPD—a code that has encouraged officers to manufacture a common narrative when an officer shoots or kills a person or is otherwise accused of misconduct.
Medical-Legal Partnership with University of Chicago Trauma Center
Rosie Gruen, ’25, and Sam Hallam, ’25, have led a medical-legal project that we launched last year with the Trauma Center at the University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC) and pro bono attorneys from the Akerman law firm to prevent police from to violating patient civil rights and medical privacy and interfering with critical medical care. We formed this partnership to address reports from the doctors and staff at the Medical Center of police abuse of patients who have suffered gunshot injuries; coercive interrogations of people who are being treated for serious injuries; interference with medical care and patient autonomy over medical decisions; searches and seizures of patients’ personal property; invasions of patient privacy and personal health information; shackling and physical abuse of patients; and forcing medical personal to perform invasive tests on patients. The Clinic team has been conducting and working to publish empirical research on interactions between police and professionals and staff at the Medical Center and patients and their family members. In addition to the conducting approximately fifty long-form interviews, the Clinic has researched the intersection of property law, criminal law and procedure, privacy law, constitutional law, and administrative regulations and practices in medical settings around the United States. Students have also consulted with national medical and legal experts. Based upon our research, the Clinic developed a first draft of recommended UCMC policies for internal feedback to prevent ongoing civil rights violations and interference with patient care. Our research has also taught us that despite similar civil rights violations in hospital settings and interference by law enforcement with medical treatment, there is a lack of model policies or established best practices on the subject. We are hopeful that the publication of our research and the policies that we develop at UCMC will serve as a model for hospitals throughout the country and prevent civil and human rights violations and improve health outcomes in the Trauma Center and beyond.
Partnership with the Cook County Public Defender and Zealous
We also built on our partnership with the Cook County Public Defender’s Office and Zealous, a national non-profit dedicated to supporting public defender offices, to identify and address systemic issues in the criminal legal system that deprive clients of the Public Defender and Clinic access to justice. Darius Diamond, ’24, Gabbie Zook, ’24, and Katherine Stanton, ’25, have led our efforts on this project. This year, our focus has been to support the Public Defender’s work to create two holistic community defender offices in Chicago—the first is scheduled to open this fall in the Roseland community on Chicago’s South Side. The second will be in the Austin community on the West Side. Clinic students have been on the ground floor in designing the offices and services with community members, public defenders, and people in jail. We are developing plans for Clinic students to maintain a regular presence in the Community Defender Offices to work with public defenders and their clients in addressing police accountability and other systemic barriers to justice.
In addition, students are working with public defenders in Cook County to achieve greater independence from county prosecutors and judges when advocating with their clients to change and enjoin laws, policies and practices that impair the ability of public defenders to represent their clients and to improve the criminal legal system. For example, Clinic students are currently working with the Public Defender to explore ways to change the law to give the Public Defender the power to retain counsel to bring affirmative civil rights litigation.