NAVY PIER — The Chicago Police Department grew by 108 officers Thursday in what was touted by city officials as one of the largest graduating classes from the police training academy since Mayor Rahm Emanuel took office six years ago.
But as those rookies are assigned to work with experienced officers to learn how to patrol Chicago's streets, questions raised by federal investigators remain about whether they will learn how to patrol Chicago's streets "lawfully and effectively."
A 161-page report by the Department of Justice released Jan. 13 concluded that the department's field training program — designed to complete the training of new officers once they leave the academy — is a "hot mess" that "actively undermines, rather than reinforces, constitutional policing."
Federal investigators called on the department to make "significant changes to the field training program" which "are necessary to ensure [probationary police officers] are adequately prepared to police constitutionally and safely."
Police Supt. Eddie Johnson acknowledged that the department's field training program needed to be improved, a process that he said he began when he took over as top cop nearly a year ago.
"We are encouraging the best and the brightest of the department" to become a field training officers, Johnson said after the ceremony. "It is one of the most important positions."
While field training programs are designed to provide new officers with "hands-on mentorship, training and evaluation," the Chicago Police Department's effort "suffers from longstanding systemic deficiencies that have disabled the program's ability to serve this function," according to the report.
In addition, the field training program "is not set up to distinguish capable recruits from ill-suited ones," according to the report.
There are not enough officers in the program, federal investigators found, which forces as many as three rookie officers to be assigned to one experienced officer. That is unacceptable, according to federal officials.
In addition, field training officers must be better trained. Only recently was a five-week course established for participants in the program, federal investigators found.
More troubling, the federal report found, was that field training officers frequently tell rookie police officers to "throw out" what they learned in the academy because they will show the new officers how to "be the police."
This "unwillingness to reinforce academy training, whether because they accurately judge it to be inadequate or because they do not respect CPD's core values, sends a perilous message to recruits and undermines any improved polices or procedures intended to inculcate a culture of respectful and constitutional policing," according to the federal report.
Those changes must include appointing only qualified officers to train rookie police officers — rather than appointing any officer who volunteers — and to make the position of field training officer more lucrative and desirable for ambitious officers. Now it is a "road to nowhere," according to the report.
Field training officers must be evaluated to ensure that they are teaching rookie officers lawful techniques, federal investigators found — noting that problems with the way the program is structured date back nearly a decade.
While federal investigators praised city officials for starting to address problems with the field training program, those "reforms are in the initial stages and CPD has no concrete plan for how, or by when, these goals will be accomplished," according to the report.
New officers waiting for a position in the field training program will no longer be assigned to patrol so-called areas of high crime to increase police visibility, Johnson said.
That practice was "dangerous, and demonstrates CPD's disregard of the training necessary for new officers to do their jobs safely, effectively and lawfully," according to the federal report.
Rookie officers will now only patrol if accompanied by experienced officers, Johnson said.
Eighty-five officers became field training officers Thursday as part of the graduation ceremonies.
Two of those newly promoted officers were involved in fatal shootings that prompted lawsuits that city officials settled for millions of dollars, as first reported by the Tribune.
In 2011, Officer Raoul Mosqueda fatally shot Darius Pinex as he tried to drive away from a traffic stop. In December, the City Council agreed to pay his family $2.34 million to settle wrongful death claims.
In 2010, Michael St. Clair II shot William Hope Jr. during a traffic stop. The city paid Hope's family approximately $4.6 million to settle their lawsuit.
Johnson said the allegations against those officers are being investigated, but department rules prohibit officials from blocking promotions before wrongdoing is established.
The federal investigation was also highly critical of the five months of training prospective police officers in Chicago receive in the academy. Officers graduate "unprepared to police lawfully and effectively," according to the report.
However, Johnson said the city could not afford to stop hiring officers while the academy is reformed.
"The crime isn't going to take a moratorium," Johnson said. "We got to attack this crime. It is not going to wait for us to do things three or four years from now. We have to continue that fight. We will tweak things and improve them until we get it right."
The mayor has repeatedly pledged to implement the reforms suggested by the U.S. Department of Justice and negotiate a legally binding agreement — known as a consent decree — to ensure that reforms are implemented under the authority of a federal judge.
In his remarks to the new officers, Johnson acknowledged that the new officers were joining the force during a fraught time not only because of the findings of the Department of Justice but also as a yearlong surge of violence shows no sign of slowing down.
Johnson asked the new officers to act with "professionalism, respect and trust" every time they interact with members of the public.
Every officer should imagine the most important person in their life dealing with the police, and ask themselves whether they want that experience to be "courteous or uncomfortable," Johnson said. They should strive to treat everyone they encounter as they would wish their loved one to be treated by police, he added.
In every interaction with a member of the public, there will be a "golden moment to build someone's faith in our department," Johnson said.
Emanuel praised the diversity of the new police officers, noting that the reflected Chicago's strength as the "most American of America's cities."
The graduating class was 78 percent male and 57 percent nonwhite, city officials said.
Officer Malgorzata Rivera, who received the academy's highest academic award and delivered the graduation speech at the ceremony Thursday, is a Polish immigrant, Emanuel said.
In her speech, Rivera acknowledged that she and her classmates knew they were joining the department at a difficult time, but she said her training had prepared her to face those challenges.
"We were not discouraged," by news reports about police brutality, Rivera said. "We trained harder and learned as much as possible."
However, Rivera said images "of officers who abused their authority enraged and shamed us" and vowed to "be the change," as the department's marketing slogan encourages prospective officers.
In the next two years, Emanuel has promised to add 970 positions to the Police Department in the next two years: 516 police officers, 200 detectives, 112 sergeants, 50 lieutenants and 92 field training officers. The department also will fill 500 vacant positions.
