CHICAGO (WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Former Seattle Police Chief Kathleen O’Toole, a co-author of a recent 21st Century Policing Solutions study about building public trust in policing, said true community policing is needed in any city’s effort to restore that trust.
O’Toole said that doesn’t simply mean naming one group of officers “community police.” Robert Boik, who previously led Chicago’s office of Constitutional Policing, couldn’t agree more.
“One of the things that the report really highlights is this need to shift as many resources as possible as close to the community as possible,” Boik said. “That doesn’t mean that every specialized unit is disbanded, though that’s probably a great place to start, in terms of looking at where to shift resources closest to the community.”
Earning the trust of everyday citizens and police officers is something that police departments around the nation have to be committed to, O’Toole said.
“In order to have a police service that is considered legitimate by the community, it should reflect the community it serves,” O’Toole said. “Wherever I’ve been in the world — I’ve worked in the peace process in Northern Ireland, I’ve worked in Boston, Seattle — wherever I’ve worked, I’ve recognized that it’s so important to have the police service to reflect the community.”
O'Toole said she’s aware some police unions and others have resisted police reforms, but she added that surveys show the majority of officers will accept it, under the right conditions.
“Good police officers are not intimidated by fair and well-structured accountability systems, so I think that it’s just a matter of getting those accountability systems right,” she said.
Chicago is one of several cities that are operating under federally monitored consent decrees because of past civil rights issues. O’Toole said that’s not a bad thing.
“It’s something that can be a wonderful tool, a wonderful foundation for reform,” she said. “If a department doesn’t have a consent decree as a roadmap then the police chief should do an assessment of the organization and develop a similar roadmap.”
Chicago is still struggling to comply with its own consent decree. O’Toole said effective reform systems need to be clear, consistent and fair.
Good cops, she added, want bad cops held accountable.
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