Commentary: Chicago’s police must do more to protect human rights
When the city of Chicago rejected the vast majority of the recommendations of the Use of Force Working Group for reforming the policies of the Chicago Police Department, it once again chose to rely on the status quo rather than engage in meaningful reform.
CPD’s use of lethal force policies do not comply with the most basic standards under international human rights law aimed at protecting the fundamental rights each of us have by virtue of simply being human. These rights include the right to life, equality, liberty and security of person, freedom from torture and cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and freedom from discrimination. These rights belong to every individual, regardless of race, ethnicity, immigration status or gender, and are recognized under treaty commitments of the United States.
To protect these rights, a police use of lethal force directive must allow lethal force only when it is absolutely necessary as a last resort and in response to an immediate, particularized threat; proportional to the threat or resistance faced; sanctioned by law; and held meaningfully accountable through independent investigations and accessible, transparent record-keeping. The city’s policies failed to meet these standards, according to a recent report by the Global Human Rights Clinic at the University of Chicago Law School, of which I am the director and report co-author.
Despite its well-documented history of excessive use of force disproportionately directed against communities of color, the city continues to refuse to protect human rights and adopt best practices in its use of force directives. The Working Group recommendations ask the city of Chicago to do just that: restrict the use of Tasers to situations in which a person presents an immediate threat of serious bodily harm; ban chokeholds; prohibit force against peaceful protesters; restrict force against vulnerable people; define force to include intimidation tactics; require officers to document all significant uses of force, including when officers point their guns at a fellow human being; impose a duty to intervene when fellow officers use unnecessary force; and respect the dignity of people injured or killed by CPD. These recommendations, if implemented, would protect the basic human rights of the people of Chicago.
The city’s rejection of the recommendations on policing during protests is a notable and disturbing example. The Working Group recommended prohibiting use of force against peaceful protesters — specifically, that pepper spray, long-range acoustic devices and batons not be used against passively resisting protesters or to disperse crowds at protests. This recommendation is in line with human rights requirements, prohibiting disproportionate use of force, and falls squarely within best practices. Citing the need for “options” against peaceful protesters, the city refused to make this change.
Respect for life and human dignity, as well as the freedom to assemble and organize, require that officers not employ force against peaceful protesters even when the protest has not been arranged according to permit or notification systems. Use of force in response to peaceful assemblies suppresses free speech rights by intimidating and harming protesters. In many documented cases around the world, it has resulted in grave injury, permanent disability and even death of protesters.
Letters: City, CPD’s rejection of reforms is an outrage »
Notably, governments that have suppressed the right to protest often use the distinction between “legitimate” and “illegitimate” protests to justify police use of force. For example, Chile’s notification system contains numerous requirements for “authorized” protests, deviation from which has been used to justify escalation of force resulting in deaths and serious injury to protesters. In contrast, jurisdictions such as Canada that have sought to protect the right to protest have opted to keep officers out of crowd-control equipment and engage with protesters through community liaison officers to ensure the safety of all involved.
The Working Group has asked CPD to take a different approach to policing, one that recognizes and protects the basic human rights of Chicagoans. The Police Service of Northern Ireland provides a useful model for meaningful reform in police engagement with protests. In Northern Ireland, by law, the police’s duty to protect human rights of protesters is on an equal level with its duty to ensure safety and security. According to police leadership, these reforms have helped to shift police officers' mentality toward protests from one of “control and stop” to “facilitation,” and to build a human-rights-centered institutional culture.
This past June, the United Nations Human Rights Council called on all governments, at the national, state and city levels, “to look into their manuals and guidelines used for training law enforcement officers with a view to identifying the proportionality of measures in the handling of suspects and other persons in custody,” particularly with respect to the treatment of Africans and people of African descent.
By Claudia Flores
Claudia Flores is the director of the Global Human Rights Clinic and associate clinical professor of law at the University of Chicago Law School.
This article was originally posted on Chicago Tribune.