Progress Illinois

In the past two weeks, we've written repeatedly about the refusal by Mayor Daley and Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis to hand over the list of "repeat offender" police officers to lawyers suing the city over excessive force allegations.  On Wednesday, a "visibly angry" federal Judge Robert Gettleman found Weis in contempt of court for ignoring an order to produce the list of officers who've received five or more citizen complaints.  Gettleman ordered Weis to appear in court on Monday and face questioning from both the judge himself and the lawyers seeking the documents.  Now the Sun-Times is reporting that Weis caved and has agreed to disclose the list rather than face Gettleman's wrath.

But this doesn't mean we'll be seeing the names anytime soon.  

A separate petition currently before the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals is part of an effort to release a shorter list to the public -- this one containing those officers with ten or more complaints.  That list originally surfaced several years ago during a different civil rights case against the Chicago Police Department (Bond v. Utrerus) and was provided to the alleged victim's lawyers under a "protective order."  After the case was settled, a third party intervened seeking access to the list and 28 Chicago aldermen ultimately signed on to his request.  (Full disclosure: The intervenor was my father, Jamie Kalven.)  U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow ruled in favor of the motion, but the city appealed, sending the matter to the Seventh Circuit, where it is still pending. 

In this more recent case (Moore v. Smith), the city refused to do what it had agreed to in Bond and countless other civil rights case -- give the plaintiff's counsel the list under protective order.  That distinction got lost in the sparse media coverage, but it's crucial.  In effect, the city tried to expand government secrecy here. 

As the following excerpt from the March 4 hearing shows, Gettleman was incredulous: 

GETTLEMAN: We have the chief law enforcement officer of the City of Chicago basically picking and choosing the orders of the federal court that he will obey or disobey, and he's chosen to disobey this order. I believe he is in direct contempt of the Court. It's not even a rule to show cause situation, because he has told me he will not obey the order of the Court to turn over these documents, which as Mr. Taylor points out are very much or identical to the type of documents that he has turned over, that the City of Chicago has turned over on at least 29 occasions that you know of and probably more and that we've dealt with before.

I don't care whether your sensitivities about the name calling that you accuse the plaintiffs' lawyers of doing might somehow hurt morale. I don't know how that happens. There is a lot worse names that are leveled at the police in this City than "repeater." But even crediting Mr. Weis with a good-faith belief that this would hurt morale, it's his job to deal with his own officers.

And I respect the police department in this City, and I respect Mr. Weis's job, it's a tough job. But it makes it a lot tougher when he comes into a federal court and says "I'm not going to obey your order."

Gettleman went on to tell the city's lawyers, "I don't see using this case as a vehicle to try to test the enforceability of orders of this court."  And that's just it: the city was attempting to test the degree of secrecy the court would allow.  Gettleman wasn't having it, however, and Daley and Weis clearly backed off, as today's news shows.  But it's incredible -- and deeply disturbing -- that they even tried.