Professor Stephen Rushin recently told the Chicago Tribune the salient question for cities that have undergone police reform is whether the improvements are sustainable.
“The No. 1 good thing about these federal interventions is they force local municipalities to face the issue of police misconduct head-on,” said Rushin, author of a forthcoming book evaluating two decades of federal intervention into law enforcement. “I think there’s a bunch of structural and organizational reasons, without federal interventions, that make it easy for cities to push those difficult decisions off their plate.”
Rushin said that if a pattern of unlawful police conduct is found in Chicago, the cost of implementing reforms and paying for court monitors could approach $100 million.
For more, read “Historic Probe of Chicago Police Expected to Be Long And Costly.”