Justice
Why the DOJ Is Investigating the Chicago Police Department
Given the department’s long history of police brutality, an audit is long overdue.
The U.S. Department of Justice is headed to Chicago to investigate whether police there have been regularly violating civilians’ civil rights. If a pattern is found—as was the case in the DOJ’s investigations into police departments in Ferguson, Cleveland, New Orleans, and a few other cities—Chicago police will be subjected to federal court-ordered reforms spelled out in a consent decree.
Already, Chicago’s history of police brutality looks rather like a pattern: