Has City Hall been handcuffed by its police unions? We’ll find out in the coming months, as city and union negotiators spar over contract changes that are crucial to restoring public trust in a department that has done a poor job of policing itself.

Both sides know those contracts need to be scrubbed of provisions that have been used to shield bad cops from the consequences of misconduct. The rules have been exploited so effectively that they’ve "essentially turned the code of silence into official policy," in the words of Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s police accountability task force.

And when two officers who’d been involved in questionable shootings of citizens applied to become mentors to rookie cops, top police officials say they couldn’t reject them, thanks to the contract.

There’s simply no defending those provisions in light of the U.S. Department of Justice investigation that followed the 2014 fatal shooting of teenager Laquan McDonald by a Chicago officer now charged with first-degree murder. Echoing the findings of Emanuel’s task force, the DOJ said Chicago police use force against citizens inappropriately and are rarely held accountable because of inadequate training, a dysfunctional oversight system and a culture in which cops close ranks to cover for each other.

The Chicago Police Department has responded with changes in policies and training, and the City Council signed off on Emanuel’s plan to overhaul the oversight system. But contract provisions that have been wielded at the expense of citizens are now prized bargaining chips. If city negotiators want concessions, Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo Sr. has said, "We’ll tell them to pony up."

Those collective bargaining agreements make it harder for citizens to file complaints or to learn how those complaints are resolved. They make it easier for cops to lie and harder for their bosses to discipline them. That was never their intent. They’re supposed to be about assuring officers due process or protecting them from arbitrary decisions by supervisors.

But there’s no public purpose in requiring the city to disregard or destroy disciplinary records. There’s no reason an officer involved in a shooting should have 24 hours to coordinate stories with others at the scene before giving a statement — or be allowed to amend the statement after watching the incident on video.

The contracts also undermine the Police Department’s efforts to improve a training program that matches new officers with experienced mentors. The Tribune reported recently that officers Raoul Mosqueda and Michael St. Clair II — who together have cost taxpayers more than $8 million in lawsuits alleging excessive force — are in line to become field training officers. A police spokesman says top supervisors can’t stop them.

"One reason CPD’s Field Training Program remains unsuccessful is that the selection process knowingly discourages many of the most-qualified officers from serving as FTOs and allows problematic police officers to continue acting as FTOs," the DOJ report says. Applicants for those positions have to meet minimum qualifications and test into the jobs, but "leadership, mentorship and instructional skills are not necessarily considered in selecting new FTOs."

A negative disciplinary record could weed out some applicants, but the oversight system has done a poor job of identifying them. A Tribune analysis of four years of complaints ending in December 2014, for example, found that fewer than 4 percent resulted in a finding of misconduct.

In 13 years on the force, St. Clair was named in 12 complaints, none of them resulting in discipline. The Independent Police Review Authority cleared him and his partner in the 2010 shooting of William Hope Jr. A federal jury, though, awarded Hope’s family $4.6 million after determining St. Clair and his partner had detained Hope unlawfully and used excessive force.

Mosqueda has been named in 17 complaints and disciplined once — a five-day suspension in 2014. In 2011, he fatally shot a man who tried to drive away from a traffic stop. The city settled a lawsuit by the family of Darius Pinex for $3.5 million, but that disciplinary case hasn’t been resolved. Mosqueda still could be punished or fired.

In a normal workplace, the boss would think twice about putting either of them in the pipeline to train others. But under union rules, police supervisors have no such discretion. That lets everybody off the hook, with predictably unsatisfactory results. It doesn’t benefit the public, the police department or the cops whose stellar qualifications and performance ought to give them a leg up.

Clawing back those contract provisions will require some backbone from politicians who count on the unions for endorsements and donations at election time. Those same people — we’re looking at you, Chicago aldermen — have already signed off on fees and tax hikes that will cost the average Chicago family almost $1,700 more this year than in 2011. Your constituents are counting on you to demand the necessary changes to right the Police Department. That doesn’t mean they’re going to be eager to buy back protections that shouldn’t have been traded away.

Chicago cops do a dangerous and demanding job, and their salaries reflect it. A new officer makes more than $71,000 a year after an 18-month probation; a 20-year veteran makes more than $92,000. They earn their paychecks. But citizens shouldn’t have to pay extra for accountability.

Our editors found this article on this site using Google and regenerated it for our readers.