The Cook County Public Defender’s office has joined with Black Lives Matter Chicago and the #LetUsBreathe Collective and other social justice organizations in suing the city of Chicago, asking the courts to order City Hall to end detention practices the plaintiffs say deny people who are being held by police their rights to communicate with their lawyers and loved ones.
On June 23, the coalition of plaintiffs filed suit in Cook County Circuit Court against the city.
Plaintiffs are represented by attorneys Alexa Van Brunt, of the MacArthur Justice Center; Brendan Shiller and Jeanette Samuels, of the firm of Shiller Preyar Jarard and Samuels, of Chicago; Craig B. Futterman, of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, of Chicago; Sheila A. Bedi, of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law’s Community Justice and Civil Rights Clinic; Daniel Massoglia and Brittany Shaw, of the First Defense Legal Aid Clinic, of Chicago; and Joey Mogul, of the People’s Law Office, of Chicago.
In addition to Black Lives Matter Chicago, #LetUsBreathe Collective and the Public Defender’s Office, plaintiffs include Stop Chicago, UMedics, GoodKids MadCity and the National Lawyers Guild.
The lawsuit targets a police practice it calls “incommunicado detention.”
The lawsuit specifically accuses Chicago Police of routinely violating provisions in Illinois state law, requiring police to allow detainees to “communicate with an attorney of their choice and a member of their family” by phone, “within a reasonable time” after they are placed in custody.
The plaintiffs accuse police of “routinely” denying “people in custody access to a phone.”
The plaintiff organizations say they have members who have endured this practice while in Chicago Police custody, or they have represented clients who suffered this alleged practice.
For instance, the complaint cites surveys conducted by the Public Defender’s Office indicating nearly a quarter of those arrested by Chicago Police from April 16 to June 5, 2020, were “never offered … access to a phone at any point while they were detained at the police station.” More than half of those who were able to make a call had to wait more than one hour to do so, the complaint claimed, with many waiting more than five hours. The average wait time was more than four hours, the complaint said.
The lawsuit alleges the Chicago Police Department “has a well-documented history of denying access to counsel, in violation of Illinois state law.”
The complaint said that alleged practice “has increased in recent weeks,” as police have responded to sometimes violent protests and incidences of looting and riot activity in the city, in the wake of the killing of George Floyd at the hands of police officers in Minneapolis in late May.
The complaint accuses the police of “using the COVID-19 pandemic and recent community protests as cover” for the alleged practices.
The complaint further asserts Cook County Public Defender Amy Campanelli, in response to the COVID-19 outbreak, asked Chicago Police to create a “private place to consult with their attorneys remotely.”
The complaint claims Chicago Police have declined to do so, citing “internal procedures” that “prevented officers from allowing people in custody to access phone calls – and lawyers – until after they had been interrogated and processed.”
The plaintiffs assert the city’s practices “facilitate coercive interrogations,” which can allegedly lead to false confessions, because they cut arrestees off from legal guidance needed to counter “police coercion.” They assert the practices have been “approved at the highest level of CPD command, including by CPD’s general counsel.”
The complaint noted the plaintiffs alerted both Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx and Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul about their concerns and allegations. However, neither Foxx nor Raoul have taken any action on their behalf, the complaint said.