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The steps taken Monday by the Daley administration and City Council to address police abuse rightly dominated the news out of City Hall. After years of delays and inaction, the city agreed last week to settle four police torture cases, and as the council’s finance committee signed off on the $19.8 million in payments Monday, aldermen urged Mara Georges, the city’s top lawyer, to find a way to end the city’s obligations to defend and pay a pension to the lead torturer, former commander Jon Burge. Then aldermen Ed Burke and Isaac Carothers, one a former cop and the other chairman of the council’s police and fire committee, introduced an ordinance that would require police involved in shootings to take tests to see if they’ve been drinking–standard procedure in other cities. In a demonstration three floors upstairs, Al Sharpton called for reforms–such as a fully independent agency to investigate police misconduct–that local leaders have pushed for years.
Monday, though, union leaders and city attorneys stressed that the new agreement calls on the trades to enroll at least 100 former students from Chicago public schools or city colleges in apprenticeship programs each year. Union leaders said repeatedly that the plan was their idea.
Tom Villanova, president of the Chicago and Cook County Building & Construction Trades Council, added that it had never been easy for the unions to find qualified apprenticeship candidates from the public schools. “There are only 17 shop teachers in all of the Chicago Public Schools,” he said.
Hairston nodded. “Well, the reason I’m asking is that we sit in here year after year, and minority people must be hiding under a rock, because we can never find them for jobs,” Hairston said. “Who will monitor this?”
