Chicago City Wire

Wednesday's 33-17 vote by Chicago City Council to deny rank-and-file members of the Fraternal Order of Police the right to arbitration in more serious disciplinary matters -- the same right as other members of public unions – merely delays the inevitable, say Council members who supported the measure.

“State law gives the police the right to arbitration,” Alderman Silvana Tabares (23rd) said before Wednesday’s vote. “This is an open and shut case if this goes to court.”

FOP President John Catanzara repeatedly promised to take the matter to court if City Council failed to ratify the arbitration provision, approved by independent abritrator Edwin Benn as part of the larger police contract.

In an earlier vote on Wednesday, Council did approve a contract with a pay increase for police that runs through June 2027. Mayor Brandon Johnson, who opposes arbitration, had asked Council members to vote on the issue separately from the main contract.

A provision in the Illinois Public Labor Relations Act, covering grievance procedures, is clear regarding arbitration: “The collective bargaining agreement negotiated between the employer and exclusive representative shall contain a grievance resolution procedure which shall apply to all employees in the bargaining unit and shall provide for final and binding arbitration of disputes concerning the administration or interpretation of the agreement unless mutually agreed otherwise.”

Opponents, though, argue that the process will move disciplinary matters behind closed doors away from the now transparent process under the Chicago Police Board. But the cops say the civilian Board harbors an anti-police bias, leading to excessive disciplinary determinations. Arbitration would have a significant impact on the workload of the Board. Max Caproni, the Board’s executive director, told the Chicago Tribune: “Our expectation would be that very few, if any, of those cases would come to the Police Board if this change takes effect. Bottom line, I think about 90% of our docket, we would lose that, if this change took effect.”

During debate, Ald. Raymond Lopez (15th) accused opponents of arbitration of waging a political agenda against the police department, and of being hypocrites.

“No one is calling for increased oversight with the Chicago Teachers (who have the right to arbitration) after the Inspector General’s 2022 report of hundreds of sexual complaints from students.”

“This level of political double speak will make [George] Orwell proud,” he added.

Former FOP spokesman, Martin Preib, who spearheaded the fight for arbitration, blamed the mainstream media for pressuring Council to reject the contract provision.

“In the days leading up to the vote, the entire media establishment in Chicago rallied their propaganda machine, based largely on refutable lies, to send a message to Chicago’s City Council members that granting the arbitration would compel them to face media’s wrath,” Preib wrote in the Chicago Contrarian.

“The media tropes were the usual nonsense,” he continued. “Citing the massive payouts on police misconduct lawsuits was the main theme. The vast majority of these lawsuits are themselves media fictions. The Achilles heel in these settlements, the fact that betrays they are generally nothing more media deceits on a magnitude never seen before in the country, is the fact that outlets like the Chicago Sun-Times and the Tribune regularly violate the tenets of journalistic ethics by refusing to cover the myriad of evidence cited in the federal courts that demonstrate these allegations are laughable.”