On the night Chicago police Officer Ella French was shot to death and her partner badly wounded, the two were working on a roving team tasked with patrolling areas around the city prone to spikes in violence and other crime.
French, her partner and a third officer were working what is known as the community safety team. It was a Saturday night in the South Side’s West Englewood neighborhood, historically a part of the city that sees more than its share of shootings.
When they stopped an SUV, its driver ran from them and his brother struggled with French and her partner before allegedly shooting both in the head.
Officer Ella French was fatally shot on Aug. 7. (Chicago Police Department)
Chicago police Superintendent David Brown and other top brass have relied on the community safety team to try to quell stubborn violence in the city over the last year.
But some department sources have criticized those leaders for allowing too many young and inexperienced officers to work on it. Making street stops carries inherent danger, they said, and too many inexperienced officers in the mix can create the potential for mistakes.
Some less experienced officers have been sent to the team when there simply weren’t enough volunteers, finding themselves working in districts they aren’t used to. Brown and the team have also faced criticism in a lawsuit for allegedly using quotas to increase police activity where the community safety team patrols.
A community safety team roster from January of this year shows that among the 822 police officers then tasked to it, 373 had start dates with the department just in the prior four years, a Tribune review found. Some 225 had start dates in the year 2018 alone, the same year French became an officer.
Dennis Kenney, a professor at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice in New York City, said it’s not necessarily surprising that younger cops or those with less experience would be part of such a team. Younger officers can be more assertive and aggressive than older ones, he said, and can gain experience fast.
“The military encounters the same thing,” he said. “There’s a reason why they (recruit) 18-year-olds and not 35-year-olds.”
Still, Kenney said, “experience matters.” Cops with more time on the street “tend to be more measured in the actions that they take. More cautious. A little less easily excited.”
During a news conference this week, Brown bristled when a reporter asked if any of that played a factor in the 29-year-old French’s death. French had a short stint as a corrections officer for the Cook County sheriff’s department before she was hired the Chicago Police Department, where she worked for a little more than three years before she died.
It was unclear whether French volunteered for the post on the team, and the department has not provided that information.
“So, it’s quite predictable that we try to find other reasons why this happened,” Brown said in answer to the reporter’s question, which included whether “reverse seniority,” or the practice of sending officers with less time on the job to spots on the community safety team or other high-demand units when there are too few who step up to work on them.
The offender, Emonte Morgan, who is charged with first-degree murder, killed French, Brown said, and that’s where things should stop.
“That’s the only person we’re pointing the finger at today. One person did this,” he continued. “Not reverse seniority. Not any other reasons than this person killed her and tried to kill other officers.”
Team born in 2020 tumult
The community safety team formed during the COVID-19 pandemic and intense civil unrest resulting from George Floyd’s murder by a police officer in Minnesota — two events that some crime experts believe contributed to spikes in violence in cities across America.
Brown at the time noted that on other occasions the city reduced high homicide numbers, it had large citywide teams.
But that hasn’t stopped many observers, inside and outside the city’s 12,000-strong police force, from questioning the effectiveness of Brown’s overall crime-fighting strategy in which the new citywide unit is paramount.
Chicago police work the scene near where two officers were shot at 63rd Street and Bell Avenue in Chicago on Aug. 7, 2021. (Chris Sweda / Chicago Tribune)
So far in 2021, Chicago’s violence remains at one of its highest levels in decades, a far cry from 2019 when the city was enjoying its third consecutive year of gun violence reduction. Its 474 homicides through Sunday is 10 higher than the same time last year, and total shootings are up 12%, official police statistics show.
The community safety team began with about 300 officers and eventually swelled.
The team formed through a reshuffling of Police Department resources from the 22 patrol districts and other units. The superintendent has discretion to send officers he wishes to the team, regardless of experience, but those sent without volunteering are only required to work there for 90 days by union rule.
Brown’s use of the team meant a major policy reversal from his temporary predecessor, interim Superintendent Charlie Beck. He instituted a massive restructuring of the department, which involved moving hundreds of cops from its specialized gang and drug units, along with detectives, to the patrol division, so police officials there could use them more efficiently to address neighborhood issues.
Beck, a former longtime Los Angeles police chief who was only Chicago’s top cop for five months, did not include a roving citywide unit.
As insistent as he was about starting such a unit, Brown was mindful of the controversies swirling around Chicago’s past citywide teams.
“I do understand the history of the difficulties with these units both with misconduct and effectiveness,” Brown said in May 2020, a month into his tenure as superintendent, when he was contemplating starting a citywide unit. “If I were to pursue that, I’d want to do it in a way that would be much different than what we’ve done in the past.”
Controversial tactics
Brown wanted the community safety team to do more than just saturate violent crime hot spots. His vision of the team was one that takes aggressive enforcement action, while also participating in community service projects to show residents they’re not just about jumping out of cars to stop people.
Brown talked to reporters in February about the department’s use of traffic stops and other enforcement action while trying to foster trust with the neighborhoods. He has resisted attempts to describe the efforts as instituting quotas, as his critics have described them at a time when the department is under a federally mandated consent decree to improve its policing practices.
“We want to measure what we’re doing,” Brown said. “And to the untrained eye you might look at our asking about traffic stops and think, ‘Oh, they’re trying to do a quota,’ when what we’re actually trying to do is ... (have a) balancing act of enforcement versus community engagement.”
There are clear indicators that the community safety team uses traffic stops as one of its tools.
According to data provided by the Police Department, the team made more than 14,400 traffic stops through most of January, a total that was about 46% of the stops made by all of CPD. But the team wrote just 124 traffic tickets.
Police accountability advocates believe such a demand for activity puts the department at risk of committing racial profiling and other civil rights infractions. The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, which has been critical of Chicago police strategies and how they adversely impact communities of color, has raised concern about the number of traffic stops in the city in recent years.
Kenney, the New York professor, said traffic stops in areas with higher crime rates can be problematic because officers never know how risky a stop really is, but they also must handle them while trying to build trust in the community.
“Put those two together and it really creates a problem for the police because they’re required in making the stops to try to handle them in a way that it doesn’t at least appear to be profiling, it doesn’t appear to be oppressive occupying policing, which puts them at even greater risk when they’re dealing with unknown individuals who are criminals,” said Kenney.
In January, a police supervisor who worked on the community safety team filed a lawsuit in Cook County Circuit Court against the city alleging he was removed from the unit because he wouldn’t be pressured to have officers working under him make illegal stops and arrests.
The lawsuit, filed by Lt. Franklin Paz under the state’s Whistleblower Act, accused Brown’s hand-picked head of the unit of forcing cops under his command to generate “activity,” cop-speak for ordering officers to make plentiful arrests and stops, and take other police actions. Such requirements can give at least the appearance of quota-based policing.
Since then, attorneys for the city of Chicago, which is the defendant in the lawsuit, argued for the case to be dismissed, partly on the grounds that Paz’s transfer to another unit was discretionary under police department policy. But Judge Margaret Brennan denied the city’s request, and the case is still making its way through civil court proceedings.
Sources within the Police Department have said Brown has at times pushed for activity during his weekly meetings of CompStat, data-driven sessions that use crime statistics in real time to hold commanders accountable for upticks in the areas of the city they oversee.
This activity comes in the form of traditional metrics such as traffic stops, pedestrian street stops and arrests, as well as a newer category of so-called positive community interactions.
‘They were young kids’
One former community safety team officer talked about her roughly three months with the unit.
The officer questioned the claim from Brown that the unit was community-service oriented and said she never participated in any such activities during her time with the team, and wasn’t aware that any existed. The officer, who is still with the department, asked that she not be identified because she is not authorized to speak to the media.
The officer summed up her community service experience on the team, as far as it related to dealing with normal citizens.
“ ‘Have a good day.’ With a smile,” she said. “That was the extent of it.”
A spokesman for Brown said the unit has taken up several community service efforts, including helping tutor children, hosting sports clinics for baseball and basketball, helping work in food and clothing drives, attending numerous peace walks and running in a chess club.
The officer, who in total has more than 10 years on the job, said she often paired up with younger officers on the team. Those more inexperienced cops can benefit from learning from others, the officer said, but they don’t always.
“You have to consider the fact that a lot of times,” she said, “they’re paired up with themselves. They were young kids.”
As a member of the unit, the officer enjoyed a somewhat flexible work schedule, unlike on district beat patrols. The unit did not have to run from 911 call to 911 call, though the community safety team would sometimes support the beat cops when needed and it responded to more serious “in-progress” calls, as well as shootings, she said.
The officer said their sergeant was feeling pressure from higher-ups to get subordinates to generate more activity, which includes traffic stops.
But those stops don’t happen for no reason on the community safety team, the officer said, even if the initial reason seems routine. When French and the officers stopped the SUV, it was for expired plates.
“The more traffic stops you do,” she said, “you’re definitely going to run into something.”
Nightmare scenario
Although neighbors from the closest residential block to the shooting site — near West 63rd Street and South Bell Avenue — described their block as quiet, one neighbor acknowledged how gang activity and other crime is prevalent nearby, so it would be no surprise that French and the other officers were there.
It was after 9 p.m. when French, her partner, 39, and the third officer with them, who is 30, spotted the SUV. It was being driven by Eric Morgan, authorities have said, with his brother Emonte and a woman as passengers.
At court hearings for the brothers this week, prosecutors said the cops had the trio get out of the vehicle, and it didn’t take long for the encounter to spiral out of control.
Emonte Morgan had a drink in one hand and a cellphone in the other, prosecutors said, and after refusing to put them down, started jerking his arms away. That’s when Eric Morgan took off, allegedly because he knew his brother had a gun and was scared, with the 30-year-old officer chasing him on foot.
French and her partner then wrestled with Emonte Morgan, authorities said, a struggle that ended with him partially back inside the car.
By that point the gun allegedly was out of his waistband and shots were fired, striking both of the officers trying to control him. Their sidearms were still holstered.
Chicago Tribune’s Paige Fry contributed.
jgorner@chicagotribune.com
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