In Cincinnati, a city with a police force of roughly 1,000 officers, reform was born of a class-action suit filed in 2001, after years of abusive policing practices in black neighborhoods. To settle the lawsuit, Cincinnati entered into an agreement not only with the federal government but also with community organizations and the police union, thus formally bringing all the stakeholders for police reform into negotiations with one another. Frequent meetings to evaluate progress and a department commitment to “problem-oriented” community policing were mandated by the “collaborative agreement.”
In Oakland, a city with fewer than 800 cops, attempts at police reform in roughly the same span of time have cost about $14 million and have been accompanied by starkly different outcomes. The lawsuit that led to federal court oversight there was filed in 2000 by victims of a group of officers who allegedly beat, robbed, and kidnapped citizens. But despite federal intervention, corruption scandals and police abuse continued with some $57 million paid out to settle with victims over the next ten years. Last year, just as the department seemed to finally be fulfilling all its obligations under the settlement agreement, a ring of officers was busted for sexual misconduct involving an underage sex worker.
In 1966 the Chicago Housing Authority was sued by public housing residents alleging that the agency’s segregationist policies in public housing construction and tenant screening were violating their civil rights. The tenants won the lawsuit the following year, and a federal judge ordered the city to remedy its segregated public housing by constructing new units in white neighborhoods. But aldermen and Mayor Richard J. Daley fought the orders tooth and nail, spurred on by fervent NIMBYism in white neighborhoods. It took years to get even a modest number of public housing units built outside poor, African-American areas, and a federal judge still has to sign off on decisions to build or rehabilitate public housing in the city today. Ultimately, the city pursued policies that helped rid it of much of its public housing rather than seeking to remedy residential segregation.
