“Has City Hall been handcuffed by its police unions? We’ll find out in the coming months, as city and union negotiators spar over contract changes that are crucial to restoring public trust in a department that has done a poor job of policing itself.
“Both sides know those contracts need to be scrubbed of provisions that have been used to shield bad cops from the consequences of misconduct. The rules have been exploited so effectively that they’ve ‘essentially turned the code of silence into official policy,’ in the words of Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s police accountability task force.”