In the Feb. 28 election, the coalition of organizers who helped pass the ECPS ordinance backed 71 pro-accountability candidates. Forty-one of them are likely to win, with more than 98 percent of precincts reporting results and mail-in ballots being counted until March 14. Three additional write-in candidates aligned with ECPS organizers are also poised to win seats. (See full results at The TRiiBE’s Election Center.)
Update March 16, 2023: Official results released by the Chicago Board of Election Commissiners show that 43 candidates aligned with ECPS (including three write-in candidates) won seats on Police District Councils.
Eight of the three-member police district councils (PDCs)—the 6th, 10th, 12th, 17th, 19th, 20th, 24th, and 25th—will be entirely made up of ECPS-aligned council members. Eight more councils—the 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th,14th, 15th and 18th—will have two each, giving the ECPS coalition’s allies control of 16 out of 22 PDCs.
“We got a majority of the district representatives,” Frank Chapman, a field organizer with CAARPR and one of the leaders of the coalition that got the ordinance passed, told The TRiiBE the next day by phone. He noted the coalition’s many “decisive victories, either all or two-thirds of the representatives,” as well as a the single seats won by ECPS candidates in the 9th and 11th Districts. “But the main thing is, we were victorious, and that’s great.”
Candidates backed by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) won two-seat majorities in each of the 8th, 16th and 22nd police districts, and one seat each in the 5th and 15th districts. The police union endorsed 19 candidates for the PDC races, eight of whom were elected. The FOP also spent $25,000 on two election attorneys (one of whom ran unsuccessfully for a seat on the 25th PDC) and spent $15,410 to support a candidate who lost his race in the 19th District.
Candidates who were not endorsed by the FOP but had other law enforcement ties also won one seat in the 18th district and two in the 22nd district, as did Mark Hamberlin, a candidate in the 8th district who has variously claimed and denied having FOP support.
“For the FOP even to be allowed to be the opposition is crazy,” Chapman said. “This is an organization who are diametrically opposed to this legislation to begin with. So their involvement, their support of candidates, putting out a list saying who they endorse, this is scandalous.”
The only reason the police union was running candidates for PDCs, Chapman said, was to “undermine it.”
Each PDC sends one member to quarterly and annual meetings with delegates from all 22 councils, where they report findings from their districts and make policy recommendations to the CCPSA. The PDCs also meet collectively to nominate CCPSA commissioners. The decisive victory for ECPS-supported candidates across a majority of districts means the coalition should be able to advance its agenda in those meetings—something Chapman says they fully intend to do.
“We have the majority of the votes,” in citywide meetings, Chapman said. “Which means, we will be able to push forward with our agenda, which is to use these councils and use our democratic option to say who polices our communities and how they’re policed, and to get more control of policing in this city.”