Chicago Police Department – Performance Evaluation System
As Chicago and the nation experience a year marked by rising gun violence and widespread protests around policing, Civic Consulting Alliance remains focused on facilitating collaborative public safety and criminal justice reform with institutions and communities to ensure that everyone is safe and justice is exercised equitably. For more than four years, we have supported the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in its efforts to reform departmental practices to improve the quality of policing and the relationship between police and the people they serve. In recent years, work has included projects to prepare for and respond to a court-monitored consent decree, to implement a new use of force training, to develop and implement CPD’s new strategic plan, and to implement a new vision for community policing.
In 2019, CPD endeavored to redesign its performance evaluation system, a recommendation of CPD’s strategic plan, and a requirement of the consent decree. The existing system did not effectively identify how officers were performing or who needed additional training and support. As a result, CPD sought to develop a more robust tool for professional development, personal growth, and accountability. Moreover, CPD aimed to ensure that this revised evaluation system would fulfill consent decree requirements related to evaluation criteria, internal processes, and training.
From August 2019 through July 2020, Civic Consulting Alliance and a pro bono fellow from McKinsey & Company supported the performance evaluation system redesign. We:
Documented current state performance evaluation processes within CPD, and national best practices across peer departments and industry experts;
Synthesized findings and proposed options for improvements to the current system;
Built out the recommendations into a revised performance evaluation process flow and identified resources needed for implementation; and
Developed an implementation plan and designed materials to support implementation.
As a result of this project, CPD is now equipped with a performance evaluation system that evaluates those qualities critical to ensuring officer growth and accountability, including community policing, impartial policing, effective use of de-escalation, and constitutional policing. Moreover, the new system standardizes evaluations across officers and those in higher, supervisor-level rankings to ensure a single, consistent process.
Beginning in January 2021, CPD will pilot the new evaluation process in one district, assessing roughly 400 officers and supervisors. This will set the stage for the anticipated rollout of the process CPD-wide, to more than 13,000 sworn officers and supervisors, in 2023.
As our country strives to ensure fair and equitable policing practices and build trust between police and the communities they serve, we hope that CPD’s new performance evaluation process will contribute to a body of reforms that lead to more effective and just policing in Chicago and beyond.
“The performance evaluation system that Civic Consulting Alliance helped to design will ensure that evaluation is fair and consistent across the Department, and will enable us to build a stronger culture of coaching and effective supervision.”
Outputs
Design and implementation plan—for a performance evaluation system based in best practice research and in compliance with consent decree criteria
Outcomes
CPD equipped with a performance evaluation system that evaluates those qualities critical to ensuring officer growth and accountability
Approximately 400 officers and supervisors to be evaluated from 2021-2023 in pilot of the new process
Rollout of the new evaluation process CPD-wide, to more than 13,000 sworn officers and supervisors, slated for 2023
