Enter the Federal Wiretap Act—a set of very strict federal laws about recording other people without their knowledge. In fact, making such recordings or disclosing their content can be a felony, punishable by prison time as well as fines. There are state laws, too, against recording a conversation without the knowledge of either party, absent a warrant or other legal clearance. The recorded officers knew it, and complained to federal authorities, who took the issue seriously. So that’s how it came to be that, a few weeks into the job of mayor, I learned that my newly reappointed police chief was being investigated by the FBI. Eventually a message came through, thinly veiled but quite clear, from federal prosecutors: the people responsible for the covert recordings needed to go, or charges might be filed.
Why did they send me that signal, instead of just acting on their own? Was the intent to do me a favor, giving me a shot at resolving this quietly and helping my young administration without getting bogged down in the scandal of indictments just a few weeks after we got started? Maybe. Or perhaps they just understood the politics of all this before I did. Why should a U.S. attorney shoulder the responsibility of taking down a beloved African-American police chief, if he can get the mayor to do it for him by removing him from his position? Justice would be served and compliance would be established, while charges and a messy trial could be avoided.
In any case, whatever had led to this point, the choice now lay at my feet. I sat at the end of the conference table in my office, and contemplated which scenario was more likely to tear the community apart—a well-liked African-American police chief potentially being indicted over compliance with a very technical federal law, or me removing him for allowing things to reach this point? There was no good option: the community would erupt either way.
Maybe the chief would step down on his own, I thought. I called him. (Another mistake; things like this should be done in person. Since that day, I’ve never removed a direct report without sitting down with him or her for a face-to-face discussion, however painful and awkward.) After I explained the situation and my view of it, he did offer his resignation, and I accepted it.
The reaction was instant and fierce. Community activists demanded to know more details about what had happened, but I was worried that going into too much detail would get us sued. (Eventually I did go into more detail publicly, and a lawsuit quickly followed, teaching me another important lesson.) By the next day, he had changed his mind and withdrew his resignation. Allies in the community, including many African-American leaders whose support and respect I had counted on before, had convinced him to change his mind—and now wanted me to change mine.
But the status quo was not an option. Even leaving aside that I believed removing him was the best way to avoid him facing potential legal action, I had lost confidence in the leadership of a chief who had not come to me the moment he realized he was the target of an FBI investigation. The hiring and firing of officers in our city is ultimately up to a civilian Board of Public Safety, but the mayor decides who ascends to senior rank. Acting on that authority, I demoted him from the position of chief to that of captain.
Then something happened that I did not see coming. Local press began reporting on rumors that the tapes contained evidence of officers using racist language to describe the former chief. (All of the five offi cers known to have been recorded were white.) The content of the tapes had not come up when I was talking with staff or with the chief about the issue. If true, this was explosive, and serious. The credibility and legitimacy of our police department depended heavily on the expectation that officers did their job with no racial animus. And since so many of the worst race-based abuses in modern American history happened at the hands of law enforcement, policing was the most sensitive part of the entire administration when it came to demonstrating that we acted without bias.
Infuriatingly, I had no way of finding out if this was actually true. The entire crisis was the result of the fact that the recordings were allegedly made in violation of the law. Under the Federal Wiretap Act, this meant that it could be a felony not just to make the recordings, but to reproduce and disclose them. Like everyone else in the community, I wanted to know what was on these recordings. But it was potentially illegal for me to find out, and it was not clear I could even ask, without fear of legal repercussions. As of this writing, I have not heard the recordings, and I still don’t know if I, and the public, ever will.
Overwhelming pressure mounted for me to disclose the recordings, especially from the African-American community. Protesters picketed my first State of the City address. A group calling itself Citizens United for Better Government formed and appeared in public meetings with custom-made T-shirts reading RELEASE THE TAPES.
I invited a number of the most prominent community and faith leaders to meet in my living room, so that I could explain the legal constraints I was under. They viewed my protestations skeptically, as did the Tribune, but legally I was stuck unless a court gave me room for maneuver.
The story dominated media coverage of my administration for most of our first year, and affected my relationship with the African-American community in particular for years to come. A legal drama ensued, with the council suing the administration to release the tapes, while the officers sued the city over the fact that the tapes had been made in the first place. The technicalities became dizzying, with one branch of the city government suing another; some parts of the case are still in litigation years later as we look to the courts to answer the basic question of whether I can lawfully authorize the recordings to be released.
The most important lessons of this painful episode were not about the finer points of federal wiretapping laws, but about the deeply fraught relationship between law enforcement and communities of color. This issue, previously an abstraction for me, was now hitting home. Ferguson and everything that followed in the Black Lives Matter movement came after the tapes controversy exploded locally, but their urgency grew from the same root: the fact that many of the worst historical injustices visited upon black citizens of our country came at the hands of local law enforcement. Like an original sin, this basic fact burdens every police officer, no matter how good, and every neighborhood of color, no matter how safe, to this day. To the many people in the community who rose up to demand that the tapes be released, this wasn’t a question of whether I was right or wrong in fearing that doing so would violate state and federal wiretap laws. It was about their belief that not everyone in the community could trust the men and women sworn to protect them. Like so many police officers and Americans of color dealing with the long reach of such past wrongs—and the present-day wrongs that flow from their legacy—I found myself answering not only for myself but for history.
ANOTHER CHALLENGE IN the reelection campaign would be the mixed popularity of my approach to our streets downtown. While this entailed far less moral anguish than the police tapes situation, it was in the headlines just as often, and led to even more critical letters to the editor and challenging conversations. Even many of my supporters weren’t so sure of my approach, stopping me at the Farmer’s Market or the sidelines of an event to say, “I love what you’re doing with the city . . . except for your ‘Smart Streets.’ ”
Unlike our famous smart sewers, the program I had decided to call “Smart Streets” had little to do with sensor technology. It was about the hope of a better downtown, and the role of street design in making it happen.