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“The Public Does Not Believe the Police Can Police Themselves”: The Mayoral Administration of Harold Washington and the Problem of Police Impunity

The article examines the tenure of Harold Washington, Chicago’s first black mayor, and his relationship to the Chicago Police Department (CPD). It suggests that while police accountability had been a long-standing goal of Washington and his allies, he failed to sufficiently address the impunity of the CPD once elected. From the outset, the Washington administration exemplified this contradiction by appointing the police department’s first black superintendent, but one who would leave in place a failed structure of a police accountability that made it possible to cover up an ongoing pattern of police torture and coerced confessions. These cases of police torture throw into relief the obstacles faced by this first generation of black mayors who attempted to uproot the institutional underpinnings of police impunity amid the emergence of mass incarceration.