Two years ago, Chicago newspapers and air waves were full of public discussion of patterns of police abuse, government secrecy, and institutional denial. As converging police scandals threatened to engulf his administration, Mayor Daley rebranded the agency that investigates abuse complaints, appointed a new police superintendent, and promised an era of reform.

Today public debate is muted. There are several reasons for this. Among them is the unresolved status of a key legal issue, arising from Bond v. Utreras, a federal civil rights alleging police abuse. In 2007, Judge Joan Lefkow of the U.S. District Court ruled in Bond that certain police documents—including the complaint files of the individual officer defendants and a list of 662 officers with the most citizen complaints in a five year period—are public information.

In a strong, eloquent opinion, Judge Lefkow went back to first principles. Such information must be available to the public, she wrote, so we as citizens can hold accountable the public officials we have entrusted with the powers to detain, arrest, and use force.

The City appealed Lefkow’s ruling to the Seventh Circuit of the U.S. Court of Appeals. It has been pending there for more than two years. For much of this period, the public conversation has been frozen in a state of suspension.

In the meantime, the legal struggle over official secrecy has continued unabated. If anything, it has intensified. It is being waged on multiple fronts. The City has worked tirelessly to maintain its regime of secrecy. And civil rights attorneys have countered with strategies to force greater transparency.

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