An on-line survey has become available for Chicagoans to say how the Chicago Police Department (CPD) should focus its training.

Each year, CPD reportedly assesses the topics and methods that it should prioritize for officer training—and then educate officers accordingly.

This year, a call has gone out to members of the public (find a link below) to identify the subjects about which cops should most learn. But that call didn't come from the police department; rather, it came from a court-appointed watchdog.

In 2019, a federal court appointed former prosecutor Maggie Hickey to oversee the city's effort to reform policing—as part of a consent decree resulting from a federal lawsuit brought by the Illinois attorney general.

Hickey has taken on a couple of major tasks. One is to keep track of how CPS is implementing the reforms mandated by the consent decree. Another is to gather Chicagoans' complaints and suggestions about policing.

The monitoring team led by Hickey has held a number of public forums to hear about residents' experiences with cops. And this month, the team put out a survey that it said is "a mechanism for [residents] to provide anonymous input and feedback to the Chicago Police Department about what training [residents] believe is needed for CPD officers and members."

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