Police consultant at center of lawsuit
NO-BID CONTRACT | City watchdog demands records on deal
A $100,000 no-bid Chicago Police Department contract with Charles Bowen -- the former Cook County commissioner who spent more than 15 years as Mayor Daley's chief liaison to black ministers -- is at the center of an unprecedented legal battle between City Hall and the inspector general's office.
In 2006, Bowen was asked to assist the Police Department with the recruitment and retention of minority officers. He was also charged with reviewing the process of disciplining wayward officers, evaluating community policing and developing "crime-fighting initiatives that involve community participation."
"If you want to get people in the city of Chicago to listen to what you have to say, you go through the faith-based organizations," Bowen, 75, said Thursday.
"I had been extremely helpful in setting up all of their interfaith contacts. I created that with [former Supt. Terry] Hillard. . . . We were trying to recruit. . . . Beyond that, we went into the field of my expertise. It was with the churches. We thought that was a way to get to a lot of them. We tried to get them into the Police Department."
Bowen said he achieved the goals of the contract and has no idea what piqued the inspector general's interests. He said he was interviewed by the inspector general's office two years ago and "answered all the questions they asked me."
"Phil Cline [Hillard's successor] asked me if I would like to come over as a consultant. . . . When Cline of course left, that was the end of it," he said.
Cline said: "He did a good job for me. Community policing depends on good relationships with community leaders. If there was a problem in the community, he would gather ministers and other leaders and encourage minority youth to take the police test."
In February 2006 -- two years after Bowen left the city payroll and one year after he stopped working for free in the mayor's office -- the Non-Competitive Procurement Review Board exempted the Bowen contract from competitive bidding requirements.
A "Justification for Non-Competitive Procurement" on the city's Web site states that more than 12 people from across the country were interviewed to determine whether they were capable of making the "same impact" as Bowen and that no suitable candidate was found.
A request for the names of competitors interviewed and cities and professional organizations contacted was left blank.
Police contract administrator Mike Palumbo wrote that Bowen had "extensive contacts" with religious leaders and "earned their unprecedented trust" making him "singularly situated" to do the work.
Bowen's name appears frequently as a sponsor on the City Hall "clout list" introduced as evidence in the trial that culminated in the 2006 conviction of Daley's former patronage chief.
For 15 years, he worked in the mayor's office, lining up black ministers in support of Daley's campaigns and public policies and diffusing community tensions.
Earlier this week, the inspector general's office filed a lawsuit demanding that Corporation Counsel Mara Georges turn over documents and records vital to the inspector general's investigation of "how a former city employee was awarded a sole-source contract in apparent violation of the city's ethics and contracting rules."
The inspector general's office wants the court to require Georges to reveal who hired that individual and why, saying it "has been unable to determine who bears responsibility for the critical decision to contract with the former employee."
Citing attorney-client privilege, Georges has refused to say.