Nearly $261 million.

That’s how much City Council members recently agreed to pay to settle a lawsuit brought by victims of police abuse by former Chicago police Detective Reynaldo Guevara.

It’s just the most recent in a long line of multimillion-dollar payouts stemming from misconduct by Chicago police officers that has resulted in hundreds of wrongful convictions of innocent people, often through coerced, false confessions. The abuses by police in these cases could have been prevented simply by ensuring that a defense attorney was present when they talked to police.

Chicago is the false confession and wrongful conviction capital of the United States. We can change that. False confessions appear in around 60% of homicide cases nationally where DNA evidence later exonerated the convicted person. Research shows roughly 84% of false confessions occur after the person in custody has been interrogated for more than six hours. Confessions alone do not solve crimes and should not be relied upon.

The Cook County public defender operates a team of lawyers ready to respond 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for anyone who calls the hotline of our Arrest Response Division.

Anyone arrested in Cook County can call and have a lawyer sent to the police station, the hospital or anywhere else they are being held — for free. Attorneys at the station can meet with their clients immediately, offer legal advice when they most need it and prevent abuse or manipulation by the police.

If you are taken into custody, regardless of whether you are arrested or charged, police are required to inform you that you have the right to consult with an attorney in private, either by telephone or in person, before you are questioned.

The Miranda warning should be familiar to anyone who has ever watched a crime drama: “You have the right to remain silent. Anything you say can and will be used against you in a court of law. You have the right to an attorney. If you cannot afford an attorney, one will be provided for you.”

In Illinois, police are required to let you call a lawyer within three hours of when you’re placed in custody. Despite this, only a tiny fraction of people in Chicago police custody speak to an attorney.

Why? Because police are not required to make it easy. Police would prefer to interrogate people without a lawyer getting in the way. And how many people have an attorney’s number memorized?

Now imagine if people in custody were automatically given the public defender’s hotline number and provided a phone when police read their rights on video.

This solution would cost the city nothing.

In fact, police are already required to provide phones and private attorney visitation rooms in every station. This safeguard would simply require reading one additional sentence. Police already have cameras in interrogation rooms and use body-worn cameras when they read people their rights. Offering the public defender’s phone number on video would require no additional work.

Change is hard for everyone. The Chicago Police Department was initially reluctant when body cameras were suggested in Chicago. But now they are the norm. They resolve discrepancies when they arise. They protect officers when they do their jobs and protect community members when police abuse their powers.

We are urging the city to immediately implement this no-cost solution, which would guarantee that people have the right to counsel and significantly reduce the risk of another officer abusing someone in custody.

Money alone won’t make up for all the harm caused to the wrongly convicted and their families. Providing real access to a lawyer at the station would prevent that harm before it starts and save millions in taxpayer money that we all know is urgently needed and could be better spent elsewhere.

It’s time to make the promise of Miranda real in Chicago.

Abigail S. Clough is the associate director of the Arrest Response Division at the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender. Sharone R. Mitchell Jr. is a Cook County public defender. 

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