Mary Dixon: If you live in Chicago and you have a hard time keeping track of candidates running for public office, the job is about to get a little harder. You'll now be voting in police district council elections. The councils are part of a new police oversight system meant to give civilians a say in how the city is policed. Most people don't know who's running, but for a number of candidates on the ballot, this race is personal. WBEZ's Anna Savchenko has the story.

Anna Savchenko: There are a couple of things Coston Plummer leads with when he meets people these days. One that his name rhymes with Boston

Coston Plummer: Like the city of Boston, Coston.

Anna Savchenko: And two that he supports the working class.

Coston Plummer: I just believe in the 99%.

Anna Savchenko: Plummer is collecting signatures on a street corner in the Hyde Park neighborhood. He walks up to a young woman and starts his pitch.

Coston Plummer: Excuse me, have you heard of the ECPS? It's the District council where the community gets involved in the oversight of police.

Anna Savchenko: Plummer tells her he's running in the 2nd police district, but like many people, she doesn't seem to know exactly what the district councils are. 

Stranger: I um, would like to research everything...

Coston Plummer: Okay, I know...

Anna Savchenko: She does not sign, Coston like Boston’s petition, but he says that's ok.

Coston Plummer: You know, my goal is even if they don't sign my petition, I want to alert them to let them know that this is around the corner in February and that we will have power to be able to make changes that we never could do before.

Anna Savchenko: The district councils were created in response to years of protests against police misconduct. Here's how they're going to work. Each one of the city's 22 police districts will have a council with three elected members. If there's a problem in their district, they can take it up with local police officials or a new city wide accountability commission. That commission has the authority to shape police policy. So together the police district councils and the city wide commission, they will hold the police department accountable, but they'll also decide how the department has run, how the city's $2 billion police budget will be spent. For Plummer, it boils down to a simple question.

Coston Plummer: How can you police the community without asking the community what's going on?

Anna Savchenko: Plummer is one of many candidates who are getting involved because they have been directly impacted by police violence. He said his brother was tortured by officers under former police commander Jon Burge. He allegedly beat at least 100 men into false confessions in the 70s and 80s.

Coston Plummer: That was the biggest thing that kind of like pushed me, like I never want to see that happen to anybody, but especially to the Black and brown people in my community. I'm tired of it. That’s got to stop.

Anna Savchenko: Frank Chapman is one of the people who has spent years pushing for more civilian oversight. He leads the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression. I asked him how the idea for the councils came about.

Frank Chapman: Well, it came about as a result of the murder of Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, and I could go on and on. But specifically Rekia Boyd.

Anna Savchenko: 22-year-old Rekia Boyd was shot by a police officer. Her death in 2012, deeply unsettled Chapman and others in the Black community who felt like they were living in a war zone. They held a meeting on the second floor of an old bank building in Englewood. The way Chapman remembers it, about 150 people showed up. Almost all of them have been touched by the city's violence and had a story to share.

Frank Chapman: And at that meeting, we resolved that we wanted to have an all elected, all civilian police accountability council. 

Anna Savchenko: The legislation establishing the police district councils and the city wide commission was finally signed into law last summer. And although it's an experiment, Chapman feels good about it.

Frank Chapman: It can work and will work, if there's, if people take these positions as a matter of civic responsibility.

Anthony Driver: To be honest, I don't know, I don't know what the future holds. I don't know who will be elected to these seats.

Anna Savchenko: Anthony Driver is the President of the Citywide Community Commission for Public safety and Sccountability. He says he's worried about how Chicagoans will cast their votes in February, how voters will track all these candidates and all these police districts. But he says it's worth trying, because the police department has not been able to curb violent crime.

Anthony Driver: What I do know is that the thing that was missing is civilians being directly involved, voters and residents being directly involved in the process. And these district councils give you a chance to do that.

Anna Savchenko: Candidates for Chicago's District Councils will appear on the ballot in next year's mayoral election. Anna Savchenko, WBEZ News.

WBEZ transcripts are generated by an automatic speech recognition service. We do our best to edit for misspellings and typos, but mistakes do come through.