The University of Chicago crime lab is getting a new leader

The University of Chicago Crime Lab, a valuable resource that the Chicago Police Department has used to analyze its policies and practices, is getting a new leader on Monday.

Katie Hill, who previously served as a policy adviser to Mayor Rahm Emanuel and later as a top official in Chicago’s legal department, will replace Roseanna Ander as the crime lab’s executive director. Ander, who helped set up the crime lab, will take on a new leadership role.

“The exciting thing for me about Katie coming on board is that I feel like I have a partner who can take the work forward and make sure we’re at the forefront of innovation and doing good work,” Ander said in an interview alongside Hill.

Hill will help oversee key initiatives such as the Crime Lab’s training academies for police and community violence intervention leaders, launched with $27.5 million from billionaires Ken Griffin and Michael Sacks.

But Hill said she is focused heavily on addressing the needs of Chicago policymakers.

“I don’t have a specific project that I start on day one,” she said. “I want to come in and learn and think about it. But I’m really looking forward to diving into the work in Chicago.”

Researchers are already trying to tackle some of the biggest problems facing the Chicago Police Department, including how to better deploy officers amid a staffing crisis, how to solve more shootings and murders and how to proactively eliminate people as suspects in crimes – an undertaking that could help avoid wrongful convictions and the costly settlements that come with them.

Much of CPD’s work is viewed from the perspective of austerity – making the most of the limited resources that currently exist, Ander said.

“This allows them to work more effectively with the resources available to them,” she said. “And that, I think, requires being data-driven and learning what works so they can scale the most effective strategies … and use technology more effectively.”

Hill’s background largely revolved around public safety and criminal justice reform.

While serving as Chicago’s first assistant corporate attorney, she helped negotiate a federal consent decree that provided sweeping police reforms following the murder of teenager Laquan McDonald. She previously worked as director of policy, research and development at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, where she led bail reform initiatives and made data publicly available.

Hill said the crime lab has been an important partner throughout her career and she recently worked as an instructor at the Police Leadership Academy.

“So when the opportunity arose to potentially work officially and full-time at the crime lab, I was pretty excited,” said Hill, who most recently worked as general counsel for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services, the state’s Medicaid agency.

The crime lab was founded in 2008 with $100,000 from the university’s provost in response to the murder of a UChicago graduate student and reports of shootings of school-age children. But Ander said the mission has remained largely unchanged.

“Because of the work we have done in Chicago over the last 15 years, we now have tremendous evidence and insight,” she said. “But we cannot simply expect this evidence to then translate into national implications. We actually have to be very conscious about how we do this.

“How do we develop federal partnerships to free up federal money to scale the things that are working? How do we work with governors and other states to leverage lessons learned? So what excites me is that kind of innovation.”