The Chicago Police Department has a problem with racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic police officers on the force. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other extremist groups are represented among the CPD’s roughly 12,000 sworn members.

The city inspector general’s office has called attention to this policing problem before, to little effect. So in a recent letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson, copied to police Superintendent Larry Snelling and other public safety officials, Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Tobara Richardson raised the issue in excruciating detail.

Comparing Chicago’s ineffectual response so far to what other cities have done, Richardson calls on Johnson to form a multiagency task force to seek a whole-of-government approach to the problem.

A blue-ribbon commission would be all well and good. But there is no reason for bureaucratic hand-wringing on this one. There should be no room for overt racists and anti-government zealots on Chicago’s police force, and Johnson and Snelling should act to eradicate their presence now.

In fact, no new laws or rules may be needed. Rule No. 2 of the CPD’s code of conduct prohibits any action that “brings discredit upon the Department.” A separate rule explicitly prohibits membership or association with groups that have a known racial bias.

CPD also has history on its side. Richardson’s letter to Johnson cites a 1960s case in which the grand dragon of the Illinois Ku Klux Klan was a Chicago police officer — and was fired because of it, along with two other Klansmen officers.

A city lawyer summed up the thinking in simple terms. “I think it is incongruous for the (police) board to believe he can be a........

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