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In this Oct. 20, 2014 frame from dash-cam video provided by the Chicago Police Department, Laquan McDonald, right, walks down the street moments before being fatally shot by CPD officer Jason Van Dyke sixteen times in Chicago.(Photo: AP)

CHICAGO Black Lives Matter activistsand other civil rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in an attemptto force court-monitoring of the embattled Chicago Police Department's reform efforts.

The lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Northern Illinois comes after Mayor Rahm Emanuels administration said earlier this month that it had floated a proposal to the Justice Department to install an independent monitor to oversee reform efforts in the police department. The Emanuel proposal would not require the police department to enter what is known as a consent decree, which requires court monitoring. That proposal is under review by Justice Departmentofficials.

The plaintiffs include the groupsBlack LivesMatter Chicago, Blocks Together,Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Justice for Families, Network 49, Women's All Points Bulletin and 411 Movement for Pierre Loury as well as six people who say they have faced excessive forceby Chicago cops.

The City of Chicago has proven time and time again that it is incapable of ending its own regime of terror, brutality and discriminatory policing, the plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit. It is clear that federal court intervention is essential to end the historical and ongoing pattern and practice of excessive force by police officers in Chicago.

The Justice Department completed a 13-month investigation in January of the police department days before President Trump was inaugurated. The investigation, which was spurred by widespread protests in the city following the court-ordered release of video that showed a white police officer fatally shooting a black teen as he ran from cops, found that the nations second-largest police department was beset by racial bias, excessive use of force and a cover-up culture within the ranks.

The Justice Department forced more than a dozen troubled police departmentssuch as the ones in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimoreinto consent decrees during the Obama administration. But Trumps attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that he worries the decrees undermine police and that he will avoid using them.

Emanuel, who is under intense pressure to takesteps to reform the department, had expressed support for entering a consent decree during the Obama administration. But earlier this month, his administration indicated that an independent monitor might be the best step to take, considering Sessions aversion to taking the step.

City officials planto hold a news conference later Wednesday to discuss the lawsuit.

Even before the release in November 2015 of police video of the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, Chicago Police faced mistrustin large swaths of Chicagos black and Latino communities. (The officer who fired the shots, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder on the same day as the video's release and is awaiting trial.)

The city council offered a formal apology and set aside millions of dollars for reparations for the more than 100 people who allegethat police officers under former police commander Jon Burge's committed horrific abuses against them. The suspects were subjected to mock executions and electric shock and beaten with telephone books as their interrogators flung racial epithets at them. A Chicago Police Department review board ruled in 1993 that Burge's officers had used torture, and he was fired.

The police department and American Civil Liberties Union in August 2015 entered an agreement on monitoring how officersgoabout conducting street stops of citizens in the nations third-largest city. The agreement came after ACLU published a study that showed black Chicagoans were subjected to 72% of stop-and-frisk searcheseven though theymake up only about a third of the city's population.

Chicago has paid more than $600 million in settlements and legal fees related to accusations of police misconduct since 2004. In the last two years, at least 99 cases were filed by people alleging excessive use of force by Chicago Police, the plaintiffs contend.

Prior tothe Justice Department issuingits scathing report about policing in Chicago at the end of the Obama administration, the city and police announcedseveral reforms, including implementing a field training officer program for new cops, revising the departments use of force policy and began the process of issuing police body cameras.

But the plaintiffs contend that Chicagos long and troubled history underscores why court-monitored oversight of changesis necessary.

Absent federal court supervision, nothing will improve. Internal revisions to the (Chicago Police Department)accountability and operational structures have failed to ameliorate conditions on the ground for those subjected on a daily basis to police abuse, the plaintiffs wrote in the lawsuit. (Chicago Police Department) policy changes, implemented over the years are superficial changes in name only.

Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondentAamer Madhani on Twitter:@AamerISmad

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