Notorious Cop Glenn Evans Back To Work, And Now His Old Boss Is In Charge

BY ANDREW FAN and SAM STECKLOW

Glenn Evans is back. The former Chicago Police commander accused of shoving his gun down a suspect’s throat has wrapped up his suspension and returned to a department now led by his old boss Eddie Johnson.

Earlier this month, Police Supt. Johnson told a small gathering of the Park Manor Neighbors Community Council that Evans, who was acquitted of the aggravated battery and official misconduct charges tied to the 2013 incident in December, is back on the force after a 1½-year suspension.

Evans, demoted to lieutenant, is on administrative duty at police headquarters in Bronzeville.

Johnson recently declared he’s never witnessed police misconduct, but he directly supervised Evans during a time when a series of serious misconduct charges were lodged against Evans.

With the exception of a single one-year stretch, Evans reported directly to Johnson between March 2008 and March 2014. While working under the future superintendent, Evans racked up at least 11 formal complaints, including an incident in which then-lieutenant Evansallegedly fractured bones in a woman’s face at the headquarters of the district where Johnson was commander.

Even though investigators eventually recommended discipline for Evans in that case, he later was promoted to district commander, again serving directly under Johnson, who at that point was a deputy chief.

Shared history

Johnson’s confirmation of Evans’ return to the force, which came in response to an audience question during an unannounced visit to a South Side community meeting at St. Columbanus Church, comes five months after Evans was acquitted of the battery and misconduct charges.

In January 2013, then-commander Evans was alleged to have chased a gun-possession suspect into an abandoned building, where he was accused of tackling the man, sticking his gun into the man’s mouth and pressing his Taser against the man’s groin. 

While serving under Johnson as both a lieutenant and later a district commander, Evans won widespread praise from community leaders for his aggressive style of policing. Still, the numerous excessive force allegations surrounding Evans call into question whether his longtime supervisor, now head of the Police Department, can truly address police misconduct in the city.

In a March 29 interview with CBS2, Johnson declared that “I’ve actually never encountered police misconduct, ’cause you got to understand, officers that commit misconduct don’t do it in front of people that they think are going to hold them accountable for it.”

Several cases involving Evans, who did not respond to interview requests, and other officers serving under Johnson raise doubts about that claim.

Johnson and Evans: A Timeline (story continues below)

Johnson commanded the Gresham District, which includes the South Side neighborhoods of Chatham, Auburn Gresham and Park Manor, between March 2008 and August 2011. Evans served as one of his lieutenants during that period.

In April 2011, Evans allegedly pushed his hand into the face of a recently arrested woman, Rita King, for minutes on end. King claimed in a federal lawsuit that Evans repeatedly told her, “I’m going to push your nose through your brain,” and hospital records from a visit several days later show that King suffered multiple bone fractures in her face, according to a report by WBEZ.

The Independent Police Review Authority, the police watchdog often criticized for supporting officers against their accusers, found some of her claims credible and recommended Evans receive a 15-day suspension. The incident involving Evans took place inside the Gresham District headquarters, where both Evans and Johnson worked at the time.

IPRA sustained a second complaint against Evans later in 2011, stemming from when the lieutenant, off-duty and in civilian clothes, allegedly threatened Chas Byars at a South Side diner after Byars criticized his treatment of another patron. While arresting Byars, Evans caused the man’s infant son to fall from his carrier and hit his head on a table. IPRA recommended a seven-day suspension for Evans in the case. This incident took place after Johnson had been moved to an interim position in which he was not Evans’ direct superior.

Despite the charges, Evans soon would be promoted to work directly under Johnson again. After then Supt. Garry McCarthy elevated Johnson to deputy chief for Area Central in March 2012, Evans was chosen to serve as one of his district commanders — bypassing the rank of captain entirely — to take over the Grand Crossing District, just northeast of his old post in the Gresham District.

More accusations against Evans

Evans continued to rack up citizen complaints, even while in charge of an entire police district. While serving under Johnson as the commander of the Grand Crossing District, Evans received eight complaints in a little more than 1½ years, according to data from the Invisible Institute.

During that period, only 14 of the Chicago Police Department’s roughly 12,000 officers received more complaints than Evans. His complaint numbers were high for a senior officer: The 22 current district commanders received only six total complaints in the same stretch. In total, police records obtained by WBEZ show that Evans has been the subject of more than 120 misconduct allegations over the course of his nearly 30-year career. About half of these cases relate to excessive force.

Additionally, four federal lawsuits have named Evans as a defendant for acts of alleged misconduct committed while directly under Johnson’s command. Since 2002, the city has paid out more than $300,000 in settlements stemming from misconduct complaints against Evans, without admitting to any wrongdoing.

Evans is not the only Johnson subordinate facing misconduct allegations. An Injustice Watch investigation last month identified 15 other federal lawsuits naming officers who served under Johnson’s command.

Community members appreciated the working relationship between the two officers, however, with some tying Evans’ tactics under Johnson’s supervision to a general decline in crime.

After Johnson was assigned to the Gresham District and promoted Evans to be his tactical lieutenant, “Crime ceased to rise and started to decline. Our community was elated at the effectiveness of both Commander Johnson and Lieutenant Evans,” Keith Tate, president of the Chatham/Avalon Park Community Council, said at a September 2014 Police Board hearing.

Tate also tied Evans’ later “relentless efforts” in the Grand Crossing District to a drop in the crime rate.

At the meeting in Park Manor this month, Johnson declined to elaborate on exactly where in the department Evans’ new job is, though police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi clarified that Evans, who returned to work on May 1, is still stripped of his police powers. He had been on an unpaid suspension since his indictment in August 2014.

Though Evans was acquitted of criminal charges in December, he remains the subject of an IPRA investigation, according to Guglielmi. Johnson’s announcement of Evans’ return originally was noted by Worlee Glover, a community member who attended the meeting, on the Facebook group Concerned Citizens of Chatham.

Community remains supportive

Despite the many accusations against Evans, he remains well-regarded by community members in his old districts. Park Manor Neighbors Community Council President Darlene Tribue said in a phone interview that as commander, Evans made the Park Manor community, which sits between the Grand Crossing and Gresham districts, feel safer.

“They would see him standing on the street, and the gangs would run the other way,” she said.

When Supt. McCarthy transferred him from the Grand Crossing District to the Harrison District on the West Side in March 2014, Tribue led community members to protest outside police headquarters. McCarthy acknowledged the community’s frustration, saying at a Police Board hearing that month that he had moved Evans because he was his “favorite among [his] favorites,” and needed him in the increasingly violent West Side district.

“I don’t condone any violation of the law but I respect Commander Evans because he is brutally honest with residents about what is going on,” Glover wrote in an email. “There were those in attendance [at the Park Manor meeting] who made it clear they would take Commander Evans back.”

Tribue said in a phone interview Tuesday that things in Park Manor since Evans left are “back to the way [they] were before him.”

On the surface, the city crime statistics reflect her statement. While Evans was Grand Crossing District commander, serious crimes steadily declined, hitting a plateau in 2015, the first year after he left.

These statistics mirror citywide crime drops, however, and the Police Department’s record-keeping under McCarthy has been called into question in probes by CBS Chicago, Chicago magazine and Truthout.

“All of us would welcome him back,” Tribue said, while noting that many of the incidents of accused misconduct occurred within the neighboring Grand Crossing District.

According to the Citizens Police Data Project, those incidents include at least seven allegations, with an additional five originating in the neighboring Gresham District.

The decision about whether Evans returns now rests partly in the hands of his old boss.

This report was published in collaboration with DNAinfo Chicago. Additional reporting by Darryl Holliday.

One Change Police Can Make to Show They’re Serious About Reform

BY ELEANORE CATOLICO

Very few police misconduct complaints see the light of day. Only about 7 percent are sustained, and only 2 percent result in officer discipline, according to the City of Chicago’s own data. What most troubles people looking to enhance police accountability, including Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s handpicked task force, is that the majority ofthe complaints never get investigated.

Of the 17,700 civilian complaints filed from 2011 to 2014, investigators didn’t open cases on 58 percent of them. Why? They were marked “no affidavit.” Due to a state law and police union contract rules, civilians must sign sworn affidavits to accompany their official complaints.

After a blistering 200-page task force report detailed the alleged failures of the Police Department, Emanuel and the city’s new top cop Eddie Johnson say that they’re ready to tackle police accountability and transparency. One way to regain the public trust, as suggested by groups as diverse as state lawmakers, policy researchers, civilian advocacy groups and the Independent Police Review Authority, is to nix the affidavit requirement and start investigating more claims.

The affidavit requirement is enshrined in the current police union contract—and it became a state law in 2004, after the city’s police union lobbied for it. Proponents of the law argue that it’s a deterrent for false claims and helps make the investigative process fair for police officers. Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo told the Chicago Tribune last year that the law protected officers from biased or unfounded misconduct allegations.

But opponents of the requirement, including the Police Accountability Task Force, appointed by the mayor, say the law has a chilling effect.

“The affidavit requirement keeps people from bringing complaints and helps some police misconduct remain hidden from view,” the task force report reads. “[M]any citizens lack faith in the oversight structure or broader legal system and may think that even if their complaint is justified, signing an affidavit could put them in legal jeopardy.”

And there’s some merit to that, though IPRA spokesperson Mia Sissac couldn’t name a particular instance where an affidavit was used against a complainant in court. The reality is that the signed, notarized document could be used against complainants under suspicion of perjury, which is a Class 3 felony in Illinois.

Another reason the affidavit presents a barrier is the requirement that complainants sign the form in the presence of an IPRA employee.

“Either the affidavit is signed at HQ or the investigators have to go to the complainant to have the paper signed,” says Bocar Ba, a doctorate student at the University of Chicago Harris School of Public Policy who has conducted research on the affidavit requirement. “In both cases, distance is an important factor.”

Right now, it’s up to the rapid response investigators to collect the affidavit within 30 days of the complaint filing or the complaint will get marked “no affidavit,” according to IPRA’s intake and rapid response manual.  Investigators coordinate with complainants to get these sworn testimonies on the books.

“Overall, the investigators will make every good faith effort — visiting homes, hospitals, jails, etc. — to obtain an affidavit at the same time they are taking a statement,” Sissac said.

But, according to the task force report, this practice has waned in recent years. IPRA has no clear guidelines on when an investigator is sent to retrieve a signed affidavit from a complainant.

“Investigators used to actively seek out the affidavits, sometimes even knocking on doors,” the report reads. “Investigators now play a much more passive role and have placed the burden on the complainant.”

Ba found that the proportion of affidavits signed dropped by 15 percent after IPRA moved its headquarters from its South Side location on 35th Street to the Goldblatt’s Building at Chicago and Ashland avenues in late 2011. The new, nondescript location currently lacks clear outdoor IPRA signage and sits nearly a mile from the nearest L station.

African-Americans saw the highest drop in affidavits signed as compared to other minority groups following IPRA’s move to the North Side.

Ba emphasizes that dropping complaints without affidavits doesn’t just hurt the complainant, it also hurts the Police Department — even if investigators rule that the complaint is not sustained.

“[I]f the affidavit is not signed, nothing will appear on the disciplinary history of the officer,” Ba said. “So essentially, the complaint is not binding and it is not a credible threat. If it’s fully investigated and we know that the officer was innocent, it provides useful information.” With the affidavit requirement in place, the complaint is ignored completely, he said.

In very rare cases, investigators can bypass the affidavit. If the complaint alleges criminal misconduct and the information provided proves “sufficiency based on objective verifiable evidence” — for example, video footage — then an investigator can request an override affidavit exception. The commanding officer of the Internal Affairs Division has the final say for IPRA cases, according to the FOP’s collective bargaining agreement with the city. But the “override process” is under-used, the task force found. Twenty-two “no affidavit” complaints that accuse officers of criminal misconduct never got an override request between 2011 and 2015, according to the Citizens Police Data Project. Four of those complaints accuse officers of criminal sexual assault and were never investigated.

The Commission on Accreditation of Law Enforcement Agencies (CALEA), which developsnational standards for public safety and law enforcement agencies, has joined the chorus of organizations that don’t consider the affidavit law best practice.

“[A]gencies should investigate all allegations of misconduct, regardless of their source,” CALEA recommends. “The agency [should] carefully review each complaint for validation before disregarding it for lack of a credible complainant” in the case of anonymous complaints.

In an open letter posted on IPRA’s website, Chief Administrator Sharon Fairley said that the agency had begun implementing some of the task force’s recommendations, including new case review procedures that will improve the quality of investigations and the implementation of guidelines for when an override of the affidavit requirement can be used.

Illinois legislators are taking action to reform the law that requires affidavits at the state level. In January, State Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago, introduced HB 4476, which, among other things, seeks to eliminate the need for the affidavit requirement.

“HB 4476 will not require a public employer to investigate every complaint of alleged police officer misconduct,” Flowers said. “But it will prevent a public employer from using state law as justification for its failure to do so.”

Right now, the bill is being stalled in the Rules committee.

“We need to all be working on these issues,” she said. “Millions of dollars are paid out and so many lives are affected. It’s incumbent upon all of us to make sure this system works for everyone.”

This report was produced in partnership with The Chicago Reporter.

Data Plays Central Role in Police Reform Efforts in Chicago and Beyond

BY ANDREW FAN

Over the last 20 years, a data revolution has swept policing, with sophisticated computer programs that track and predict wrongdoing helping police across the country drive crime rates to record lows.

Now that same revolution may finally be coming to police accountability.

On April 13th, a special mayoral task force, appointed in the wake of the Laquan McDonald protests, announced the findings of its investigation into the Chicago Police Department, bluntly declaring that “the community’s lack of trust in the police is justified.”

The task force’s claims rest on a mountain of data, cataloging major racial disparities in everything from police shootings to traffic stops to promotions within the CPD. Their report states that “the CPD’s own data gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.”

Police Accountability Task Force chair Lori Lightfoot speaks about the findings of the panel’s report at the Harold Washington Library on April 13, 2016. (Stacey Rupulo/Chicago Reporter)

Data is driving police reform in Chicago and beyond. Nationally, a wave of organizations is beginning to document and quantify police misconduct, sometimes using the same approaches police departments use to track crime. In Chicago, police data compiled by journalists, activists, and academics provided central evidence for the task force’s report. The report’s proposed reforms also lean heavily on data analysis to identify and reduce misconduct, meaning the work done by watchdogs and media organizations could eventually be standard practice within the CPD.

Despite the task force’s sweeping claims, their report provides extensive detail for only one case of alleged police misconduct – the shooting of Laquan McDonald. Instead many of the task force’s key assertions rely on a type of analysis known as “disparate impact,” which examines whether policies and practices disproportionately hurt minority groups in order to prove the existence of discrimination.

Often used in housing discrimination cases, disparate impact has been increasingly applied to police departments, playing a major part in the Justice Department’s recent investigation of the Ferguson Police Department. In New York City, a disparate impact analysis built on sophisticated statistical work helped convince a judge to sharply limit the NYPD’s controversial “stop and frisk” program. Judge Shira Scheindlin wrote that “NYPD officers are more likely to stop blacks and Hispanics than whites… even after controlling for other relevant variables” like local crime rates.

While Chicago’s task force employed a less detailed approach, it also found “significant disparate impacts associated with the use of force, foot and traffic stops and bias in the police oversight system itself. African-Americans make up about a third of Chicago’s population, but 74% of those shot by the police and 72% of those stopped by the police. African-Americans are also far more likely to file complaints, but far less likely to see any form of disciple for the accused officer.

The task force’s conclusions rely on work by a host of organizations in Chicago. The ACLU of Illinois originally released the data on CPD investigatory stops in March of 2015. Seven months later, the Invisible Institute launched an initiative called the “Citizen’s Police Data Project” which provided the data on over 50,000 police complaints.

Nationally, organizations are working on similar initiatives. The Guardian and the Washington Post have both launched projects to track the number of Americans killed by the police. Their work revealed hundreds of police killings not reflected in data kept by the FBI, which relies on self-reporting from local police.  Earlier this month the Post won a Pulitzer Prize for “its revelatory initiative” in creating its database and reporting on the findings.

Meanwhile, the New York Legal Aid Society – the nation’s largest public defender organization – has created the Cop Accountability Project, a database of misconduct claims lodged against NYPD officers. Unlike data projects aimed at the media and the general public, the Legal Aid Society’s work aims to help defense lawyers push back against the police in individual court cases.

Joanna Schwartz, a UCLA law professor who studies police reform and misconduct litigation, says that the last few years have seen “real movement on the data side,” with public concern about police misconduct and easier access to information helping to drive a diverse set of data-based police accountability projects.

Data also plays a central role in the Chicago task force’s recommendations for reform. In stark contrast to the CPD’s embrace of software used to analyze crime trends, the task force notesthat IPRA – the police oversight body – “has had the power to examine patterns of complaints when investigating police misconduct, but has not exercised it.”

The task force aims to change that, recommending that new oversight bodies regularly look for patterns of misconduct and use that information to investigate potential abuse.

The report also calls for the implementation of an Early Intervention System (EIS), which uses officer data to predict problematic behavior and allow supervisors to step in. Schwartz sees similarities between an EIS and the crime-tracking software embraced by police departments, noting that “early intervention systems are, in their design, very similar to Compstat,” the crime analysis program used by the CPD.

The CPD originally attempted to launch a data-based EIS during the 1990s, but discontinued the program after a few years. The task force cites lackluster support from CPD leadership and“opposition from the FOP” for the program’s cancellation.

Given the strength of Chicago’s police union, it remains to be seen how many of the task force’s recommendations will be enacted, but the increasing use of data by media and nonprofit organizations is already guiding serious conversations about the department’s future. As organizations in Chicago and around the country continue to refine databases and programsto monitor the police, it looks like data is becoming a central part of police reform.

This report was published in collaboration with The Chicago Reporter.

New Bill Would Nix IPRA in Favor of Revamped Police Oversight

BY SAM STECKLOW

If a new police accountability ordinance passes City Council muster, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority would be abolished and replaced with a new organization dubbed “truly independent” by supporters but lambasted as a mere “IPRA plus” by critics.

Fifth Ward alderman Leslie Hairston announced a bill Tuesday that would create an Independent Civilian Police Monitor (ICPM), a new police oversight board she says would be more removed from the political process than IPRA, and more transparent about its investigations and findings.

“The establishment of an Independent Civilian Police Monitor is a win-win for both police and the public,” Hairston said during Tuesday’s press conference. “Chicago is under a microscope, and how we choose to respond to this moment will define us as elected officials and as a city.”

Her announcement came after months of protests against the current police accountability system in Chicago, and on the heels of controversy encircling Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s pick for new police superintendent.

University of Chicago law professor and longtime police accountability activist Craig Futterman helped draft the ordinance. “Everything this agency does, unlike IPRA, will be fully transparent, so that everybody can see, from beginning to end, when a situation goes down within hours, information’s going to be released to everybody,” Futterman said at the press conference. “That’s how you gain trust—by being honest with people.”

Under the current system, the head of IPRA is appointed by the mayor. Under the new ordinance, a selection committee would choose three publicly vetted candidates and recommend one for City Council approval. The selection committee would consist of representatives from civil rights groups, immigrant rights groups, LGBTQ rights groups, faith groups, and the mayor’s office, along with participation from the city’s lead police, fire, and legal organizations. The proposal bars former employees of the Chicago Police Department or Cook County state’s attorney’s office from working at the ICPM.

The ICPM’s investigative mandate would also be wider-ranging than IPRA’s, which is limited to investigating complaints made against police officers, as well as firearm discharge and death or injury under police watch.

In the new ordinance language, the ICPM would investigate any perceived or alleged misconduct by police officers, even without a civilian complaint. The ICPM would also analyze patterns within the police department, making regular public reports to the mayor and the superintendent, and maintaining its own database—something IPRA does not have and that often hampers investigations.

The ICPM ordinance also calls for a sharp increase in funding tied directly to the CPD—1.5 percent of the CPD’s budget. For comparison, Mayor Emanuel’s 2016 budget, approved by City Council, allotted $1.4 billion to the CPD and just $8.4 million for IPRA.

Additionally, the ICPM’s staffing would be tied proportionally to CPD’s, at one investigator per 100 police officers.

Reactions to the proposed legislation from police observers has so far been mixed.

“The proposed ordinance covers all the important bases: independent review of individual complaints, and an audit function regarding patterns and trends of officer conduct,” saidSamuel Walker, a police accountability expert and professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha. Walker regularly advises police departments, including Chicago’s, on oversight.

But within hours of Hairston’s announcement, the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR), an activist organization that has been working for years on a more wide-ranging proposal for police oversight, tweeted its disapproval.

We're soon issuing a response to this FRAUDULENT plan, which amounts to reopening IPRA as 'IPRA plus' (Monitor). https://t.co/huCMs96WK4

— The Chicago Alliance (@NAARPR) April 6, 2016

“It’s the same bullshit,” said Frank Chapman, a longtime organizer with CAARPR. “All it is is rearranging seats on the Titanic. We don’t want that. We want community control of the police.”

Hairston, whose ward includes parts of Hyde Park and South Shore, declined to address CAARPR’s specific criticisms. “What we can all agree on is that we all want accountability and transparency with this new agency,” she said in a phone interview Wednesday. “They have their view as to how this should go and I have my view.”

CAARPR, founded in 1973 with an implicit goal of establishing civilian control of the police, has been advocating for a similar plan called theCivilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) for the last four years, and has urged the activist community to “soundly reject” the proposed ordinance.

“Through CPAC, the Independent Police Review Authority would be replaced, the police board would be replaced, and the Internal Affairs department would be replaced,” Chapman said. “CPAC, as a political entity, would be an elected body. It would not be by appointment.”

Chapman also argues that the proposal does nothing to change the practices of the mayoral-appointed Chicago Police Board, which rarely moves to discipline officers. (For example, the board has yet to followformer superintendent Garry McCarthy’s recommendation to fire detective Dante Servin, who killed Rekia Boyd in 2012.

UIC political science professor Dick Simpson agrees that control over the police board is key. “IPRA has been a major problem, but the overall discipline of police, particularly by [the] police board, is a major problem,” he said. Simpson is a longtime advocate of an elected police board.

In an e-mail, police board head Lori Lightfoot, also a member of the mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force, said she had not reviewed the ordinance, but that “the Task Force will be releasing detailed findings next week, some of which will address the same topics as the ordinance.” (The task force has been delayed in issuing its report, which had been scheduled to come out in late March.)

At Tuesday’s press conference, Hairston said she plans to introduce the police monitor ordinance in City Council “May or June.” As of press time, no other aldermen had publicly supported the ordinance, though Hairston said Wednesday that unnamed aldermen had already reached out to her to express their approval. If passed, the law could take effect as early as January of next year.

This report was produced in partnership with the Chicago Reader. 

After Saying #ByeAnita, Chicago's Young Black Organizers Continue Calls for Justice

BY ELEANORE CATOLICO

“This board is illegitimate!”

The cry reverberated inside police headquarters in Bronzeville on Thursday during a meeting of the Chicago Police Board. Activists with the Black Lives Matter movement turned out to demand justice for Rekia Boyd, the 22-year-old woman shot and killed by off-duty officer Dante Servin in 2012. Servin was criminally charged, but his case was thrown out due to a legal technicality, an outcome some critics blamed on Alvarez’s office.

About 40 members of Black Youth Project 100, Assata’s Daughters, and other affiliated groups, each of which had campaigned to oust incumbent Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez, donned bright yellow shirts that read fire dante Servin.

At the meeting’s outset, police board president Lori Lightfoot said Servin’s public hearing would take place May 19. Demonstrators met the announcement with jeers. Former police superintendent Garry McCarthy recommended that Servin be fired nearly four months ago. Still, the police board has not heard the case.

(Michael Key/City Bureau)

The delay, said BYP100 organizer Damon Williams, “is an assertion of power to prove to the community that . . . our demands don’t matter. It seems to invalidate our presence.”

In anticipation of the four-year anniversary of Boyd’s death this Monday, BYP100 hopes the #SayHerName campaign, aimed at shedding light on black women and girls who are victims of police violence, catches fire as quickly as #ByeAnita, the social media campaign critical of Alvarez that took root in the run-up to the primary.

“We’re here to put pressure on the board, and prove their dishonesty,” Williams said, “[and] their lack of respect for human life.”

The first speaker during the meeting’s public comment section was Dorothy Holmes, the mother of Ronald Johnson III, who was fatally shot by Chicago police officer George Hernandez in October 2014 during a foot pursuit. Dash-cam footage released last December shows Johnson running away from police before he was shot and killed. Shortly after the video’s release, Alvarez declined to file charges against Hernandez because Johnson was carrying a gun when he was shot. Both Alvarez and Johnson’s lawyer blamed the slow process on the Independent Police Review Authority.

“We’re getting tired as hell. Ya’ll just as guilty as these police officers,” Holmes said, addressing the board. “Everyone else ain’t safe but ya’ll are.”

The sentiment was echoed by activists who took the microphone. Among their demands: an elected police board, the redirection of funds from the police department to schools and clinics, and Servin’s dismissal.

Community members not affiliated with BYP 100 attempted to walk to the podium and speak but were drowned out by the activists’ chants. At one point, a woman defended another person’s right to speak, which resulted in a tense verbal exchange between the activists and other attendees.

(Michael Key/City Bureau)

The demonstrators eventually came together in the center of the room and began to chant, “Fuck Lori Lightfoot!”

About a half hour after after the protest began, Lightfoot said, “Officers, please clear the room,” and demonstrators were escorted outside. Lightfoot adjourned the meeting shortly thereafter. (The Chicago Police Department declined to comment on particular tactics used to escort protesters out of the room.)

It was the second time in the past month that an action by black youth activists in Chicago led to the interruption of a public meeting on police matters. Demonstrators previously disrupted a Police Accountability Task Force meeting.

Outside police headquarters, the activists joined hands in solidarity. Among those in attendance were people whose loved ones were harmed by a police force that, demonstrators say, doesn’t care about the loss of black life. Martinez Sutton, Boyd’s brother, has become a fixture at these meetings and protests. A man who identified himself as representative of Bettie Jones, who was shot and killed the day after Christmas in what police admitted was an “accident,” said officers had no respect for her life. Shapearl Wells, the mother of Courtney Copeland, who was killed this month but whose shooter remains unknown, said police had not done enough to find his killer.

“I don’t see this type of bloodshed and ravage on the Gold Coast,” Wells said. “This is a choice to allow our black and brown children to die in the streets.”

This report was published in collaboration with the Chicago Reader.

New Police Reforms in Newark May Hint at Chicago’s Future

BY ANDREW FAN

First Garry McCarthy ran the police department. Then the ACLU filed a lawsuit. Then the Department of Justice came knocking.

Sound like Chicago? It is, but it is also what happened in Newark—about four and a half years before us.

The results of that Department of Justice probe are now codified in a reform agreement announced this week, which includes sweeping accountability reforms and federal monitoring that could cost Newark up to $7.4 million over the course of the agreement.

Former Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. (Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune)

In May 2011, McCarthy stepped down from his post as police director in Newark to become Chicago’s police superintendent; within a week, the Department of Justice had announced a civil rights investigation of the Newark Police Department. Four years later, McCarthy was forced out in Chicago, and again his departure was closely followed by a federal probe, which is ongoing.

In both Newark and Chicago, McCarthy employed data-based policing techniques that provoked complaints about racial profiling, even as they reportedly reduced crime.

McCarthy and his supporters have argued that aggressive policing and “broken windows” strategies work. In Newark, a city with a murder rate about twice Chicago’s, McCarthy used CompStat—crime-tracking software favored by his friend and former boss, NYPD Commissioner Bill Bratton—and flooded high-crime areas with police. He presided over a 46 percent drop in shootings over four years.

Using similar tactics in Chicago, McCarthy pressured officers to increase street stops, which increased more than 50 percent in his first two years. Police said Chicago saw a 38 percent overall crime dropbetween 2011 and 2015. (But, as Chicag first reported in April 2014, some of these drops may have been exaggerated.)

The Justice Department’s probe found widespread unconstitutional practices in Newark, much of it during McCarthy’s command. Seventy-five percent of Newark police stops lacked legal justification, and these stops disproportionately affected African Americans. The Justice Department also claimed that the department’s policies “effectively promote[d] a view that living or simply being in a high-area is criminally suspicious.” Meanwhile, the ACLU of Illinois uncovered evidence of similar issues in Chicago, finding that police conducted 250,000 stops without arrests during the summer of 2014, four times the rate of stops at the height of New York’s controversial “stop and frisk” program.

In Newark, the Justice Department also found a “pattern or practice of unconstitutional force” and faulted an internal review process that sustained only one civilian use-of-force complaint during a six-year period that included McCarthy’s entire tenure. In Chicago, less than two percent of complaints filed between March 2011 and September 2015 resulted in disciplinary action, according to police data obtained by the Invisible Institute.

As part of the reform agreement, Newark’s police department must now make over 50 changes to its use-of-force policies, including limits on firing at vehicles, mandatory reports every time an officer points a gun, and stricter limits on both lethal and nonlethal force. A former attorney general was tapped to be the department’s federal monitor for five years—more if the reforms are not sufficiently implemented.

A legal expert told the Tribune that reforms and monitoring in Chicago could come close to $100 million, but the Newark agreement caps the expenses for the first five years at $7.4 million. Newark Mayor Ras Baraka said he was “not ecstatic” about spending that much money, according to the Associated Press, but Baraka said the changes could save the city money through fewer police complaint lawsuits, which cost Newark $5 million from 2007 to 2009. (Chicago paid $5 million in its Laquan McDonald settlement alone and since 2004 has paid more than $660 million in police misconduct settlements.)

New interim police superintendent Eddie Johnson must now confront a surge in homicides while addressing rising public anger over police misconduct. The previous interim superintendent, John Escalante, said last month that he would expand the use of CompStat, but Johnson hasn’t yet commented on specific strategies, only that, “We’ll talk about what’s gone well and what’s gone wrong and how we can make things right.”

This report was produced in collaboration with Chicago magazine.

How Chicago's 'Fraternal Order of Propaganda' Shapes the Story of Fatal Police Shootings

December 15, 2012, was a bleak, rainy Saturday with a chill in the air. Chicago police officer Ruth Castelli, an eight-year veteran of the force, was patrolling the city's southwest side with fellow officer Christopher Hackett. The two didn't usually ride together, but Castelli's regular partner was on leave. The day started innocuously enough—earlier that morning Castelli had participated in "Shop With a Cop," a seasonal initiative that sends officers on a shopping trip to Target with underprivileged children on their beat. The rest of the day proved to be far more consequential.

Castelli and Hackett were in their Chevy Tahoe when word came in: according to testimony that Castelli later gave, around 11:15 AM a dispatcher called over the radio that four black men in a silver SUV had just robbed someone at gunpoint at a gas station at 38th and Kedzie. Castelli and Hackett sped off to find the vehicle, their sirens silent.

The story of what happened next would gradually take shape based on bits of information, coming first from Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Pat Camden, and then eventually from a Chicago Police Department statement attributed to then-superintendent Garry McCarthy.

The tale they told would be used to justify the fatal shooting of an unarmed man—and to absolve the officer involved of any wrongdoing.

Camden explained how the scene unfolded. In conversations reported by the Chicago Sun-Times and the Chicago Tribune, he described a tense and dangerous encounter between Castelli, Hackett, and 23-year-old Englewood resident Jamaal Moore. Moore was a suspect in the gas station robbery, Camden said. A 911 call reporting the incident sent Castelli and Hackett on the chase. News reports differ on what Moore and his cohort were accused of—some quote Camden alleging one robbery, while another attributed a string of robberies to the inhabitants of the silver-gray SUV. There was also confusion about the exact number of people in the automobile.

Regardless, Camden went on, within 90 seconds of the dispatch, Castelli and Hackett were hot on the trail of the SUV. Their own police vehicle topped out at 70 miles per hour, Castelli later told investigators. The chase ended when the fleeing driver careened the SUV into a large black lamppost at Garfield and Ashland. Most of the passengers jumped out and ran, Camden said.

What happened next is hazy in news reports—one of the police cars on the scene skidded onto the sidewalk, McCarthy said, and "may have hit Moore," who was struggling to get out of the car.

Hackett then wrestled with Moore, according to news reports. "[Hackett] was thrown around like a rag doll," McCarthy told reporters at an unrelated press conference later that day. Then, as Hackett tried to handcuff Moore, the 23-year-old flipped him to the ground not once but twice. One of the officers yelled that Moore had a gun. After that, said McCarthy, Moore charged at Castelli.

She responded by firing her 9mm semiautomatic handgun.

"Based on the male officer saying that [Moore] had a gun, she was in fear and she fired twice, striking him," McCarthy said.

When the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA)—the body that investigates police shootings—eventually cleared Castelli of any wrongdoing in Moore's death, the agency cited what had by then become a familiar narrative, crafted and repeated by both the FOP and CPD: the officers were preventing Moore's escape following an alleged armed robbery attempt, and they "reasonably believe[d] that such force [was] necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm" to Castelli, her partner, or anyone else.

There was just one problem: this story wasn't true.

“Anytime I talked to the media, it was always a disclaimer at the front end. These statements are based on preliminary facts immediately following the incident . . . facts always subject to change.”

—PAT CAMDEN­

Key aspects of the media's original reporting began to fall apart just hours after Moore was shot. First, Moore's connection to the robbery was called into question. On the day of the shooting, Camden told the Tribune that Moore, ostensibly pegged as the driver of the silver SUV, had "pulled out a weapon" during the alleged truck robbery. But when contacted for a follow-up by DNAinfo, Camden said he had "no idea if there was a robbery" and downgraded the role of the car to "a possibility of a connection" to "a gray SUV."

More discrepancies would emerge, each one discrediting the story initially presented by the police union and CPD, and each calling into question the outcome of IPRA's investigation.

It wasn't the first time or the last that the FOP, through Camden, blurred the lines between fact and fiction. In its dual roles of providing both information to the media and legal defense for its members, the FOP has helped shape the narrative around police shootings, arguing consistently that the officers involved feared for their lives.

There have been 48 fatal police shootings in Chicago since 2012, Camden's first full year on the job. At least 17 have resulted in lawsuits, and at least one—that of Esau Castellanos-Bernal—has resulted in a federal investigation.

(Since no local or national media outlet comprehensively tracked victims of police violence prior to last year, City Bureau and the Reader compiled a data set of fatal police shootings since 2012 based on press releases from the city and CPD, and from local and national media databases. IPRA counts 47 fatal police shootings during this time, based on CPD data. But the department's tally of fatalities has previously been called into questionby Chicago magazine and other news outlets.)

The FOP, through Camden, provided an initial version of events for 35 of these shootings. A City Bureau and Reader analysis found 15 cases in which crucial aspects of Camden's statements were later proved to be false or misleading based on evidence filed in lawsuits, unearthed in media investigations, or captured on video.

A sobering mix of factors enables the FOP to put forth misinformation with little pushback, City Bureau and the Reader found through media analysis, as well as interviews with union officials, labor experts, and local reporters. The Chicago Police Department rarely issues an official statement in the hours immediately following a police shooting—supervisors with the authority to issue statements may be asleep, and the information must work its way through the department's own bureaucracy. In this information vacuum, the news media usually turn to the FOP, frequently citing the police union's version of events as the definitive one. In the media's rush to publish a story, and with few resources to investigate cases further, articles often go to press relying entirely on the FOP's narrative. A legal case tilted in favor of the officer then moves through a weak accountability system heavily circumscribed by the FOP's contract with the city.

According to experts this is just one alarming example of the power of police unions. Police officers—and their unions—possess an increasing sense of invincibility, says Stephen Downing, a retired Los Angeles Police Department deputy chief and board member of Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, a group of current and former police officers and others working against the effects of the "war on drugs."

"The growing strength of police unions over the last 20 years has given them a feeling of impunity and arrogance that their only job is to protect the police officer," Downing says, "regardless of what they've actually done."

Pat Camden boasts of commenting on more than 500 police-involved shootings during more than four decades with the Chicago Police Department and the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7. (Illustration: Paul Higgins/Chicago Reader | Photo: John H. White/Chicago Sun-Times)

Camden enters the scene

On February 1, 2008, Jody Weis was sworn in as the 54th superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. Then-mayor Richard M. Daley gave Weis, a former FBI agent, a mandate regularly thrown at new police chiefs: to stem the tide of shootings in the city while beefing up community policing.

Weis, criticized as an outsider from his first moments on the job, began by cleaning house; three deputy superintendents resigned within days of his hiring. Patrick Camden, a former police officer who called himself the "voice and face" of the department and was a fixture on the scene of police shootings, was among those compelled to retire.

Camden joined the force in 1970 and worked at CPD's Office of News Affairs from 1985 to 1998. He "retired" that year, only to be rehired 24 hours later in the newly created civilian role of deputy news director, a position he held for the next ten years. Camden estimated then that he had offered up information on police shootings 325 times as a department spokesman.

The city had recently undergone a shift in its accountability structure, withthe 2007 creation of IPRA, meant to replace the internal Office of Professional Standards. Unlike OPS, the new agency was run by civilians, and crucially, was billed as being independent from police.

But Camden felt that the launch of IPRA had also stymied the free flow of information he'd been used to directing as press officer for CPD. As he left the department, Camden lamented that, under IPRA, the public knew less about police shootings than it did before.

His public frustration with CPD's new information system found an outlet three years later when he became the spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7.

Camden's presence marked a sea change in the organization's relationship with the media. Then-president Michael Shields announced Camden's hiring in May 2011 with the stated goal of changing the public's perception of the union. To do this, Shields said, "it is imperative to have a voice in the media." Shields saw Camden's experience with CPD—and with local news outlets—as invaluable.

"When Pat Camden shows up on a scene of a police shooting, the media looks to him for guidance," Shields said.

(That year also marked a huge shift in the union's political spending strategy, with total political expenditures more than doubling, according to filings with the Illinois State Board of Elections.)

Prior to 2011, the FOP's official spokesman was its sitting president. City Bureau and the Reader could not find any instance in which Mark Donahue, FOP president from 2002 to 2011, was quoted in a breaking news story about a police shooting.

But under Camden, the union's media reach greatly expanded.

When Camden got a call about a shooting, nine times out of ten he headed straight to his sedan—no coffee, no food, no special uniform—to get to the scene.

"I'm not rushing," Camden said in a recent interview, "but I'm trying to get there in a reasonable amount of time."

He once had a squad car that could clear the streets, but those days were long behind him—without traffic, it took him about 45 minutes to drive into the city from his home in Will County. Once at the scene, his shock of white hair, tan face, and neatly trimmed salt-and-pepper moustache made him easily recognizable.

Camden often arrived after some of the initial confusion had died down. From there, he'd talk to union reps already present. They'd tell him what they'd gleaned from the officer, and Camden would relay that information to the media.

Crucially, he would give his statement from the officer's point of view—before a witness had a chance to comment.

"Somebody says, 'Hey, I want to get on TV'—maybe they haven't been on the scene or anywhere near the scene but they want to be on television," Camden says. "At that point, the officers need to at least get the basic facts of the shooting out."

“Not only did I just lose my son under false pretense, you have [the public] thinking he is ‘that kind of kid.’ It’s lies about him, but that is the story people start believing.”

—GWENDOLYN MOORE, THE MOTHER OF JAMAAL MOORE, WHO WAS FATALLY SHOT BY A CHICAGO POLICE OFFICER IN 2012­

Camden says he was never skeptical of an officer's story—especially the part where an officer feared for his life. Camden always believed him.

"Why would an officer shoot somebody if he wasn't in fear of his life?" he asks.

But many fatal incidents call into question the underlying assumption that cops only shoot civilians when in fear for their own lives.

In March 2012, for example, Rekia Boyd was shot in the back of the head by Dante Servin, an off-duty CPD detective. Camden told the Tribune that Servin, while driving down his block near Douglas Park late at night, saw a group of people "causing a disturbance." When Servin told them to "quiet down," one of them approached his car and pointed a gun in his direction. Servin fired four shots over his shoulder and out of his window, hitting Antonio Cross in the hand and Boyd in the head.

Servin was in fear for his life, Camden said on the scene. Cross, who was taken to the hospital in handcuffs, was charged with assaulting a police officer. Police did not say whether a gun had been recovered, the Tribunenoted; we now know that there was no gun—Cross had been wielding a cell phone as he gestured towards Servin.

Then in September 2013, Marlon Horton was shot and killed by Kenneth Walker, an off-duty police officer working as a security guard at a Chicago Housing Authority development near the United Center. Camden told theTribune that Walker saw Horton and Shaquila Moore, a civilian security guard, struggling in the lobby of the complex. They got Horton to leave the building, but then saw him urinating on a truck in the parking lot. Walker told Horton to leave and identified himself as police, at which point Horton began fighting, pulling Walker to the ground and, according to Camden, ripping out a dozen of Moore's braids. Camden said that Walker shot Horton after Horton "lunged" towards Walker.

Security camera footage tells a much different story. Though it is partially obscured, the footage shows Walker initiating the physical conflict with Horton; Moore then joins in. Horton never pulls Walker to the ground or rips out Moore's hair. Though Horton appears agitated, nothing suggests he posed an immediate danger to Walker or Moore. Jarrod Horton, Marlon's brother, has sued Walker, Moore, the city, and CHA in federal court.

These are just a few of the "well over 500 police-involved shootings" Camden now boasts of commenting on in a combined three decades at CPD and FOP. It's a role that seems to be unique among big-city American police unions.

"I cannot remember any occasion when the Los Angeles police union made any kind of statement [about a police shooting]," says former LAPD deputy chief Downing, explaining that the Los Angeles Police Protective League prefers not to comment on pending investigations. Veteran Detroit Newscrime reporter George Hunter said in an e-mail that Detroit Police Officers Association officials "generally don't get involved in day-to-day crime stories unless the media reaches out to them first." Christian Boone of theAtlanta Journal-Constitution and Joshua Scott Albert, who covers Philadelphia for the Daily Beast, both said that the police unions in their respective cities rarely speak out in initial media reports. Crime reporters in Baltimore, Oakland, New Orleans, Milwaukee, and Miami, who asked not to be named, described similar situations in their cities.

Gwendolyn Moore’s son Jamaal was fatally shot by police in 2012. She says his reputation was sullied by misinformation about the circumstances of his death. (Jonathan Gibby/City Bureau)

A union like no other

Chicago's FOP Lodge 7 operates under the auspices of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police, though it often acts independently. (Unions in other cities can be chapters of larger unions such as the FOP or the International Union of Police Association, or independent bodies.)

Though it would not become the official bargaining agent for CPD's rank-and-file until 1980, Lodge 7 was incorporated as a charter of the national FOP in 1963. The 60s in Chicago fostered a political climate not unlike that of today, with a nationwide social movement tackling racial inequality. The civil rights movement criticized and made new demands on police, including that they wear name tags and implement citizen review boards. These attempts at reform prompted swift unionization efforts, according to Samuel Walker, professor emeritus of criminal justice at the University of Nebraska at Omaha and an expert on police accountability.

"Many local unions originated or at least became more militant in response to specific police-community relations initiatives in the 1960s," he wrote in his seminal 2008 study "The Neglect of Police Unions."

Though their stated goals included improving the wages and working conditions of their members, police unions also began lobbying against reforms and negotiating contracts that were protective of officers accused of misconduct in the line of duty.

Lodge 7's first president, Joseph Lefevour, was quoted in multiple media stories throughout the 1960s defending officer misconduct. In July 1966, he told an AP reporter that he blamed Martin Luther King Jr. for riots protesting police violence. "He preached nonviolence," Lefevour said. "Yet, wherever he goes, violence erupts."

Lefevour also vigorously defended CPD officers following the infamous "police riots" at the 1968 Democratic National Convention. Hecharacterized Mayor Richard J. Daley's orders that police should "shoot to kill" protesters as a "positive position," and excused extreme police brutality by saying, "[Police officers] are Americans. When they saw people tear down the flag and run up the Viet Cong flag, well, they're red-blooded Americans." The Reader later reported that the "police riots" were in fact a coordinated offensive against protesters, orchestrated by police leaders and people in Daley's inner sanctum.

Lodge 7 also argued against a proposal to create a "Fred Hampton Day," named in honor of the Black Panther leader whose death at the hands of Chicago police became the era's most notorious example of police disinformation. Police claimed that officers attempting to serve the Panthers with a search warrant for weapons had been dragged into a gun battle with Hampton and others. It later emerged that the attack on Hampton had been coordinated between CPD, the FBI, and Cook County state's attorney's office—and that Hampton had been unarmed and in bed.

Lodge 7 would later use membership dues to pay for the legal defense of Jon Burge, the Chicago police commander implicated in torturingpotentially hundreds of black and Latino men into false confessions over three decades.

Defending officers is a key part of the FOP's mission—and that of most police unions. Ron DeLord, the founder and former ten-term president of the largest police association in Texas and an expert on union-police relations, says that the key reason any officer joins a union is first and foremost to obtain legal protection in case of allegations of misconduct.

"You paid us to provide your day in court," DeLord says. "It isn't our job to try you [for what you did], that's the job of the judicial system."

According to Lodge 7's tax forms, its top expense from 2010-2014 after staff salaries was legal fees—at a rate of roughly $1.5 million a year. In 2014 alone, the FOP paid $230,000 to Daniel Q. Herbert & Associates, the law firm representing officer Jason Van Dyke as he faces first-degree murder charges for the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald. (Herbert was previously Lodge 7's in-house counsel.) In November 2015 the FOP started a collection to raise money for Van Dyke, and eventually put up $1.5 millionto release him on bond. Chicago's FOP is also pushing the city to destroynearly six decades of police misconduct files as part of an ongoing contract dispute.

Filling 'the void'

The FOP's mission to protect its Chicago members and its desire to shape the narrative of a police shooting are thus closely entwined. In the first few hours after a police shooting, a lack of information creates what Camden calls "the void." Journalists tipped off to a shooting scramble to find details of what has transpired. This leaves the first person or agency to comment with significant leeway to influence the story.

"It's a law of nature," Camden says. "If there's a void, somebody has to fill it."

That "somebody" is rarely CPD, which reporters say can take hours to make an official statement about a shooting. Getting an on-the-record response from a CPD department head, chief, or beat cop is highly unusual. This leaves journalists left to rely on press releases that offer little more than boilerplate information. In the September 2012 fatal shooting of Christopher McGowan, the department wrote merely that, "The offenders pointed a weapon at the officers and as a result of this action, officers discharged their weapons fatally wounding one of the offenders."

A veteran journalist who's covered breaking news and crime for more than a decade—and who asked that his name not be used because of concerns that his employer might object—identified several limitations to fully reporting on police shootings, among them that a reporter may not be on the scene, could wait hours for a statement from police, may not have access to witnesses, and is often working to publish the news as soon as possible.

CPD has "no written policy" for disseminating information following a police shooting, according to spokesman Anthony Guglielmi, although the department does suggest that the ranking officer on the scene respond to news media inquiries, with the option to "designate a subordinate member to speak to the media."

That rarely happens, the veteran journalist said.

And so, the void.

The journalist said that in his experience, not only would Camden take his calls—he'd go so far as to initiate the conversation, reaching out after a shooting to give his version of events.

"There was pressure to get something out," the reporter noted. Best practice was to "wait for the official police statement and lead with it, and fill in the gaps with the Camden stuff." But in the rush to meet a deadline, "a lot of what [Camden] said became the majority of the story."

Camden's demeanor, said the journalist, "was very buddy-buddy with reporters." At the center of that was access: "The thing with Camden is, he is a spokesman for the police officers, so you always had to take what [Camden] said with a grain of salt. . . . But he was so good at his job and so nice with reporters. You could always call him on his cell . . . and he was often the only one releasing information at the time."

But that information was always tainted by the FOP's perspective, and its mission to protect its officers.

"What is interesting [about the FOP] is that they seem to embed a point of view in an information statement," said Cristina Tilley, a former news reporter and an adjunct lecturer at Northwestern University. "They are simultaneously confirming the information and are kind of spinning it."

Jane Kirtley, a media ethics and law professor at the University of Minnesota, argues that journalists need to be critical of messages from the Fraternal Order of Police, which often come "with an authoritative veneer" despite their biased point of view.

"The union has its own agenda," she added, often motivated by "an even stronger incentive to maintain the reputation of its members."

Her advice for journalists is to always make clear when a statement can't be backed up and explain the limitations of the information available. "This is what we heard according to the FOP, which is the police union—not everybody knows that."

"There's a huge responsibility on the part of the news media," Walker says. "Here's somebody who now has a record, a proven record, of deliberately giving out false information."

Camden denies ever giving out misinformation deliberately, but echoes calls for responsibility from the media: journalists should know that the information they are getting may not be accurate.

"Anytime I talked to the media, it was always a disclaimer at the front end," Camden says. "These statements are based on preliminary facts immediately following the incident . . . facts always subject to change."

Camden, pictured in 2003 during his time as a CPD spokesman, has often been the only voice of authority talking to reporters immediately after a police shooting. (Tim Boyle/Getty Images)

Weak accountability

The November 19, 2013, interview of officer Ruth Castelli took place at IPRA's West Town office, a little more than six miles from where she shot and killed Jamaal Moore. IPRA's office sits on the fourth floor of a redbrick building, where tall windows are framed in forest green.

The interview began around 10 AM, and Castelli's team of lawyers and union reps outnumbered the investigators present to tackle her case—one IPRA investigator's questions were scrutinized by Castelli, her lawyer, and her FOP field rep, Kriston Kato.

Castelli began the interview by noting that, per Kato's advice, "I am not making this statement voluntarily but under duress and am only making this statement at this time because I know that I could lose my job if I refuse."

Castelli's entourage and her disclaimer point to one way the FOP does more than shape public perception of a shooting; the union also has the power to influence follow-up investigations via its contract
with CPD.

In these instances, a strong union contract comes up against IPRA's weak and slow-moving accountability system, in which investigations take an average of 328 days to resolve.

The current agreement between Lodge 7 and the city runs through June 30, 2017, and lays out a wide range of contractual protections, from when and how an officer can be interviewed (during daylight hours, while on duty) to a provision making the results of a polygraph inadmissible in cases brought before the police board.

"The power balance has changed, because now, unlike the 60s, they have these various provisions in their contracts which provide special protections and special privileges," says Walker, the police-accountability expert.

As stipulated by the union contract, a police officer accused of misconduct has up to 48 hours before he or she is interviewed by IPRA, though this shrinks to two hours in the case of a shooting, with allowance for an individual officer's extenuating circumstances. (Strikingly, Castelli's IPRA interview took place nearly a year after she shot and killed Moore.) From there, IPRA must provide the names of the primary and secondary investigators, as well as those of anyone else who will be in the room. A maximum of two members of IPRA or the Internal Affairs Department can be present in an interview at a time.

Kato, a former violent-crimes detective on the west side, was himself accused of misconduct during his time on the force. In 1991 the Readerreported on allegations that Kato, who is Asian-American, had beaten false confessions out of people, many of whom were African-American.

Any influence Kato may have had on Castelli's interrogation is hard to pin down. Though the FOP contract stipulates that a union rep can advise officers during the interview, there are no statements from Kato recorded in the Moore case transcripts.

The IPRA investigator, Kymberly Reynolds, was herself a police officer with the LAPD from 1989 to 1991. Since 2010 she has not disciplined an officer listed in any of the 159 complaints she's investigated, according to the Citizens Police Data Project.

Three months after Reynolds interviewed Castelli, IPRA cleared her of any wrongdoing in Moore's death, finding that she acted in accordance with the department's use-of-force policy. According to department records, Castelli is still employed by CPD.

In a statement, IPRA said, "We are aware that the union contract governs how we interact with officers. We're examining the contract to see if there might be changes that can be made in the future."

The Laquan McDonald case

On the evening of October 20, 2014, police officers received a call that a young man was trying to break into cars in Archer Heights, and that he was armed with a knife. Before the night was out, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald would be dead, shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke.

As in so many other cases, the media machine justifying McDonald's death shifted into full gear, starting with the arrival of Camden on the scene.

Talking to the Tribune, Camden painted the incident in lurid detail: "He's got a 100-yard stare. He's staring blankly. [He] walked up to a car and stabbed the tire of the car and kept walking."

From there, Camden claimed that McDonald "lunged" at police and was then shot in the chest. The officers on the scene, he said, were forced to defend themselves. "You obviously aren't going to sit down and have a cup of coffee with [him]," Camden told CBS 2.

News media reported the case as Camden described it. Chicago police had no choice but to shoot McDonald, NBC Chicago said. Its reporter on the scene repeated the FOP's claims, citing the union as a police source and saying that, though IPRA had launched an investigation, "police say this was a clear-cut case of self-defense." Reports from the Tribune, ABC 7, andCBS 2 echoed that conclusion.

What really happened that night is now evident from the release of autopsy reports and a grainy but painfully clear dashcam video. As McDonald walked away unsteadily from the line of police vehicles, he was shot again and again by Van Dyke. The officer continued to shoot McDonald even after the 17-year-old fell to the ground.

Officials eager to distance themselves from the FOP's initial statements began backtracking the day after the video's November 24 release. Camdentold the Washington Post that his statement about McDonald being a "very serious" threat to the officers wasn't firsthand or even secondhand information. In fact, he said, "I have no idea where it came from."

“[Camden]’s standing up there representing an official body; the public is listening to him represent the police organization, even though it’s the union. The police department and the city administration should be objecting to that; if they’re not, then they’re complicit.”

—RETIRED LAPD DEPUTY CHIEF STEPHEN DOWNING­

"I never talked to the officer, period," Camden told the Post. "It was told to me after it was told to somebody else who was told by another person, and this was two hours after the incident . . . hearsay is basically what I'm putting out at that point."

Likewise, then-police chief McCarthy walked back his comments on the shooting, telling NBC Chicago that the initial press release was wrong. He took responsibility for the error— "I guess that's my fault," he said—even though the first media comments had come from Camden.

Indeed, the roughly 3,000 pages of e-mails subsequently released from the mayor's office show a battle to separate the public image of the police department from that of the FOP.

An exchange between John Holden, public affairs director for the city's Law Department, and Shannon Braymaier, deputy director of communications for the mayor's office, regarding the wording in an NBC 5 story about the e-mail release, notes that the station's reference to "the Chicago Police Department's story" about what happened the night McDonald was killed was, in fact, the FOP's story.

"They amended the online story which clarifies the subject line issue, but leaves in the reference to the Chicago Police Department's story. I have told Don [Moseley, the well-respected NBC producer] twice that it was not the 'Chicago Police Department's story' but rather the FOP's. I will continue to monitor," Holden wrote.

"This mistake is the crux of their entire story," Breymaier replied. "This is a completely unnecessary self-inflicted wound that should and could have been easily avoided."

The e-mails also include a letter from McDonald's lawyer, Jeffrey Neslund, spelling out how the city was culpable in letting Camden spread false information. "There must . . . be accountability for the City and the Department's role in allowing false information to be disseminated to the media via the FOP in an attempt to win public approval and falsely characterize the fatal shooting as 'justified,' " Neslund wrote in an e-mail dated March 6, 2015. "Here, within an hour of the shooting, the FOP spokesman gave a statement to the press describing the circumstances surrounding the shooting which contained misrepresentations, misleading information and outright falsehoods."

Downing, the former LAPD deputy chief, also places blame on the CPD and the city for allowing Camden to disseminate false information from a crime scene. "I'd throw his ass in jail in a minute," he said. "That's gotta be the best definition of interfering with an investigation. He's standing up there representing an official body; the public is listening to him represent the police organization, even though it's the union. The police department and the city administration should be objecting to that; if they're not, then they're complicit."

Dominoes of reform

Since the Laquan McDonald shooting, Camden has been noticeably silent; just one of nine police shootings since then—that of Martice Milliner, who was fatally shot in Chatham—featured comments from the FOP rep. An eyewitness interviewed by the Tribune disputed the circumstances of Milliner's killing as laid out by Camden.

Camden attributes his new low profile to the FOP. "I don't respond to shootings anymore unless the union specifically calls me," he says. "It's just the administration policy at this point in time." Dean Angelo, the current Lodge 7 president, told the Tribune in November that the decision was made months after the McDonald shooting and was unrelated. But after a recent panel on police transparency, Angelo told City Bureau and theReader that allegations of Camden making false statements at the scene of police shootings were "concerning," and suggested that Camden should have never given such statements in the first place.

"That's why you don't see Pat Camden out anymore," he said. "I'm the spokesman for the union now. The department makes the statements on the scene now, as it should have always been." He confirmed that Camden is still employed by the union as a media liaison.

Media commentary, meanwhile, has largely turned against the entire policing structure in Chicago, taking the mayor's office, CPD, IPRA, and the FOP to task. A November 27, 2015, editorial by the Tribune, which endorsed Rahm Emanuel in both 2011 and 2015, led with "the more we learn the worse it gets." The Sun-Times, which also endorsed Emanuel both times,called for McCarthy's resignation.

The mayor has responded with a flurry of new measures: extending the pilot body-camera program, creating a task force to review police misconduct, outfitting more officers with Tasers, and appointing a new IPRA chief to overhaul the agency.

CPD is responding too, in part by changing how police deal with the media. The department is developing a formal policy on the distribution of information after a police shooting, says CPD rep Guglielmi.

The policy will be based on others around the country, Guglielmi says, but he declined to give any additional information.

And on December 16, almost three years to the day of Moore's death, the U.S. Department of Justice began a probe into CPD. The civil "pattern or practice" investigation will look into whether the Laquan McDonald case was a paradigm of misconduct and civil rights violations.

The probe could result in a federal consent decree, which would give the DOJ temporary oversight of the police department. Changes mandated by the consent decree could even come head-to-head with aspects of the city's union contract, as has happened in Seattle and Cleveland, both of which have police departments under federal oversight.

The dashcam video from Ruth Castelli’s police vehicle reveals the moment when the officer, shown here with her face blurred, pulled her gun on Jamaal Moore. (NBC 5)

What really happened

Camden and McCarthy's initial story about the morning Ruth Castelli fatally shot Jamaal Moore—the gun, the robbery, the part where Hackett was thrown around "like a rag doll" by a person who had just been run over by an SUV—fell apart.

The most definitive story of what happened the morning Moore was killed comes from the video footage obtained from Castelli's car and security-camera footage taken from the gas station at Garfield and Ashland. The images are made blurry around the edges by the rain, and the ground shines as the last minutes of Moore's life play out.

In the gas station footage, Moore's silver SUV skids across the wet pavement, begins to spin around, and strikes a lamppost, which falls and crashes on top of the car. Four people jump out of the back, running across the gas station parking lot. Moore, struggling to join them, is then hit by the police SUV, with Hackett behind the wheel.

Dashcam footage shows Moore crawling out from underneath the police vehicle. Hackett then climbs on top of him, attempting to put him in handcuffs. He then appears to fall forward over Moore, later testifying that he "got too high on [Moore's] shoulders." Moore breaks free, and begins to get up and run away.

McCarthy's claim that Moore had charged at Castelli was untrue—surveillance footage shows him standing up briefly only to turn and fall to the ground.

Castelli claims that she saw a "black object" in Moore's hand and shouted, "Gun! Gun!" But the dashcam corroborates neither of those things; the shot is not clear enough, and there is no audio. (Eighty percent of CPD's dash cams don't have functioning audio, Gugliemi told DNAinfo in December, and 22 officers were disciplined last month for interfering with the recording devices.)

But we now know that the only guns the night Moore was shot belonged to Castelli and her partner.

A black flashlight was found at the scene, but whether Moore was actually holding it at the time Castelli shot him is in dispute. Castelli testified that he was holding it; in official depositions, two witnesses said he was not.

Camden stressed to the Tribune that even though no gun had been recovered from the scene, the earlier truck robbery had involved one—as if to further implicate Moore in a crime with which he was never charged. Police documents show that Moore was not charged for the alleged truck robbery. Instead, he was posthumously charged with aggravated assault of an officer with a handgun—a charge that was later changed to aggravated battery of an officer with his hands after it was determined that Moore was unarmed.

Cook County medical examiner records show that Moore, who died at the scene, was shot twice, in the back and the side of his pelvis.

Moore's mother, Gwendolyn, sued the city in federal court, alleging, among other things, that police officers at the scene had referred to her son as "just another dead nigger." City lawyers settled for $1.25 million without legally admitting any guilt. In a memorandum opinion, federal judge James Holderman wrote that the dashcam video "undercuts [the police and FOP] version of events."

But Moore's mother says that apologies and settlement money, whatever the amount, will never undo the damage done by Castelli, McCarthy, and Camden. At the time of his death, Moore had been engaged. The money from the settlement will go to Moore's young son, she said, but it won't change the fact that he'll grow up without a father. Moore is gone, hismother said, and his name has been dragged through
the mud.

"Not only did I just lose my son under false pretense, you have [the public] thinking he is that kind of kid," she said. "It's lies about him, but that is the story people start believing." v

This report was produced in partnership with the Chicago Reader, a Chicago-based journalism lab. Additional reporting and editing by Darryl Holliday. 

Movement To Dump IPRA, Police Board Gains Momentum

BY LA RISA LYNCH

Frank Chapman has long been critical of Chicago’s top officials — including a City Council that shelled out more than $500 million in taxpayer money to settle police brutality cases over the years, and a mayor and police force that uphold a system allowing such abuses.

Chapman talks a big game — but the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression (CAARPR) is backing it up with a solution: a civilian police accountability council (CPAC).

“CPAC would take the power from the mayor, from the City Council, from the Independent Police Review Authority, from the Police Board, from the Internal Affairs Department and put it in the hands of people who live in the police district. They will have the power,” said Chapman, an organizer with CAARPR.

The Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression has been advocating to establish an elected civilian police accountability council since 2012. But the group says City Council members have yet to fully embrace the idea even as they call for reforms in the police department in the wake of the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald.

Outrage over the dashboard video showing the fatal shooting of McDonald being shot 16 times by Officer Jason Van Dyke ignited days of protest in Chicago streets with marchers and activists demanding reforms in the Chicago Police Department and the mayor’s resignation.

Protestors chants at the Magnificent Mile during Black Friday November 27, 2015 at a protest in memory of Laquan McDonald, backed by Reverend Jesse Jackson and other elected officials. Protest have been happening since the release of dash cam video of the killing of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke. (William Camargo)

Protesters have demanded a federal probe into the police, the state’s attorney’s office as well as Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s  administration to see if steps were taken to suppress the video until after the mayor won a heated runoff election. Additionally protesters have asked for a “real” independent police oversight council that can effectively and unbiasedly investigate and prosecute police crimes.

While the mayor’s resignation seems unlikely, the U.S. Department of Justice announced a civil rights investigation into the police department, which signals a win for protesters. But their cry for a truly independent civilian police oversight board could be closer than most think if City Council officials buy into the idea.

Backing CPAC, Chapman noted, would end rubber-stamp payouts that take place without broader police accountability.

“They got exposed in the Laquan McDonald case,” Chapman said. “This is their chance. If they want to try to right some of the wrong that they’ve done then they can support CPAC.”

Anatomy of CPAC

CAARPR’s proposal would replace both the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) and the Chicago Police Board with a civilian-led council made of residents publically elected from each of the city’s 25 police districts. The latest push for the civilian board comes as IPRA, the agency that investigates police wrongdoings, faced criticism over its lack of transparency, which some advocates say favors police and has led to a paucity of disciplinary actions for serious police misconduct complaints.

Between March 2011 and September 2015, 28,567 abuse allegations were filed against CPD officers, yet less than 2 percent resulted in any punishment, according to the Citizens Police Data Project, a new database that analyses police misconduct complaints. Since IPRA’s inception in 2007, the agency investigated 400 shootings and found only two “unjustified.”

CPAC would have the power to investigate allegations of police misconduct and police shootings, refer cases to the federal grand jury for civil rights violations and fire police officers. CPAC would also have the power to appoint the city’s police superintendent and rewrite the police rule book including use of force guidelines.

But the proposal has not been yet introduced in the City Council. Though half a dozen aldermen have expressed interest or are sympathetic to the cause, none has publicly committed to supporting CPAC yet, Chapman said.

Among those interested, Chapman said, were Aldermen Rod Sawyer (6th) and  Toni Foulkes (16th) who did not return calls seeking comment. Random calls to council members including, Joe Moreno (1st), Howard Brookins (21st) and Scott Waguespack (32nd) to gauge where they stand on CPAC were not immediately returned.

“We are organizing people in the wards to get the aldermen to pick it up. This is a political campaign,” Chapman said comparing it to the people-driven movement that got Harold Washington elected as Chicago’s first black mayor. “We do not want to go to the aldermen without the backing of the people. That’s the bottom line.”

In the meantime, CAARPR has set up committees in Englewood, Austin and Woodlawn — communities with a high incidence of police violence — to advocate for systemic change in the department.

Currently there are more than 200 civilian police oversight entities in the country. Many consist of a mix of volunteers and appointed personnel, though their powers to investigate and punish officers vary. If enacted, Chapman noted CPAC could be the only citizen-elected police oversight board in the country.  Also  many grew out of Department of Justice investigations similar to the federal probe currently underway in Chicago and were created by public vote, state or city statute similar to a case in Pittsburgh.

The 1995 the fatal shooting of black motorist, Jonny Gammage, by Pittsburgh police officers led to the approval two year later of a citizen police review board via public referendum after several early attempts failed. However, the board’s recommendations are non-binding and must be approved by the city’s police chief, a situation that can render some citizen review boards powerless.

Pittsburgh’s citizen review board highlights a myriad of challenges that can  erode the effectiveness or authority of police oversight boards including  who sits on them. Members should be credible enough to weigh community interests with that of city government — a balancing act that IPRA continually gets wrong, according to critics. IPRA’s investigators mostly consist of retired or former police officers while the Chicago Police Board has been derided by activists as being a rubber-stamp board filled with mayoral appointees.

Other hurdles to establishing is pushback from police unions.  New York City experienced such a situation in 1965 when it attempted to include civilians on a police review board. Police unions railed against the idea which was eventually defeated in a citywide vote. Nearly two decades later, the city re-established civilian oversight of the police.

St. Louis also faced a similar situation. The shooting death of 18-year-old Michael Brown by a white police officer last year in Ferguson, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis, fueled calls for civilian oversight of the police. The city’s police union opposed the idea, saying that it would “restrain” officers from performing their duties. After contentious debate, St. Louis approved in April a measure to create a citizen oversight board, which some say doesn’t go far enough because it lacks subpoena power.

In Chicago, a growing chorus of politicians and community leaders are lending their voices to dump IPRA. Chicago’s South Austin Community Coalition Council has signed on to support CPAC, but Elce Redmond, an organizer with the west side group, recognizes there will be resistance from the Fraternal Order of Police, the state’s attorney’s office and “the powers that be.”

“Once you start saying there is going to be an independent authority looking over the police, then it is going to expand to looking over politicians and they really don’t want that,” Redmond said, adding that it opens the door for “politicians who are culpable in many of these situations” to be prosecuted as well.

When reached for comments, the national Fraternal Order of Police referred comments to the local chapter. Dean Angelo, Sr., president of the Chicago FOP chapter, did not return calls or respond to emailed questions seeking comment.

Cook County Commissioner Richard Boykin (1st) has called for a federal probe into the mayor’s and state’s attorney’s office. He’s also called IPRA “a sham, a shame and a disgrace” that has lost all credibility. He welcomed any effort to create a “real independent board” even if through the ballot box, but cautioned that elections have their downside when money is involved.

“You don’t necessarily get the best and the brightest running for public office,” he said. “You get the person who has the most money [or] can put the most money in places [to] fund people and then actually control them.”

Protestors chants at the Magnificent Mile during Black Friday on November 27, 2015. (William Camargo/City Bureau)

Chapman balked at Boykin’s comment. He questioned why a politician would be suspect of the process that got him elected to office. But Chapman noted that CPAC’s elections will be different because they will be decentralized where residents from each police district vote for a CPAC member..  

“Why would an elected official be against an election?” he asked. “How in the hell did he get into office. Here you are an elected official saying you don’t trust elections because they are corrupt. We are not talking about professional politicians. We are talking about people who live in [those police] districts.”

Damage control

Attorney Standish Willis has been here before. The civil rights lawyer called for civilian oversight of the police when torture allegation surfaced under former commander Jon Burge. Burge was convicted of lying to federal prosecutors about torture allegations and was sentenced to four years in prison. He was released in 2014.

“I think it is worth fighting for [but] I don’t have confidence that the City Council will pass it because they are not that independent,” Willis said.

But he praised CAARPR for their continued push to create an elected civilian police accountability council. The group began pushing for CPAC soon after the death of Rekia Boyd, who was shot and killed by a Chicago police detective in 2012.

“It’s always good to raise [the issue] because I think people that pay police should have control over police, especially in the context of what police have been doing over the years with people of color, particularly black people,” Willis said.

Instead both the mayor and City Council are in damage control mode. Emanuel made an impassioned speech before the City Council December 9 taking ownership and then apologizing for the McDonald shooting, though his critics continue to call for his resignation. The Council’s Black Caucus later released a 7-point plan to reform the police department — none of which called for creating a truly elected civilian police board.

Those reforms, however, did include a mandate that CPD “stop shooting people in the back,” prosecute police officers who file false reports, appoint a special prosecutor in officer-involved shootings and include community members on the mayor’s blue ribbon task force on police accountability.

Meanwhile, the police shootings of McDonald, Boyd and Ronald Johnson and the subsequent payouts demonstrate the need for elected civilian oversight of the police, added Ted Pearson, CAARPR’s co-chair.

A Chicago Police officer shot and killed Johnson, who was armed at the time, but was running away from police. No charges were filed against the officer involved in the shooting.

“The only way we are going to solve this problem is when the people are in charge of the police. It is not such a radical concept. It is a very democratic one,” he said.

But Pearson blasted Emanuel’s appointment of Sharon Fairley as the new IPRA chief after Scott Ando resigned, a day before the Justice Department  announced its investigation into the Chicago Police Department.

“They are rearranging the chairs on the deck of the Titanic,” Pearson said. “The ship is in trouble and they are trying to save it just by rearranging things. It’s not going to result in any changes until we have real community control of the police.”

This report was published in collaboration with The Chicago Defender. Additional reporting by Eleanore Catolico.

In Chicago, Mental Health Workers are Armed and Dangerous

BY DARRYL HOLLIDAY

One out of every four police shooting victims has a severe mental illness. That lesson was echoed this holiday season when Chicago police encountered 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier in the midst of an “emotional problem” and shot him dead, allegedly without warning, according to a lawsuit filed by the teen’s father.

Five days earlier, another black man involved in a mental health crisis was killed by police—this time in Georgia, where Bobby Daniels was shot twice while trying to calm down his mentally ill son. In that instance, merely being associated with an emotional breakdown resulted in death when police became involved.

Evelyn Glover-Jennings cousin of Bettie Jones, holds a prayer with her family and elective officials of the west side of Chicago on Sunday December 27, 2015. (William Camargo/City Bureau)

And the list goes on. In February 2012, a black, autistic 15-year-old was killed within seconds of encountering Calumet City police after the boy’s family called 911 for help. In December 2012, Philip Coleman died in a hospital after police tasered the 38-year-old several times and dragged him out of a police lockup on the far south side following a psychotic breakdown.

In March of this year, a black 39-year-old bipolar, schizophrenic man in Dallas named Jason Harrison was also killed by police. Officers had been to his home “a hundred times or more without incident,” according to a lawsuit, but the final response came after the man’s mother requested assistance getting Harrison to the hospital during an emotional breakdown. Again, within seconds of an officer’s demand to drop a screwdriver Harrison was fatally shot five times. A graphic video of that encounter shows what can happen when police are tasked with providing mental health services.

“By all accounts—official and unofficial—a minimum of one in four fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness,” according to a report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit dedicated to eliminating barriers to the treatment of severe mental illness. “Given the prevalence of mental illness in police shootings, reducing encounters between on-duty law enforcement and individuals with the most severe psychiatric diseases may represent the single most immediate, practical strategy for reducing fatal police shootings in the United States.”

The December 2015 report, “Overlooked in the Undercounted,” finds that the risk of being killed during a police encounter is 16 times greater for individuals with untreated mental illness than the general population. Other research shows that whites are more likely to perceive blacks as violent, dangerous, and in possession of superpowers than they perceive other races. For those who are black and have mental illness, the odds of coming away unscathed from an encounter with police are stacked overwhelmingly against them.

In a city where police “accidentally” shoot and kill a woman within moments of fatally shooting a 19-year-old man undergoing an emotional breakdown (and later that same day shoot a third person), serious questions regarding officer training and misuse of force remain unanswered. Aside from the police department via a statement offering a public apology to the family of LeGrier’s neighbor Bettie Jones, who was mistakenly shot and killed by Chicago police officers shortly before the teen was killed, answers as to what prompted the shooting of LeGrier remain elusive.

“What it doesn’t recommend? The continued reliance on police to act as a force of armed mental health workers.”

What has emerged is a rethinking of the police department’s Crisis Intervention Team program, which teaches de-escalation techniques to officers responding to mental health crises, as Mayor Rahm Emanuel and interim police superintendent John Escalante announced following the weekend police shootings.

“There are serious questions about yesterday’s shootings that must be answered in full by the Independent Police Review Authority’s investigation,” Emanuel said in a statement on Sunday. “It is clear changes are needed to how officers respond to mental health crises.”

What’s unclear is how better CIT training could have saved Bettie Jones, the “accidental” victim. Or Mekel Lumpkin, the young father who was shot by police five times on the south side hours after Jones and LeGrier were killed. Witnesses say Lumpkin had a gun but put it down when police arrived.

Instead, the mayor’s announcement has deftly shifted attention away from the larger issues of excessive force and lack of accountability in the police department. Meanwhile, a report from the Chicago Tribune detailing police radio traffic and 911 dispatch information shows that responding officers may not have known that LeGrier was in mental distress at all, meaning that dispatchers would not have specially requested a CIT-trained officer.

Police shot and killed Quintonio LeGrier on December 26 while the 19-year-old was in the midst of an “emotional problem.” (William Camargo/City Bureau)

Odds are that knowledge of LeGrier’s mental state wouldn’t have changed the outcome: as of this month, only 1,800 of CPD’s approximately 11,000 officers were trained in the perennially underfunded, voluntary CIT program, and “less than a majority” of mental health calls are responded to by a CIT-trained officer, according to 2014 congressional testimony from then-first deputy superintendent Al Wysinger.

And as many critics were quick to point out, Mayor Emanuel in 2012 closed six of the city’s 12 mental health clinics—largely in low-income, high-crime neighborhoods—without holding hearings or initiating a study or task force. Lacking the proper services or treatment, family members are left to call police when a loved one suffers from a mental episode. Faced with an overzealous criminal justice system, many mentally ill people wind up in Cook County Jail, which has been called America’s largest mental hospital, even in the words of its own top official, Cook County sheriff Tom Dart.

The Treatment Advocacy Center report finds that shifting the responsibility for responding to mental health crises from mental health professionals to police is untenable at best. First, the group says, we must begin accurately counting the number of fatal police encounters with the mentally ill to develop a better understanding of how the situations bear out. Then it advocates for rebalancing the scales by increasing funding for mental health treatment. The report outlines five public policies geared at reducing these encounters, including increasing the number of treatment beds for the mentally ill, reforming laws that create barriers to treatment, and making treatment funding decisions that consider the cost of treatment and taxpayer savings that result from providing treatment.

What it doesn’t recommend? The continued reliance on police to act as a force of armed mental health workers.

This piece was published in collaboration with the Chicago Reader.

Many Superintendents Have Tried To Reform the Chicago Police (TIMELINE)

BY ANDREW FAN

Rahm Emanuel isn’t the first Chicago mayor forced to pick a new police superintendent amid scandal. 

Nine of the last 14 top cops have either quit or been forced out by a Chicago mayor.

After each forced exit, the mayor at the time promised Chicagoans a reformer as the replacement. It rarely worked out that way.

The few superintendents who successfully instituted major reforms stand out because they made decisions unpopular with the rank and file and worked for mayors willing to back them despite potential political consequences.

Earlier this month, Emanuel, in an emotional speech to the City Council, promised “nothing less than complete and total reform of the system and the culture that it breeds.”

If the past is any indicator, the mayor has a tough job ahead of him.

Here are a few milestones on the long, bumpy, and so far unsuccessful, road to Chicago police reform:

* In 1960, Mayor Richard J. Daley faced a massive police fiasco known as the Summerdale Scandal. A group of Chicago Police officers ran a large-scale burglary ring, looting houses and driving the valuables home in their patrol cars.

To protect his administration from rising public anger, Daley lured the nation’s foremost criminologist, O.W. Wilson, to Chicago. Wilson, who had the top cop job for seven years, was wary of the city’s entrenched corruption and political interference. But Daley gave him complete control over the department and unwavering support. Columnist Mike Royko put it this way in his Daley biography, “Boss”: “Losing the Police Department as a political appendage might be painful, but it had to be done to save the Machine.”

* Chicago’s first black mayor, Harold Washington, appointed the city’s first black superintendent and ordered an end to racial segregaton within the Police Department.

Fred Rice, who served from 1983 to 1987, had some success reforming the mostly white Police Department. Rice, an experienced commander, had a veteran’s feel for the department and a mayoral mandate to shake up the department.

With Washington’s backing, Rice stood up to rank-and-file dissent when officers slowed ticket-writing in response to the racial integration of police patrols. During Rice’s tenure, tensions between the police force and minority communities seemed to ease. For instance, the department’s use of firearms fell considerably, as did disorderly conduct arrests, which were a source of tension in minority neighborhoods.

The tenures of Chicago Police superintendents since 1960. [City Bureau/Andrew Fan]

• In 1997, former mayor Richard M. Daley accepted the resignation of loyal top cop Matt Rodriguez, who ran the department from 1992 to 1997, amid public outrage over the superintendent’s alleged ties to a convicted felon, as well as allegations of police corruption and brutality under his watch.

Daley convened a blue ribbon committee after forcing Rodriguez to quit. That led to the creation of an early warning system to catch and retrain problem officers before they committed major offenses. (A recent analysis found the system doesn’t do a great job identifying troubled officers. The report found the department’s early warning system identified only 6 percent of officers with more than 10 civilian complaints. For example, Jason Van Dyke, the officer charged with murdering Laquan McDonald, had 18 misconduct complaints during his career.)

• In 2007, Daley replaced police Supt. Philip Cline after four years as superintendent with former FBI agent Jody Weis when the release of videos showing Police Department officers beating civilians sparked an uproar.

Weis, who served from 2008 to 2011, was the first outsider to head the force in 50 years. It didn’t take long before he upset the police union when he refused to back officer Bill Cozzi, who got caught on videotape beating a hospital patient handcuffed to a wheelchair.

That led to a federal investigation that resulted in a civil rights charge. The Fraternal Order of Police issued a vote of no confidence against Weis, declaring the department to be in “complete meltdown.” In 2011, Weis stepped down after Emanuel, then the mayor-elect, made it clear he would not retain him, becoming the shortest-serving superintendent in over three decades.

• In 2011, Emanuel appointed Garry McCarthy as his superintendent. He served until earlier this month when the mayor fired him. Emanuel said McCarthy became a “distraction” in the wake of the Laquan McDonald shooting.

Emanuel’s next superintendent will face close scrutiny by a wide range of stakeholders.

While simply replacing the superintendent hasn’t always led to meaningful reform, history says there might be hope if Emanuel is willing to empower the new superintendent to make sweeping changes and offer his unwavering support.

This report was published in collaboration with DNAinfo Chicago.

Do Police Have More Rights Than Juveniles? [VIDEO]

BY CHELSEA BERRY, MONZELL MCKNIGHT and JOSHUA MOORE

In 2007, Donna Moore’s 11-year-old son and 13-year-old daughter were assaulted by an off-duty Chicago police officer. The city settled with the South Side mother in 2011, awarding her family $100,000. Her case eventually led to the release of data contained in the Citizens Police Data Project.

City Bureau and Real Chi Youth spoke with Moore and others to understand the impact of police misconduct against juveniles. Watch the video below to explore questions of police and juvenile rights with our reporters as they wrote, reported and edited the piece from Blue 1647 in Pilsen. In the process, the group sharpened their reporting skills, including sourcing, editing, interviewing and question selection from our newsroom.

This report was produced in partnership with Free Spirit Media, a nonprofit providing education, access, and opportunity in media production to over 500 underserved urban youth every year. Additional reporting by Martin Macias.

For Black Officers in Chicago, City’s Police Crisis Calls for Action

BY DARRYL HOLLIDAY and HARRY BACKLUND

Edward “Buzz” Palmer has been at this moment before. When he first saw the July 28, 1967 cover of Life magazine—a black boy lying dead in the street, shot by police—Palmer was a young black police officer in a racially divided city, working in a department that still segregated its squad cars.

“It was the times,” Palmer explains. “The times create the conditions. King had been assassinated, Malcolm X had been assassinated. What it pointed out was the need for the black community to be protected. We saw all this killing going on.”

The July 28, 1967 cover of Life magazine featured a photo of 12-year-old Joe Bass Jr., dead on a Newark street after a shoot-out between civilians and police. (Source: Creative Commons/Life Magazine)

Palmer was moved by the image to form the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League, the first African-American police organization of its kind. He spent two years in the department before handing the role over to Pat Hill, who quickly had her own challenges to face.

“I knew the culture of the police department when I went in,” Hill said. “I knew the disparity in treatment of black officers, and I spent a lot of my time fighting against policies in the department.”

A call for more black police officers

Last Wednesday morning, Hill stood with other retired black police officers at a news conference to call for the hiring of more black officers and a federal investigation into the Chicago Police Department and the Independent Police Review Authority, the civilian body tasked with investigating complaints of police misconduct. Since then, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has replaced the head of IPRA, and U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch has announced a civil rights investigation of the police department.

At their news conference, the retired officers cited the persistent under-representation of African-Americans in CPD as a root cause of tensions between black neighborhoods and the police department. According to police records, the CPD is 23 percent black, compared with 33 percent of the total Chicago population.

The news conference came three days after the firing of former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, and 10 days after the release of a dashcam video that shows 17-year-old Laquan McDonald being shot 16 times by CPD Officer Jason Van Dyke. The shooting, captured and repeated on an unending loop online and on TV, was yet another moment of historical reflection for Hill.

“For me this is about the third time. It’s the third go-around. Certain concessions are always made and everything goes back to being business as usual: scandals, police brutality [and] discrimination in the department,” she said. “ I can’t be as optimistic as a person who’s going through it for the first time.”

Like the cover of Life Magazine in 1967, Hill said the latest symbol of police misconduct — the image of McDonald; a black boy lying dead in the street, shot by police — is yet another moment of striking cruelty and a call for meaningful reform.

Much like the ousting of McCarthy, past Chicago police scandals have also led to resignations and promises of reform. In 2007, CPD superintendent Philip Cline resigned amid an uproar over video footage of Chicago police beatings. The film included a widely-circulated Youtube clip of an off-duty officer beating a female bartender on the Northwest Side. Ten years before, superintendent Matt Rodriguez announced his retirement amid a series of scandals, including police corruption and brutality allegations.

Hill and Palmer sought to reform the department through diversifying its ranks, but young black activists today argue that policing itself is oppressive.

“As a black cop or brown cop, you are in a position of power over the group of people you are policing,” Janae Bonsu of The Black Youth Project 100 told The Chicago Reporter last month. “Black police antagonize us. Black police still profile us.”

Palmer and Hill agree that the problem is systemic — “violence has a handmaiden, and the handmaiden is poverty” as Palmer puts it. But Hill takes issue with the idea that an officer’s race doesn’t matter for the community they work in.

“The village needs warriors to protect it, not settlers to occupy it.” —David Lemieux

“So many young people — so many young black people especially — are taking the initiative to be heard. In that respect that’s a positive,” she said. But the young activists weren’t there in 1967, she noted — while being actively engaged in the current moment, they lack the historical perspective that comes with age.

“They really can’t take it too far [back] … There’s a big difference between white police and black police. Our upbringing is totally different and we’re treated differently. We’re suspended and punished at a higher rate — we’re scrutinized differently.”

David Lemieux, a retired black police officer and 26-year veteran of CPD, added to the chorus of calls for systemic change and improved relations between police and the public.

“In order for there to be any change in the relations between the community and the police, the infrastructure has to be saturated with people that represent the community,” he said. “The village needs warriors to protect it, not settlers to occupy it. Who are the boots on the ground? That’s what’s important.”

The history of black officers in the Chicago Police Department is long and often checkered. In 1872, Chicago appointed the first black police officer to serve outside of the South, but black officers in the early years of the department weren’t permitted to wear uniforms, and were instead restricted to plainclothes duty, mostly in black neighborhoods.

Still, black officers were better represented in Chicago than in most American cities. Between 1872 and 1930, Chicago appointed more black officers than any city except Philadelphia, and in 1940 the city had its first black captain—one of only two in the country. Yet black officers couldn’t arrest white citizens, and black sergeants were assigned exclusively to supervise black officers.

Pat Hill was among a group of retired police officers who on Dec. 2 called for a federal investigation of the ‪Chicago Police Department. Hill, who retired from the force in 2007, is the former executive director of the African American Police League, formerly the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League. (Max Herman/Chicago Reporter)

Pat Hill was among a group of retired police officers who on Dec. 2 called for a federal investigation of the ‪Chicago Police Department. Hill, who retired from the force in 2007, is the former executive director of the African American Police League, formerly the Afro-American Patrolmen’s League. (Max Herman/Chicago Reporter)

A scandal over police involvement in a string of burglaries ushered in the era of O.W. Wilson, a prominent police reformer who reorganized the department around principles of efficiency rather than patronage. Wilson promoted sergeants and recruited more African American officers, but his retirement in 1967 preceded a new era. The 1968 assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., and Mayor Richard J. Daley’s order to “shoot to kill” rioters, caused mounting racial tensions. “Shoot to kill” was the backdrop for the formation of the Afro-American Patrolmen’s Union by Buzz Palmer.

The AAPL brought a lawsuit against CPD in 1973 for discriminatory hiring and management practices, and won in 1976 with a judge ruling that CPD must hire more blacks and women.

Hill noted that while Wednesday’s news conference achieved its goal of having black officers speak out, it failed to comment on the systemic nature of racism in the Chicago Police Department by focusing too closely on a single individual.

A similar issue is raised in the handling of McCarthy by Emanuel. Hill and others didn’t support McCarthy’s hiring when he was confirmed in 2012 and while she agrees with his dismissal, she sees the way politicians are “kicking him on the way down” as political posturing.

“I don’t think it’s about one individual,” she said. “I think it’s important for black officers currently in the department and retired to take positions on this because the black community needs that.”

Palmer and Hill also agree that the black community needs the Black Lives Matter movement, including Chicago-based groups like BYP100.

“We’re living in a new era,” Palmer explained. “One of the reasons why things always died down was because blacks did not have access to the media. Now they have access to social media. When Ferguson went up the newspapers didn’t cover it, but all at once all these young people were on their smartphones and they got a million hits and people had to pay attention to it.”

He added, “This is not an issue that is going to go away.”

This report was published in collaboration with The Chicago Reporter, a nonprofit investigative news organization that focuses on race, poverty and income inequality. Additional reporting by Will Cabaniss.

Who is Linked to the False Chicago Police Account of Laquan McDonald's Death?

BY YANA KUNICHOFF and DARRYL HOLLIDAY

It’s the year of police chief firings, and the latest official to fall is Chicago superintendent Garry McCarthy, who was summarily dismissed on Tuesday following the withholding and eventual release of dashcam footage of a police shooting that contradicted officials’ accounts of the altercation. But McCarthy is not the only one potentially implicated in what many in Chicago have called a cover-up in the shooting of Laquan McDonald.

McCarthy had been an embattled superintendent even before the release of the video, facing backlash over a series of violent summers, marked most recently by the shooting death of nine-year-old Tyshawn Lee. But as the McDonald story unfolded, McCarthy’s name wasn’t the only one on the lips of protesters upset at a clear lack of transparency and honesty. Both Rahm Emanuel, the city’s mayor, and Anita Alvarez, the state’s attorney responsible for criminally prosecuting police officers, have come under fire for their roles, in a city infamous for corruption and police misconduct.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy listens to comments from attendees during the November Police Board Meeting at the Chicago Public Safety Headquarters on November 19, 2015. (Jonathan Gibby/City Bureau)

McCarthy’s departure comes after the firing of Ferguson police chief Thomas Jackson in March and the firing of Baltimore police chief Anthony Batts in July. All three cities have been the site of protests and calls for police accountability following fatal police-involved shootings since August 2014, but as leader of the second largest police force in the nation – and the top cop of the third largest city in the US – McCarthy stands out as a warning to city officials in Chicago.

The turning point for the superintendent came on 24 November when the video of the Laquan McDonald shooting was released to the public, one week before McCarthy was fired by Emanuel. At a press conference that evening, McCarthy stood alongside Emanuel in defense of his department’s decision not to press charges against the officer involved until the day before the video’s release.

Much of the country watched in shock that day as officer Jason Van Dyke unloaded 16 bullets into 17-year-old Laquan. In video obtained from a police dashcam on the scene, two Chicago police officers can be seen trailing Laquan as he walks unsteadily away from a line of patrol cars. The video shows the initial shots that topple Laquan – and then his body taking the impact of the dozen shots that followed.

The images set off protests across the city as hundreds of people blocked major streets and shopping areas in downtown Chicago across several days, including Black Friday. Playing no small part in the outrage was what many saw as an attempted cover-up in the case: the initial police press release made no mention of the 16 shots – instead choosing to preemptively criminalize him – and the civil settlement between Laquan’s family and the city was contingent on their not releasing the video. Questions over the department’s handling of the case in its early hours still linger.

At the center of complaints about Alvarez is that her “tough on crime” prosecutorial approach translates in practice to throwing the book at petty offenders while letting cases against police officers accused of deadly shootings linger with inaction. The Chicago Tribune reported that she had the McDonald video within two weeks of his death but took an additional 400 days to bring charges against the teen’s killer.

She’s up for reelection for a third term in March but has been hemorrhaging public support since the case broke. Democratic stalwart Luis Gutierrez announced on Tuesday that he would no longer endorse her. A series of news editorials simultaneously followed, alongside political pressure from Chicago’s Black Caucus and heavy-hitters like Cook County board president Toni Preckwinkle.

“I’ve had no confidence in [Alvarez’s] leadership for a very long time,” Preckwinkle, who is backing her former chief of staff, Kim Foxx, over Alvarez in the 15 March Democratic primary election, told reporters on Monday. “I think the way she has run the office is disgraceful.”

While the city’s largely young, black activist groups have pressed for accountability and resignations for months, the Chicago Tribune wondered aloud whether Emanuel would be mayor at all had the Laquan McDonald video been released following his death in October 2014 – six months before Emanuel won an election against longtime West Side political player Chuy Garcia with critical help from black voters.

Chicagoans Kenneth Wright and Debora Samuels sound off on McCarthy’s firing in the city’s Archer Heights neighborhood, where Laquan McDonald was shot and killed.

Emanuel, meanwhile, has rapidly rolled out police accountability-related initiatives since 24 November. Along with firing McCarthy, he announced an expansion of the department’s body camera pilot program on Sunday and the creation of a clout-heavy taskforce on police accountability that was called into question within hours of its introduction.

A bandage for Chicago’s problems?

Emanuel’s taskforce wouldn’t be the first time the creation of a new agency or group has been offered as the bandage on Chicago’s police problems. The Independent Police Review Authority, which currently investigates and suggests action on police shootings and other misconduct, was created in 2007 to take over misconduct reviews for the Office for Professional Standards, an internal agency deemed largely ineffective by critics.

But the birth of IPRA failed to create the promised sea change in accountability and the Laquan McDonald shooting is seen as only the latest iteration of its failure. The agency sustains complaints against police officers at around 3% and has only twice recommended an officer involved in a shooting be fired – despite Chicago police having fatally shot 70 people over a five-year span, topping departments in the largest US cities. More broadly, in terms of concrete criminal charges, the police officer accused of killing Laquan was the first officer in 35 years to be charged with first-degree murder.

Groups on the ground – particularly Black Youth Project 100, a local organization under the Black Lives Matter mantle – see structural changes in leadership as one of their key demands. But if Ferguson and Baltimore are any indication, it might be what they do next that matters most. It took months of protest in Ferguson to bring down a Justice Department investigation into racial bias in the police department, and the firing of Baltimore’s police chief took place less than a year after the city was brought to a standstill by anger at the death of Freddie Gray.

A protestor with a poster of the 16 shots of where Laquan McDonald was shot by officer Jason Van Dyke at the Magnificent Mile during Black Friday November 27, 2015 at a protest in memory of Laquan McDonald, backed by Reverend Jesse Jackson and other elected officials. Protest have been happening since the release of dash cam video of the killing of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke. (William Camargo/City Bureau)

How much outrage remains in Chicago – and where it will be directed – could hit the headlines sooner rather than later. The mother of another police shooting victim, Ronald Johnson, killed on 12 October 2014, four days before Laquan, filed a motion with a county judge in August to have the video of her son’s shooting made public.

Control of the CPD now falls to officer John Escalante, a 29-year veteran of the department who took over for McCarthy’s right-hand man, former first deputy superintendent Alfonza Wysinger, in October after the department’s highest-ranking black officer (and next in line for McCarthy’s job) stepped down. With at least one federal investigation under way and mounting calls for reform on all sides, Escalante is in the unenviable position of keeping clean in a system that appears more sullied each day.

This report was published in collaboration with The Guardian. Additional reporting by La Risa Lynch, Martin Macias, Tatiana Franklin, Ronald Reese and Monzell McKnight.

Chicago Activists Explain Why Black Space Matters

BY DARRYL HOLLIDAY and MARTIN "XAVI" MACIAS

Just minutes before the Chicago Police Department released a video Tuesday of a white police officer shooting a black teenager to death, several groups of black activists marched to Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez’s office on the near west side of Chicago to attend a community forum. She had waited too long to charge officer Jason Van Dyke for the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, they said. It was more than a year after the October 2014 shooting and the charges came only after a judge had ordered the release of the video showing his death.

But the activists declined to give interviews to reporters flanking them during their public demonstration. One woman told a journalist he was taking up “valuable black space in an action about black suffering.” After not being allowed into Alvarez’s community forum, the protesters regrouped at a nearby gallery and asked reporters to stay out of the “strictly black-only space.”

Activists made it clear to reporters and allies that the action Wednesday was a space organized and led by black youth. (Martin Macias/City Bureau)

Veronica Morris-Moore, an organizer with Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY), told reporters, “This is a space where black people are trying to process this right now. . . . I understand this is a public sidewalk but I need you to respect these people in here if you want to talk to them . . . [and] not look like you’re here to capture a circus show.”

This desire to protect not just black lives but “black space” is a tactic that has been embraced by activists and explored by writers in recent months, starting with the highly publicized incident at the University of Missouri when a young journalist was barred from an activist camp on the campus quad, and later at Loyola University, when students stood in solidarity with Mizzou organizers by barring media from a public event on the Chicago campus.

Claims to “black-only” space are as much a defense as they are an action, activists say—a defense from manipulative messages, as well as a proactive strategy to reclaim the protest narrative. A distrust of media, political figures, and public opinion has grown in the absence of meaningful reform.

Chicago’s organizers drew this connection during last week’s protest, when an activist next to Morris-Moore told a man livestreaming the protest on his phone to “stop filming—she said stop.”

Morris-Moore continued to address reporters and onlookers: “I’m asking if you could respect us. . . . You don’t have to, but if you have any half of decency in you, please leave. Don’t stand here.”

In the weeks leading up to—and the days following—the release of the Laquan McDonald video, young black activists from groups including FLY, Black Youth Project 100, Assata’s Daughters, Say Her Name, and Black Lives Matter had intentionally stepped away from establishment figures. Organizers declined an invitation from Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Monday to discuss the video’s release. They called for a media blackout of the “black-only” march on the night the video was released.

“Black people please meet at Roosevelt st and Halsted Ave at 5:30pm. This is a space for Black rage for Black people,” a BYP100 Facebook event page read.

The call for a black-only protest space prompted both support and opposition from allies of all races:

For some, the request for “safe spaces” seemed as foreign as it did unnecessary. Why advocate for the racial segregation that blacks had spent so long fighting? Why hold allies of all other colors at bay?

“We need to figure out how black people can get space, understanding that space is also time. Black people, especially poor black people, do not have space to heal from [trauma] or even combat [police violence]. Time is a luxury,” LaCreisha Birts, an organizer with BYP100, said in an interview.

It’s a sentiment that some people had trouble understanding. Presidential hopeful Donald Trump has dismissed demands for black space as “crazy” and said Black Lives Matter protesters are “looking for trouble.”

“They wrongly assume we all enjoy such luxury and are blindly seeking something even more extravagant,” author Roxane Gay wrote in Error! Hyperlink reference not valid.. “They assume that we should simply accept hate without wanting something better. They cannot see that what we seek is sanctuary. We want to breathe.”

The rejection of establishment politicians, media, and nonblack people served two main purposes, according to interviews with members of several activist groups: To create black-only spaces that would make it easier to grieve the loss of black lives and to retake the narrative of the “black man or woman shot by white officer” story, which they said had been hijacked to create a spectacle worthy of mass consumption. Activists were fed up with media accounts that they said had twisted their message in order to inflate page views, without giving voice to their demands, including calls for Mayor Emanuel, police superintendent Garry McCarthy and Alvarez to resign, and for Chicago as a whole to invest in the economic and educational opportunities of disenfranchised communities of color.

For example, while the activists planned memorials and public demonstrations, city officials emphasized a call for peace:

“People have the right to be angry. People have the right to protest. People have the right to free speech, but they do not have the right to commit criminal acts,” McCarthy told reporters at a press release designed to mitigate any violent response to footage of McDonald’s death.

“We are prepared to facilitate people’s First Amendment rights to free speech, but we will be intolerant of criminal behavior here in the city of Chicago,” he said.

The underlying assumption, activists said, was that young black people are likely to riot and commit criminal acts. By spreading the pleas for peaceful protest coming from public officials, they said, media was endorsing the idea that violence was impending.

But there were no riots. With few exceptions, the peaceful protests were filled with chanting, spoken word, and over the weekend, a rejection of Black Friday consumer culture as it traveled down the Magnificent Mile shopping district and throughout downtown on five consecutive days.

“We are organizers—we are strategic, not random people who show up to a march,” said BYP100’s communications director Camesha Jones. “People have a right to protests. We support that—it’s righteous rage.”

But just as public officials and the media fetishized black anger, organizers said, so too did they sensationalize black death, creating an unending loop of violence made normal by round-the-clock coverage. Nowhere was that as blatant as in the highly-criticized-then-deleted tweet from the Daily Beast with a GIF of McDonald dying on video.

The @dailybeast made the killing of a 17-year-old kid into an animated gif in case you were wondering how much #BlackLivesMatter in America.

— Katie Mack (@AstroKatie) November 25, 2015

#BeforeYouWatch know Black death is not a spectacle. it is a brutal truth. it is not a joke. it is normalized but it should not be normal.

— BLACK POWER ranger (@MalcolmLondon) November 24, 2015

Later in the week, Morris-Moore described her mixed feelings on the media’s interactions with activists: “Media has both been doing harm to our cause and at the same time getting our message out there.”

Multiple activists said the biggest problem was that reporters only showed up to big protests and demonstrations to cover the mayhem aspect, rather than discuss the causes for which organizers advocate on a regular basis.

“Who is interested in covering this in an objective way—and who has an angle they are trying to perpetuate?” Jones asked.

Of the hundreds of protesters who filled Chicago’s streets Tuesday night, police arrested five on charges ranging from resisting a police officer to aggravated battery. (The most serious charges were reserved for Dean M. Vanriper, a 38-year-old white man from Murrieta, California, according to police.)

Activists joined hands at Roosevelt and Halsted before marching through the city streets November 24. (Martin Macias/City Bureau)

Those arrests are the statistics media will focus on, according to Jones: “They are focused on the violence and not the demands. That includes the violence of the police and suspected violence of protesters.”

“One of the things that media gets wrong, for me, is that the movement for black lives only sees police brutality as a problem and doesn’t have a scope or sphere about what community violence looks like,” BYP100 organizer Max Boykin said. “We see community violence and we see it as part of this larger problem of state violence against black bodies.”

Organizers with several Chicago-based activist groups joined hands outside of the Cook County courthouse November 25 for the release of BYP100 member and acclaimed spoken-word poet Malcolm London, who was charged with aggravated battery by police the night before—charges that were later dropped.

“We are poised to march as long as needed,” said BYP100’s Charlene Carruthers, as a crowd of activists waited for another protester to be released from court. “This did not start last night and it didn’t end last night. We are marching in protest of constant, structural racism by the Chicago Police Department.”

The marches will no doubt continue but the young organizers may not have to wait long for media and political allies to fall in line. Even now, major news outlets and politicians are calling for some of the same measures groups like BYP100 and Black Lives Matter have pushed in recent months, including a federal investigation of the Chicago Police Department and the firing of McCarthy and Alvarez.

If and when those demands for accountability become mainstream, the difference between public space and black space may not seem so far apart after all.

This report was published in collaboration with the Chicago Reader. Additional reporting by Ronald Reese, Michael Key, and La Risa Lynch.

 

After months of protests, the city acts on the police-involved shooting deaths of Laquan McDonald and Rekia Boyd

BY LA RISA LYNCH

Superintendent Garry McCarthy has begun the process to fire Dante Servin, the veteran police detective who fatally shot 22-year-old Rekia Boyd nearly three years ago in North Lawndale and set off months of protests.

McCarthy will file administrative charges with the Chicago Police Board Wednesday against Servin—only the second time McCarthy has moved to terminate an officer in a police-involved shooting.

The decision comes in parallel with the impending release of a video showing another fatal police shooting, in which an officer allegedly shoots 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times, which city and community leaders have said could lead to massive protests. The officer involved in that shooting was indicted on murder charges today, the Cook County state’s attorney announced.

Meanwhile, Boyd’s brother Martinez Sutton, who has led the dogged fight to hold Servin accountable for his actions, applauded the decision but added, “I’ll be even happier if they actually did their jobs and had him in jail just like the rest of the criminals.”

In September, the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), recommended Servin be fired. McCarthy had 90 days from that ruling to accept or reject the agency’s recommendation. Protesters have packed Police Board meetings for months, even shutting down the August meeting, criticizing McCarthy’s for the protracted process to fire Servin, who has been on the force since 1991. That prompted the often stoic superintendent to make a rare apology for the slow process.

In concurring with IPRA’s recommendation, McCarthy said Servin exercised “poor judgment” in the shooting death of Boyd in March 2012.

Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy listens to comments from attendees during the November Police Board Meeting. (Jonathan Gibby/City Bureau)

“After considerable deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that Officer Dante Servin showed incredibly poor judgment in his efforts to intervene in a low-level dispute while off-duty,” said McCarthy in a statement released to the media.

“His actions tragically resulted in the death of an innocent young woman and an unthinkable loss for a Chicago family and community,” the statement continued. “In the end, CPD has rules that we all must live by. Officer Servin violated those rules and he’s going to be held accountable for that.”

IPRA, the agency that investigates officer-involved shootings and police misconduct allegations, found that Servin violated several rules in the Boyd shooting. It also found Servin that provided inconsistent statements about the event and said that shooting into a crowd of people was “inattention to duty.”

Earlier this year, Servin faced criminal charges in Boyd’s death but was subsequently acquitted on a technicality. Servin faced several charges including involuntary manslaughter. But a Cook County judge dismissed the charges in April, ruling that Servin’s actions didn’t amount to reckless conduct but an intentional act that warranted a first-degree murder charge instead.

According to court testimony, Servin argued with Boyd and her friends about loud noise near Douglas Park before shooting at the group, killing Boyd and injuring another man. Servin, who shot over his shoulder while in his car, claimed self-defense because he thought someone had drawn a weapon, though none was found at the scene.

Servin is the second cop in an officer-involved shooting recommended for termination by McCarthy. The first is officer Francisco Perez, who IPRA recommended be fired this summer for making false statements and “inattention to duty” for firing at the wrong car in a 2011 drive-by shooting.

In October, McCarthy filed administrative charges against Perez, who was also off-duty working security at a restaurant in the 1100 block of North Ashland at the time of the shooting. His and Servin’s fates now lay in the hands of the Police Board.

But Servin’s dismissal won’t come any time soon. His case now goes before the full Police Board for a hearing, and Servin has several chances to appeal the board’s decision, if unfavorable.

Sutton took little solace in McCarthy’s late-evening announcement recommending Servin’s firing. He questioned “what the big holdup was” in McCarthy’s decision, which Sutton said could have been announced at last week’s Police Board meeting.

The struggle to bring about justice for his sister has been a long hard fight to get Servin charged in criminal court, only to see him get off on a technicality. But it was an even harder fight to get him fired, Sutton said. He added that true justice would be to see Servin behind bars.

“I’m happy that they recommended that they fire him. I’ll be even happier if they actually did their jobs and had him in jail just like the rest of the criminals,” he said.

“It sucks in a way,” he said. “I do not like the way this system is. It wasn’t designed for the people. It was designed to protect the police officers just in case they get into trouble. And that is exactly what’s it’s been doing.”

Martinez Sutton holds an illustration of his slain sister, Rekia Boyd, during the November Police Board Meeting. (Jonathan Gibby/City Bureau)

While the wait is not over for Sutton and his family, it has begun for the city as it prepares for the release of a graphic video tape showing the shooting death of McDonald.

McDonald was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014, in Archer Heights, after McDonald allegedly refused to drop a four-inch knife. Last week a Cook County judge ordered the release of a video showing the fatal shooting.

The judge set a deadline of November 25 to release the video. But the teen’s mother, according to news reports, does not want the video released because she fears its graphic nature could spark a riot in Chicago like that in Ferguson, Missouri, last year.

Ferguson erupted in protests, then fiery riots, as demonstrators clashed with police after a grand jury refused to indict the white police officer who fatally shot unarmed black 18-year-old Michael Brown. The video’s release and the pending indictment of Van Dyke comes on the anniversary of the Ferguson riots.

In preparation of the video’s release, Mayor Rahm Emanuel convened a meeting Monday with community leaders and activists to ask for calm as the deadline approaches. But several organizations that have been at the forefront calling for justice for Boyd and others victimized by police rebuffed the mayor’s invitation.

Instead in a press statement, they decried the mayor’s effort to control “black people’s response to the execution” of McDonald. Members of Black Youth Project 100 (BYP100), Fearless Leading by the Youth (FLY), Assata’s Daughters, We Charge Genocide, Black Lives Matter: Chicago among others “believe that the community has a right to respond as it sees fit,” the statement said.

“We have no faith that the same Mayor that allowed people to starve for 34 days over a school, will be accountable to black people just because we respond calmly to a documented hate crime committed by a Chicago police officer,” the statement said. “We also believe that leaders do not reserve the right to police people’s emotions. Our responsibility is to organize public energy into impact.”

This report was published in collaboration with the Chicago Reader.

Two Shooting Deaths, Two Paths to Justice

BY LA RISA LYNCH

Just hours after the city of Chicago stunned many onlookers by agreeing to release video of the fatal police shooting of a 17-year-old boy, the brother of another black Chicagoan shot and killed by police donned a familiar uniform of all-black clothing to attend a Chicago Police Board meeting, which he’s done every month for about half a year.

“I’m just asking that you fire him,” said Martinez Sutton Thursday night, clearly frustrated by police superintendent Garry McCarthy’s continued silence on punishment for Dante Servin, the Chicago police officer who killed his sister, Rekia Boyd, near Douglas Park in March 2012.

Attendees raise their fists in protest during the November Police Board Meeting at the Chicago Public Safety Headquarters on November 19, 2015 (Jonathan Gibby/City Bureau)

“I am tired of coming here . . . every month,” he said, pounding his fist once on the podium before imploring the standing-room-only crowd to raise their fists for a full minute in Boyd’s honor. In solidarity, the crowd, a multiethnic and multigenerational mix of supporters—some wearing yellow T-shirts embossed with “#SayHerName”—chanted “I am Rekia Boyd” for a full minute.

“It was my sister’s birthday this month,” Sutton said. “She would have been 26.”

The Independent Police Review Authority, the agency charged with investigating police misconduct and officer-involved shootings in Chicago, recommended Servin be fired in September, making him the second Chicago officer recommended for firing in an police-involved shooting since IPRA began in 2007. However, Superintendent McCarthy has yet to announce his decision on whether he accepts or rejects IPRA’s recommendation.

Critics of McCarthy’s deliberation, including Sutton and the City Council’s Black Caucus, have recommended the superintendent be fired as well.

By law, McCarthy has 90 days from September 16 to make a decision on Servin’s future as a Chicago police officer; his time runs out December 15. After protesters demanded a response again Thursday night, he responded that “it’s still being worked on.” The next public Chicago Police Board meeting is set for December 9.

Just hours earlier, another due date was set, this time by a judge who ordered the release of a video showing the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald. The 17-year-old was shot dead by police officer Jason Van Dyke on October 20, 2014, in Archer Heights after McDonald allegedly refused to drop a four-inch knife. The judge set a deadline of November 25 to release the video, and despite initial reports that the city would appeal the decision, a statement released by Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that it would comply.

Advocates claimed victory in court’s decision, but the west-side teen’s family may not share the sentiment—McDonald’s mother reportedly doesn’t want the video released for fear the video of a Chicago police officer shooting her son 16 times could spark a wave of anger and violence that could tear the city apart. Others who have viewed the video have agreed that the brutal nature of the video (McDonald is reportedly shot mostly in his back even after he fell to the ground) would lead to protests and social upheaval.

So far the city has spent nearly $10 million in total settlements for both cases ($5 million for McDonald’s family, $4.5 million for Boyd’s), but justice for the two families took different paths to arrival Thursday. And with looming decisions coming to a head in both cases, a turning point for either could be announced any day.

“I fear how the video release is going to impact [Laquan’s] family. I’m much more concerned with people over property,” Charlene Carruthers of Black Youth Project 100 said Thursday. “What I expect the reaction to be with the video is that people will continue to organize, like we’ve been doing . . . around structural changes within the Chicago Police Department and the broader city of Chicago.”

That push for change has been especially evident in mass ongoing street protests and via social media through trending tags like #JusticeForRekia, #SayHerName, and #FireServinNow; all largely driven by Sutton, known on Twitter as @IAmRekiaBoyd.

The Chicago Police Board votes during its November 19 meeting (Jonathan Gibby/City Bureau)

Meanwhile, in the absence of a decision from McCarthy, Sutton and his supporters have begun to suspect ulterior motives behind the Police Department’s delay.

“I got a feeling that he is going to resign before you make [your] decision,” Sutton told McCarthy and the police board Thursday night. “That’s my feeling. He is going to resign and get off scot-free.”

Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression activist Lacreshia Birts isn’t ruling that eventuality out—and resignation has precedent in Chicago: at least 57 officers resigned between 2011 and 2015 despite “sustained” investigations against them, according to newly released Citizens Police Data Project data.

“I think that is definitely a possibility that McCarthy is buying Dante Servin enough time to resign,” Birts said. “If he resigns, he may still find another job in another city, and that is unacceptable. He needs to still be fired. Even if he still resigns they still need to take away his pension.”

This report was published in collaboration with the Chicago Reader.

Who's Who in Police Accountability

When a complaint of misconduct is filed against a Chicago Police Officer, who reviews it? It’s the people who work for the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), the Chicago Police Board, and the Chicago Police Department’s Internal Affairs Division, the three organizations that oversee the city’s police force. Here, we help identify who leads these agencies—the people responsible for keeping Chicago’s police in check.

But first, a quick explanation of the various roles these agencies play: when a complaint is filed with IPRA, the agency retains any case of “excessive or deadly force, domestic abuse, verbal abuse based on bias, or coercion.” (All other complaints are passed on to the Internal Affairs Division of the CPD, which investigates charges ranging from drug use to simple procedural violations by officers.) If IPRA investigators deem a complaint warranted, the case is “sustained.” From there, if investigators find the officer’s actions to be unjustified, the agency has the option of recommending disciplinary action to Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. If the superintendent agrees with a recommendation that an officer be discharged from the force, the nine-member Police Board convenes to vote on the officer’s future with the force. After a case is decided, a written decision is posted online.

Scott Ando: Chief Administrator, IPRA

(All illustrations by Jasmin Liang/South Side Weekly)

Scott Ando is the Chief Administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority, a position from which he oversees investigations into police misconduct and makes disciplinary recommendations to CPD Superintendent Garry McCarthy. Ando previously spent twenty-eight years working as a Special Agent for the Drug Enforcement Administration. His history in law enforcement has drawn raised eyebrows from a number of community activists, who question his ability to impartially conduct investigations. In particular, they point to accusations from Lorenzo Davis, a former IPRA investigator, that Ando forced him to reverse his findings. It’s true that Ando remains affiliated with police: he’s a member of the International Association of Chiefs of Police and the Fraternal Order of Police, as well as the New Jersey state police union.

Annual Salary: A hair under $162,000.

Lorenzo Davis: former investigator, IPRA

When Lorenzo Davis was fired from his job as a police investigator at IPRA this past July, he ignited a national furor over the agency’s internal procedures. While IPRA would not publicly divulge the exact reason for the termination, WBEZ Chicago obtained an evaluation of Davis from two weeks before he was laid off that described him as having “a clear bias against police” in investigations of officer-involved shootings. Davis, for his part, alleges that he was asked by Chief Administrator Scott Ando to change his recommendations in several cases where he found a police officer had committed an offense. Ando has denied the charge, and no state or federal investigation into the matter is being conducted. Before beginning work at IPRA, Davis was a CPD commander.

Annual Salary at IPRA: About $93,000.

Lori Lightfoot: President, Chicago Police Board

Jasmin Liang

This past June, Lori Lightfoot was appointed to the Chicago Police Board, which disciplines officers accused of misconduct. She took over from Demetrius Carney, a Richard M. Daley appointment, who had served on the board since 1996. Lightfoot is a former federal prosecutor and current partner at the powerful Chicago law firm Mayer Brown. More interestingly, she was Chief Administrator at the Office of Professional Standards, the now-defunct CPD agency that conducted investigations into police misconduct before the creation of IPRA in 2007. Lightfoot is also one of a series of new board members appointed by Emanuel over the past couple years; since 2013, five of the Board’s nine members have been replaced by newer ones.

Annual Stipend: $25,000.

Ghian Foreman: Vice President, Chicago Police Board

Ghian Foreman, a real estate developer and native of Hyde Park/Kenwood, serves as the Police Board’s vice president. Appointed by Mayor Richard M. Daley in 2010, he is a partner at the real estate firm Maktub Development LLC and the executive director of the Greater Southwest Development Corporation. As a seasoned businessman who’s also involved in community projects, Foreman is an emblem of Emanuel’s predilection for choosing white-collar professionals to fill spots on the Board. Foreman is an archetypal voter, too: according to the Chicago Justice Project, he has voted in agreement with the CPD’s disciplinary recommendations seventy-eight percent of the time, approximately the average of the board’s nine members.

Annual Stipend: $15,000.

Rita Fry: Member, Chicago Police Board

After twenty-three years at the Law Office of the Cook County Public Defender—and a number of those years at its helm—Rita Fry has worked within Chicago’s criminal justice system far longer than most others on the Police Board. As a public defender from 1980 to 2003, the number of coerced confessions to which she bore witness drove her to serve on the Illinois Commission on Capital Punishment, which contributed to the commuting of 167 death sentences. Fry reentered public service in 2009 when she was appointed to the Police Board by the younger Mayor Daley. She also serves as president & CEO of RAF Consulting, Inc., her own government relations consulting firm.

Annual Stipend: $15,000.

This report was produced in partnership with the South Side Weekly.

Top Cop's Apologies Fall on Deaf Ears as Servin Decision Lingers

BY LA RISA LYNCH

Chicago police superintendent Garry McCarthy came ready Thursday night, Oct. 15 for the throng of protesters who, as they have for the past few months, packed the Chicago Police Board’s meeting to demand detective Dante Servin be fired.

Servin was charged and subsequently acquitted on a technicality after fatally shooting 22-year-old Rekia Boyd in March 2012. The Independent Police Review Authority recommended in September that the veteran officer be fired—a first in the board’s history. McCarthy has 90 days from the ruling to accept or reject the agency’s recommendation.

“I apologize we don’t have it done yet,” McCarthy said, referring to the case. “We still have 60 days, and I am not going to put a time frame on this, but I will guarantee you that it is not going to take that long. But tonight I cannot sit here and tell you where the case is. That is a little premature based on what we do.”

At Thursday’s meeting, McCarthy tried to appease protesters’ ire over the protracted process to separate Servin from the department. He said that the department’s attorneys are still looking at the case “to determine the correct charges and all the legalities that need to go forward to bring a good case in front of the police board.”

Still, that did not satisfy a litany of speakers who told Police Board members and McCarthy that a decision to dismiss Servin had dragged on long enough. Servin, who was off-duty at the time of the 2012 shooting, fired his gun over his shoulder while inside his car.

According to court testimony, Servin argued with Boyd and her friends about loud noise near Douglas Park before shooting at the group, killing Boyd and injuring another man. Servin claimed self-defense because he thought someone had drawn a weapon, though none was found at the scene.

Servin faced several charges including involuntary manslaughter for Boyd’s death. But a Cook County judge dismissed the charges on a technicality: Servin’s actions didn’t amount to reckless conduct, the judge said, but an intentional act that warranted a first-degree murder charge. The unusual decision spurred more protests by Boyd’s family and supporters, who took control of a Police Board meeting in August before it was abruptly shut down.

IPRA, which investigates officer shootings and allegations of police misconduct, made its recommendation to the Chicago Police Department to fire Servin three years after the shooting.

Protesters line up outside the Police Board meeting Thursday. Some speakers at the meeting called for McCarthy’s resignation.

Protesters line up outside the Police Board meeting Thursday. Some speakers at the meeting called for McCarthy’s resignation.

Mike Siviwe Elliott of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression was one of the speakers Thursday night. In his remarks, Siviwe Elliott said that IPRA’s recommendation was a direct result of the #BlackLivesMatter movement and pressure from community activists and Boyd’s family. His group has been pushing for an elected civilian police board to replace IPRA and the Chicago Police Board, members of which are currently appointed by the mayor.

“So we are not going to thank you for that [recommendation to fire Servin], because you owe us that,” he said. “You been owing us that for a long time.”

“It’s not supposed to take three years to fulfill a sworn duty,” said Aislinn Sol, a member of the activist collective BlackLivesMatter Chicago. “You had three years, McCarthy. You don’t need 60 days.”

The City Council’s Black Caucus called for McCarthy’s firing earlier this month after a bloodier-than-usual September, saying that McCarthy has “failed” their communities. Several speakers Thursday also pressured McCarthy to either take action or resign.

It’s been over three years—March 21, 2012 is when my sister got killed. I didn’t get an apology from the mayor. The superintendent didn’t apologize to us. She is just dead.
–Martinez Sutton

“Stand up or step down,” said LaCreshia Birts, a member of CAARPR and Black Youth Project 100. “All actions taken by CPD start and end with you, McCarthy. … Stand up and hold police who commit crimes against civilians accountable.”

As the last speaker was called to the podium, some in the audience stood up and chanted “Fire Servin now.” Afterward, the group gathered outside Chicago Police Department headquarters to hold an impromptu rally. Boyd’s brother Martinez Sutton, 32, addressed the crowd.

“It’s been over three years—March 21, 2012 is when my sister got killed,” Sutton said. “I didn’t get an apology from the mayor. The superintendent didn’t apologize to us. She is just dead.”

Sutton also expressed disappointment that the decision to terminate Servin has yet to come, saying he finds it hard to understand how a man who committed what a judge deemed murder could still be a free man working at the Police Department.

“This decision should have been made back in 2012,” Sutton said. “It should take no 90 days at all.”

This report produced in collaboration with the Chicago Reader.

The Origins of IPRA

BY WILL CABANISS

This fall, journalists with the Invisible Institute will publish an interactive online database of all allegations of police misconduct in Chicago between March 2011 and March 2015, as well as partial data from earlier years. These records, obtained by the Invisible Institute through years of Freedom of Information Act litigation, offer an unprecedented view into the City’s system of police accountability. This series, produced in partnership with City Bureau, is meant to provide context for the forthcoming database.

The series of events that would eventually lead to an overhaul of the bodies that oversee the CPD started on February 21, 2007, when Officer Anthony Abbate, then a 12-year veteran of the force, physically assaulted a bartender named Karolina Obrycka.

Only after Obrycka’s attorneys released security footage of the incident – nearly one month later – was Abbate arrested. Police officials said they had been “unable to locate” him in the intervening weeks, even though they had apprehended Abbate in the confines of his own home. That claim took five years to disprove, when a federal jury found the police guilty of brushing Abbate’s case under the rug.

The Abbate case was not the only one on Chicago’s mind at the time. The city settled another high-profile dispute in December 2006, when it awarded $150,000 to a woman named Diane Bond. Bond had accused five CPD officers abusing both her physically and psychologically in and around her Stateway Gardens apartment.

November of 2007 saw the release of a study led by Craig Futterman, a professor of law at the University of Chicago, which alleged that Obrycka, Bond, and others were the victims of a CPD-wide code of silence.

“The odds are two in a thousand,” the study found, “that a Chicago police officer will receive any meaningful discipline as a result of being charged with abusing a civilian.”

Futterman and his team provided hard evidence that the department’s internal investigations were nearly meaningless. The evidence of cover-ups and inefficiencies within the Office for Professional Standards, the branch of the Chicago Police Department formerly responsible for investigating police misconduct, struck a particularly painful chord. But other broad swaths of the CPD were implicated in the report as well, from administrators down to officers.

The Abbate scandal led to the ouster of Superintendent Philip J. Cline, the CPD’s top administrator, who resigned in April 2007. Headlines concerning police misconduct dominated Chicago media outlets for months following both events, forcing city leaders to act or face the political consequences.

This environment set the foundations of the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). That summer, the city council voted to dissolve OPS and establish an independent agency to oversee police investigations, a proposal championed by Mayor Richard M. Daley. The founding of IPRA was set to begin a new era of accountability and discipline with the CPD. Some praised the mayor, while others called the move a transparently political calculation.

To lead the new organization, the mayor tapped Ilana Rosenzweig, an attorney who had kept an eye on the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Office at the city’s Office of Independent Review. The mayor also brought in a new police chief from outside the department, a former FBI agent named Jody Weis.

Futterman said that at the time, he and his team were encouraged by the decision to establish an independent oversight committee and to bring someone from outside the CPD to lead it, but had reservations about the mayor’s motivations.

“There was a real risk of federal intervention in Chicago,” Futterman said, referring to the period after Cline stepped down, “and one of the ways in which they very adeptly attempted to head that off was to bring in someone from federal law enforcement themselves.”

The key to IPRA was built into its name – it would investigate cases independent of the police and city government officials, and that caseload would not be small.

The agency, as it is currently structured, intakes all claims of misconduct, investigating those that involve “excessive force, domestic violence, coercion through violence, or verbal bias-based abuse.” All other complaints are forwarded to the CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA).

Disciplinary recommendations for officers found guilty of misconduct, if issued at all, range from simple reprimands to suspensions. “Separation,” IPRA’s harshest possible recommendation and one of the many institutional euphemisms the agency employs, is police-speak for being fired.

IPRA then investigates complaints that involve “excessive force, domestic violence, coercion through violence, or verbal bias-based abuse,” its website says, and forwards all other cases to the Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA).

How much attention and money these reform efforts received, however, was ultimately dictated by public outrage. While the scandal initially dominated Chicago headlines, the shock soon waned. As a result, Futterman said, IPRA wasn’t given the funding or the resources it needed to conduct thorough investigations or even find more people capable of carrying them out.

Just months after Rosenzweig’s appointment, IPRA was already facing difficulties. The Tribune reported in December 2007 that the agency, “budgeted for 85 positions … is short 24 people.” Each investigator was taking on thirty cases at a time – triple the number Rosenzweig thought was appropriate.

More important was the perception of critics that nothing had changed. Beyond the acronym swap, some initially saw few differences between OPS and IPRA.

“(Rosenzweig) inherited the exact same staff (from OPS) that was inadequate and had a culture of protecting the police,” Futterman said.

IPRA now has almost a decade of experience under its belt. It has a new leader, a former Drug Enforcement Administration officer named Scott Ando. (Rosenzweig abruptly left the agency in 2013 when her husband accepted a job in Singapore.)

But whether it has succeeded in gaining Chicagoans’ trust is unclear. Questions about its efficiency and supposed impartiality remain unanswered, too.

Eight years later, IPRA’s record shows few recommendations for punishments as severe as “separation.” At press time, the latest high-profile case of a police-involved shooting to pass through IPRA’s doors is that of Officer Dante Servin, who fatally shot 22 year-old Rekia Boyd nearly three and a half years ago. Servin shot into a crowd while off duty in Lawndale, claiming that he saw a man in the group produce a gun. Boyd was caught in his line of fire. No weapon was ever recovered.

On September 16, 2015, IPRA recommended to police chief Garry McCarthy that Servin be fired. It was only the second such verdict the agency had ever issued related to a police-involved shooting. (IPRA has also never found an on-duty shooting to be unjustified.) Before Servin’s case was that of Officer Francisco Perez, who fired 16 bullets at a car while off-duty. Perez was fired this past summer not for his actions, according to Supt. McCarthy, but for lying about them during the investigation.

Yet the reality is that, even after this most recent decision, Servin’s career with the CPD is by no means over. In fact, should McCarthy reject IPRA’s recommendation, he would save Servin from the ignominy of facing the Police Board, a panel of nine private citizens who make the final call on allegations of misconduct. IPRA’s recommendations are still no more than that – recommendations. The case against Servin, should McCarthy want it to, would come to a standstill.

Correction: A previous version of this article stated that “IPRA has also never found an on-duty shooting to be justified.” This article has been updated to reflect that IPRA has never found an on-duty shooting to be unjustified.

Published in partnership with the South Side Weekly.