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Chicago still a long way from effective police oversight system
DAVID G. DUGGAN
Law Bulletin columnist
Published: February 22, 2017
Buried within the Department of Justice’s scathing 164-page review of Chicago Police Department practices were comments about the amount of “civilian” oversight of police officers and the allegations of their misconduct.
From Page 46 to Page 93 of the Justice Department civil rights division’s Jan. 13 “Investigation of the Chicago Police Department” the authors chronicle how the police department’s Independent Police Review Authority tanked investigations, failed to pursue leads and subverted its mission to provide an “independent” “review” of police officers’ claimed misconduct.
In the month since the report’s release, the city has settled one more Jon Burge case — for $4 million — and a report by the Chicago Reader has described how officers with sketchy disciplinary records are often put on school patrol.
Whether this is because these officers are less likely to use deadly force in a school is left for the reader to assess: The police department offered limited assistance in the article, simply releasing a statement: “Regardless of their assignment, [Chicago Police Department] officers are held to the highest professional standards.”
Little mentioned in the Justice Department report is the city’s newest effort to curb the culture of violence that has tarnished the police department since the days of Al Capone. In the Justice Department’s news release accompanying the report and given prominent play in the media circus which followed the release, the bureaucrats wrote:
“Throughout the department’s investigation, [Chicago Police Department] leadership remained receptive to preliminary feedback and technical assistance and started the process of implementing reforms. Under the leadership of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Superintendent Eddie Johnson, [Chicago Police Department] has taken a number of encouraging steps, including creating the Civilian Office of Police Accountability [COPA] to replace the [Independent Police Review Authority] … ”
But given what I have seen of Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s creation, it will be simply another failed PR attempt destined to blow up in the faces of whomever happens to be mayor or police superintendent.
This is an opportunity to create an effective police oversight system that can withstand both the inevitable public outrage as well as the political winds.
Just to recapitulate: The Independent Police Review Authority did not come full grown out of the head of Zeus. It was the reboot of the Office of Professional Standards, a three-person panel of luminaries (all lawyers — one white, one black, one Hispanic) who reviewed the determinations of the police department’s internal affairs bureau to decide whether there was “probable cause” for an officer’s discipline.
When the persistent allegations of systemic torture within the police department’s ranks finally became too much for then-mayor Richard M. Daley to stomach (he was, after all, the Cook County state’s attorney when most of the Burge era excesses occurred), he sought cover by creating the Independent Police Review Authority. Eight years, and hundreds of million dollars later in settlements, Emanuel decided he needed another scapegoat. Hence the new review authority.
The Justice Department report (Page 92) identified five differences between the new and the old review authority 1) expanded investigative authority; 2) guaranteed budget floor; 3) authority to hire independent counsel; 4) a five-year ban on former police officers serving as the new review authority’s investigators; and 5) a modified mediation program [between the police officer-offender and the person whose rights allegedly were violated].
But these do not begin to address the structural problems inherent with an organization whose budget is set by the city council (its Finance Committee is chaired by Ald. Edward M. Burke, a former police officer whose wife is on the Illinois Supreme Court), without prosecutorial authority or the ability to immunize witnesses.
Without these reforms, the new review authority will be simply another window-dressing effort to put adequate political distance between the mayor, his hand-picked superintendent and police department.
I should know. In the mid-1980s I worked for what was then the best special prosecutor’s office in the country: the Office of the Special State Prosecutor for the New York City Criminal Justice System. A reform stemming from New York Police Department officers Frank Serpico’s and David Dirk’s disclosures of widespread corruption in New York and the Knapp Commission’s investigation into organized crime’s tentacles reaching into the five counties’ prosecutors and even the judiciary, the office investigated and prosecuted bribery, drug-dealing, arms-dealing and other misconduct by police officers, court officers, corrections officers, assistant district attorneys and judges in the New York state system.
Fans of 1970s genre movies may recall “Serpico” (Al Pacino) and “Prince of the City” (Treat Williams) which dealt with the issues. And political junkies may remember that U.S. Rep. Geraldine Ferraro, the 1984 Democratic vice presidential candidate, had been a Queens assistant district attorney under her cousin Nick.
Nick Ferraro had been elected Queens district attorney when his predecessor — once removed/resigned under a cloud because he was shielding a Ponzi scheme into which several of his assistant DA’s had invested.
The special office had superseding jurisdiction, a budget under the control of the governor (and not New York’s attorney general) and a staff of trained investigators and lawyers. U.S. District Judge John Keenan was one of the first special prosecutors, appointed by the New York attorney general with the approval of the governor. Because the office was independent of political influence, it was feared and respected.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability has none of these advantages. According to its table of organization and list of available positions (the chicagocopa.org website has been taken down), the office intends to hire 60 investigators and 15 “major case specialists” but only three lawyers, none with prosecutorial authority.
Even more telling regarding the fact that the office is simply a PR ploy is that it has positions for two each of senior public information officers and community case liaisons, whatever those are.
Properly conceived and constituted, an office overseeing the work of the police department should have no PR officers: Public relations should be the job of the top person or his designee who would address the media and public only when charges are filed or an investigation concluded.
Such an office should do its work in silence with maximum secrecy, off the 744 phone-number exchange used by all Chicago bureaus, in a building that cannot be watched by those who would oppose its mission.
When the Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s obituary is written, it will have remained to the U.S. Attorney’s Office and the Department of Justice to enforce the law regarding police excess, whether that excess is extortion (Mark Thanasouras), corruption (Sonia Irwin) or brutality (Jon Burge). But federal law is a blunt instrument: Federal prosecutors have other fish to fry and, like the state’s attorney, need the police department’s cooperation to make their cases.
And remember that Burge went to prison not for beating anyone up, but for lying about it in a federal civil rights lawsuit brought by one of his victims more than a decade after the incident — while he was retired and living in Florida on his police pension.
It is time for Chicago citizens to exert their influence on their aldermen and create a special prosecutor’s office with full authority over police conduct.
Then, Chicagoans of every race, color, creed or prior condition of servitude might have a police department that is respected more than it is feared.
Now retired from the active practice of law and pursuing a career as a “community activist” in his Lakeview neighborhood, David G. Duggan is admitted to the bars of New York and Illinois. His book, “Glimpses of Grace, Reflections of a Life in Christ" is available on Amazon.