Page 11 - February 2018 FOP Newsletter

SecondVice President’s Report
Is COPA using media leaks to push agenda?
Did the City agency charged with overseeing police misconduct allegations leak information to the media about an ongoing investigation against a Police Officer...again?
It’s beginning to look that way.
The Chicago Tribune broke the story in January about an alleged altercation at a Northwest Side bar involving an off-duty officer who was also in- volved in a 2015 fatal police shooting. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) recently
ruled that the 2015 shooting — in which the officer fatally shot a mentally ill man who was charging at him with a baseball bat — was not justified. A woman was also accidentally and tragically fatally shot in the incident.
The FOP condemned the ruling by COPA that the shooting was not justified. Then, on Jan. 5, the Tribune got wind of a re- ported altercation involving the same officer several weeks ago at a bar — and COPA’s investigation of it.
Chicago Lodge 7 accused COPA of using the incident at the bar to put pressure on CPD Superintendent Eddie Johnson to bolster the ruling on the 2015 shooting. FOP President Kevin Graham also questioned whether the media getting wind of the bar altercation was part of that pressure.
Was the source of the Tribune’s information someone at IPRA? If so, it wouldn’t be the first time that either COPA or its previous incarnation, IPRA, had been accused of releasing confidential information against a CPD member.
A lawsuit last year against IPRA accused the agency of releas- ing a confidential state police lab report to Chicago reporter Chip Mitchell. The lab report indicated that a DNA sample tak- en from the gun of CPD Commander Glenn Evans tested pos- itive as coming from a gang member that Evans had arrested after a foot chase.
The state police report was released by Mitchell, a reporter for the NPR station WBEZ, and portrayed as positive evidence against Evans. The report became crucial evidence in criminal charges brought against Evans. But in the criminal trial, attor- neys for Evans argued (bolstered by expert testimony) that the DNA sample was merely the result of contact with the offender in the course of the arrest.
Throughout the trial, attorneys for Evans also brought forth evidence that, they claimed, revealed a wholly biased IPRA in- vestigation against Evans. Evans was acquitted of all charges, with Judge Diane Cannon agreeing that the DNA report did not point to misconduct by Evans.
Then there’s former Chicago Police Officer Emily Hock, who had been involved in an ongoing domestic dispute with a former boyfriend and alleged that he had been stalking her. In October 2016, she discovered that an investigator at IPRA had released private information to Kristopher Weiss, her ex-boyfriend.
From the Chicago Tribune:
Two years into a bitter child custody battle, Chicago police Officer Emily Hock said she became fearful after her son’s father seemed to have an uncanny knowledge of her daily work sched- ule...
But Hock, who filed a lawsuit on Tuesday in Cook County Cir- cuit Court, said she was stunned in October to uncover emails pointing to the alleged source of Weiss’ inside information — an investigator with the civilian agency charged with investigating Chicago Police misconduct.
Hock said the emails showed the investigator giving Weiss tips on how to make his complaints to police and the Independent Police Review Authority seem more substantial.
“I was completely almost taken off my feet,” Hock, an eight- year department veteran now on medical leave, said in an inter- view in her lawyer’s offices. “I couldn’t believe that an agency that has this much power and this much access to police officers’ con- fidential records...was providing them to somebody who I was scared for my life from.”
Hock’s lawsuit against an IPRA investigator and the City of Chicago alleged intentional infliction of emotional distress, pri- vacy violations and failure by the City to properly supervise the investigator.
There is also the case in which an attorney representing the officer accused in the Laquan McDonald shooting claimed that IPRA had released information from IPRA to Chicago writer Ja- mie Kalven, a founding member of the Invisible Institute.
From the Sun-Times:
[The officer’s] attorneys said at a hearing Tuesday that long- time South Side activist Jamie Kalven was leaked information from the Independent Police Review Authority, the police over- sight agency that last month was re-launched as the Civilian Of- fice of Police Accountability just weeks after the shooting, taint- ing evidence that was subsequently obtained by investigators from the State’s Attorney’s Office and FBI.
Now information from a COPA investigation has found its way to the Tribune.
What is particularly suspicious about three of the four epi- sodes is that the reporters involved are believed by many Police Officers to be decidedly biased against CPD officers. They have routinely published articles alleging police misconduct but re- fuse to cover evidence of wrongdoing among activists and law firms alleging police misconduct.
Indeed, Jamie Kalven’s organization, the Invisible Institute, is, according to its website, supported by prominent wrongful conviction law firm Loevy & Loevy.
Recently, Hinkel published an article that infuriated many Police Officers and their supporters when he quoted former IPRA director Sharon Fairley as saying that the police were “squealing” when the FOP criticized both IPRA and COPA as being unfair in their investigations.
Squealing?
The signs that COPA is using the media to push an agenda are growing. It’s time the City got a handle on it and found out who is doing any leaking - and why. d
MARTIN PREIB
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2018 11