Page 10 - November 2019 FOP

SecondVice President’s Report
Will Lightfoot allow disastrous new police oversight agency?
Here we go again.
The powerful anti-police movement is attempt- ing to create another, even more radical police over- sight agency. Will Mayor Lightfoot bow to it?
Recently, a group holding a news conference at Chicago City Hall gave the mayor an F grade for her failure to support passage of an ordinance created by the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA).
The proposed ordinance aims to create a new elected board and commission to investigate and oversee the Chicago Police Department. It calls for the hiring of dozens of new officials in the city, would cost untold millions of dollars and place numerous limitations on who is eligible for election or ap- pointment to the commission.
While police officers are expressly disqualified from having a role, special allowances are made for “...people who have direct experience of police misconduct or have an immediate family member who has had direct experience of police misconduct.”
The bizarre ordinance would turn control of the CPD over to a group that, judging by its website, not only detests police but also has little or no grasp of the current state of affairs in this city.
GAPA would usher in a new era of shockingly bad governance — even for Chicago — but it has created a perfect opportunity to explain to the law-abiding taxpayers in this city what they’re currently getting for their money in the way of “accountability” in the CPD.
Bureau of Internal Affairs
Like most police departments across the country, the CPD has an office of sworn members dedicated to internal affairs. The CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs’ duties include investigation of most criminal allegations and employment-related policy infrac- tions.
Internal Affairs has built-in credibility in a police department because it is staffed by people who have done the job. Most offi- cers who are fired by Internal Affairs are branded “bad cops” and generate disdain from the majority of officers who take pride in their work.
Unlike most police departments, the CPD’s Internal Affairs is only a small part of an enormous and inefficient accountability bureaucracy.
Civilian Office of Police Accountability
In the wake of the Laquan McDonald incident, the civil- ian-staffed Independent Police Review Authority was rebranded the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA), and a budget increase was put in place to ensure that COPA maintains a cash flow of at least 1 percent of the Chicago Police Department bud- get — this amounted to more than $13 million in 2018.
COPA has administrative jurisdiction over all allegations of im- proper search and seizure, denial of legal counsel, domestic vio- lence allegations against officers and any complaints related to a police-involved shooting or police-involved death.
COPA lacks people with a strong knowledge of police work,
since the COPA ordinance prohibits the employment of former CPD officers or anyone who has been a police officer within the past five years.
This makes for inequitable outcomes, such as the recent po- lice board case against an officer in the shooting of Ryan Rogers, where COPA ruled a shot was fired only a fraction of a second out of policy. Bound by a system that almost always defers to COPA, the CPD’s superintendent’s objection to filing separation charges was disregarded.
Even more alarming was a recent incident (originally hidden and then uncovered by the tenacious work of FOP lawyers) where COPA hired an outside expert on use of force to investigate the shooting by an officer of Bettie Jones and Quintonio LeGrier.
Although it was encouraging that an organization with almost no policing experts sought out the assistance of one, COPA hid the report after the retained expert found the shooting to be jus- tified. It then arbitrarily decided (obviously without the needed expertise) that the shooting was unjustified.
If you don’t understand how a COPA head appointed by a group of anti-police commissioners is less biased than one ap- pointed by an elected mayor, you’re catching on.
Inspector general’s office
Around the same time the Chicago City Council expanded the jurisdiction and budget for COPA, it created a Public Safety Inspector General position and increased the guaranteed mul- timillion-dollar budget of the inspector general, with automatic increases tied to the total City budget.
Joe Ferguson entered the police accountability media grab in 2014 by investigating the alleged cover-up by detectives in the David Koschman death investigation. While his investigation resulted in the resignation of several high-ranking department members, a recently conducted police board hearing illuminat- ed what just about every Chicago Police Officer already knew: It makes a very sensational story to believe that more than a half dozen of Chicago’s finest were willing to put their livelihoods on the line to protect a nephew of Mayor Daley.
The hearing exposed the more boring truth: Cops never cared about Daley’s nephew, but felony review standards at the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office are very high. Getting a drunken fistfight homicide charged in Cook County would be less like- ly than finding two MAGA hat-wearing neo-Nazis wandering around River North in a polar vortex.
Ferguson was a leader of the Police Accountability Task Force and signed the group’s report which determined, without any in- vestigation, that a group of officers filed false reports to protect former officer Jason Van Dyke. No unbiased investigation starts with the lead investigator signing a document declaring all sus- pects guilty, so you can add the inspector general’s office to the list of groups that will never be mistaken for pro-police.
It came as no surprise that Ferguson recommended firing anyone whose name touched the McDonald investigation, in-
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10 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ NOVEMBER 2019
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