Page 22 - December 2020

The hottest issue at COPA
As the year comes to a close, there are defi- nitely certain topics at COPA that have be- come high priority. It seems like our ci- vilian oversight crusaders have become obsessed with certain allegations that
they love to sink their teeth into. While
not to diminish their other pet projects,
it appears to me that they become very excited about investigative stop reports, use of force and all flavors of off-duty incidents.
While the majority of these complaints are case-specific, there is one area that COPA is euphoric about. That would be the Body Worn Camera general order. Like a dog chasing its tail, COPA can always find a way to integrate the BWC into any allegation.
We have written in the past about the BWC general order. Any working police officer who is required to affix it to their vest should read the order and become very familiar with the requirements. The biggest issue with the BWCs at COPA is failing to activate them on a timely basis. COPA will get a complaint, see that there was no use of force violation, but then hit the officer with an allegation of failure to activate timely. My advice to this is to review the general order. It is
found at Special Order S03-14. There is a laundry list of times where you must activate the device. The theme is essen- tially that you must activate it when you are about to engage in police activity. That means when you get the assignment and engage your lights, you should activate the BWC. Err on the side of caution and read
the general order.
Now the reason COPA constantly alleges a BWC vi-
olation is not out of solid investigative techniques but rather out of anger. Many of COPA’s investigators still oper- ate under the assumption that every police officer has done something wrong. They will review a complaint and see that at certain times the BWC did not capture wrong-doing. In- stinctively, they believe that wrong-doing did occur, but due to the officer’s unintentional failure to timely activate or due to some sinister cover-up, it was missed. For the officer’s neg- ligence or bad motive, this wrong-doing must have occurred, but was missed on the video. There are no coincidences in body-worn camera activation at COPA and there are no “fog of war” instances, but rather everything is a plot to hide mis- conduct. I suppose if you believe in unicorns and monsters under the bed that your failure to find them is not due to the fact that they don’t exist, but rather due to the fact that these
TIM GRACE
The Law Firm of Grace & Thompson Specializes in Representing Chicago Police Officers
James E. Thompson, Partner JThompson@ggtlegal.com
Timothy M. Grace, Partner connorgrace@aol.com
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22 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ DECEMBER 2020