The union representing Chicago’s rank-and-file cops filed a lawsuit in federal court Friday, alleging the city’s police oversight agency has led dubious investigations and imposed unfairly harsh discipline on officers.
The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police and eight officers allege the city of Chicago, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Chicago Police Department have “conducted untimely, biased and unfair investigations” used “to uphold excessive disciplinary recommendations.”
COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten and several COPA employees are also named as defendants, along with Chicago Police Supt. Larry Snelling.
The lawsuit marks the latest broadside against Kersten, who has recently faced stiff criticism from Snelling over her handling of the investigation into the fatal police shooting of Dexter Reed.
Meanwhile, city Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s office has begun reviewing complaints about “the quality and integrity” of COPA’s investigations and allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers.
In an interview Friday, FOP President John Catanzara claimed Kersten “has taken that agency to a far-left ideology that is way beyond their mission statement.”
“They’re in charge of police accountability in theory, but they’re not accountable to anybody,” Catanzara said. “They made false claims, false reports, erroneous findings. It goes on and on and on.”
A COPA spokesperson didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokesperson for the police department declined to comment on the pending litigation.
The 37-page complaint contends COPA has ignored evidence and deprived officers their due process rights. The police department is named as a defendant because the superintendent has the power to agree with COPA’s findings and is otherwise involved in the disciplinary process.
The lawsuit specifically cites the disciplinary cases of eight plaintiffs: Joseph Capello, Eric Duron, Vincent Barner, Terrance Nalls, George Spacek, Dimar Vasquez, Jaime Acosta and Lucasz Gorski.
Much of the suit hinges on the findings of investigations overturned or altered when officers took cases to arbitration. In 2021, the inspector general’s office found 78% of cases taken to arbitration resulted in discipline being either reduced or eliminated.
The FOP recently won a court battle expanding the right to arbitration, allowing officers to grieve the most serious disciplinary cases. But the union is appealing that ruling because it requires those arbitrations to be held in a public forum.
Catanzara argued favorable arbitration rulings are evidence Kersten and COPA are biased.
“We want the court to send a signal to her, to her No. 2, No. 3 and the other investigators working for COPA that our members are not there to be basically pinatas and punching bags,” he said. “They don’t get to just make stuff up to appease squeaky wheels in this city under the guise of police accountability when it’s nothing but some far left-wing agenda that she’s been placed in charge of.”
The suit accuses Kersten of colluding with a host of top underlings to systematically treat police officers “unequally and unfairly.” It also claims without clear evidence that COPA’s chief “routinely makes public comments on pending investigations that taint the investigation process and any results thereof.”
That portion echoes Snelling’s frustrations about Kersten’s comments about the ongoing Dexter Reed investigation. During a contentious Chicago Police Board meeting in April, Snelling criticized Kersten’s account of the shooting as “misleading at best.”
“I’ve made no statements about it because I don’t want to poison the well when it comes to this shooting,” Snelling said, adding that COPA “doesn’t exist to create a bias.” Any possible impropriety, Snelling warned, “jeopardizes the integrity of that investigation.”
The Reed case is not one of the eight cases cited by the FOP in Friday’s lawsuit. However, Catanzara said it was “kind of the straw that broke the camel’s back” for the union, which along with members is seeking damages, attorneys’ fees and the “values of the compensation and benefits lost” due to “unlawful conduct.”
“This isn’t just the average case where the officer or we didn’t like the outcome,” Catanzara said. “These are egregious examples of misconduct by COPA, Andrea Kersten and her lead investigators.”