Chicago’s new police oversight chief has repeatedly wiped out or dramatically scaled back recommendations to fire officers following pushback from the city’s top cop, the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ have found.
The reversals by the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability follow acrimony and infighting that roiled the agency, culminating in the resignation of its chief administrator, Andrea Kersten, after a tenure marked by internal accusations of mismanagement and anti-police bias.
In March, Kersten was replaced on an interim basis by LaKenya White, who has worked for COPA since the agency was established in the wake of the police killing of Laquan McDonald in 2014.
White’s administration has since walked back the disciplinary recommendations for six cops — four it said should be fired and two for whom it said firing should be considered.
In each case, COPA adopted recommendations made by police Supt. Larry Snelling, who had publicly assailed Kersten over her handling of the police shootout that killed Dexter Reed. Three cops received no discipline, one got a reprimand, and two got suspensions of a week or less.
COPA had spent an average of more than three years investigating each of those cases and could have asked the Chicago Police Board, an independent body that decides disciplinary cases, to settle disputes with the Chicago Police Department over its conclusions.
The Sun-Times and WBEZ found:
- COPA sought to have Sgt. Luke Opoka fired for what it found was lying to a dispatcher and saying that a driver tried to run over officers during a traffic stop in March 2019. Opoka ultimately was reprimanded.
- Opoka’s partner, Officer Thomas Fennell, faced anywhere from a 180-day suspension up to firing over accusations of chasing the same driver and disregarding a supervisor’s order to immediately terminate the pursuit. Instead, Fennell was suspended for seven days.
- COPA initially pushed for the firing of Officer Fernando Ruiz over a shooting that left an armed man paralyzed in August 2022, but the agency ended up agreeing he should be suspended for one day. Ruiz still could be fired for fatally shooting another armed man less than a year later.
- Officer Roger Farias faced dismissal for allegedly having a nightclub bouncer falsely arrested following an off-duty altercation in November 2019. A lawsuit was settled, but COPA effectively dropped the case without imposing discipline.
- The agency recommended that Officer Johnny Brown face anywhere from a 180-day suspension to firing for grabbing and berating a drunken woman who showed up at his home after he left her at a bar in June 2020. Brown ultimately wasn’t disciplined.
- James Dillon, a field training officer, faced firing for shooting in the direction of a man who opened fire inside a home in November 2020. Dillon wasn’t disciplined.
The officers didn’t respond to requests for comment or couldn’t be reached.
COPA’s final decisions stretched from May to July — months after Kersten stepped down to avoid a potentially embarrassing no-confidence vote that could have led to her own dismissal.
Such shifts in COPA’s recommendations had been rare. The Sun-Times and WBEZ found just three similar decisions since 2019.
‘COPA is under assault’
Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor, says the reversals demonstrate that “our police accountability system is in peril” and that “COPA is under assault.
“It is a trend that should terrify people,” Futterman says. “And that doesn’t bode well for the future of police accountability.”
Sharon Fairley, who previously ran COPA and its predecessor agency, says it’s important for Snelling to be able to challenge COPA’s disciplinary findings and recommendations.
“It’s a communication and a sharing of perspectives in which one can convince the other about a point,” Fairley says of the discussions between the police department and COPA. “And then a finding might change based on that.”
COPA didn’t explain why its recommendations shifted so dramatically.
In closing reports, the agency said it “maintains the initial findings are appropriate” but made changes based on “a discussion of applicable law, the burden of proof, the facts and available evidence … and in the interests of settlement.”
White wasn’t made available for an interview about decision-making process in these “non-concurrence” cases, in which the superintendent formally disagreed with COPA’s findings.
According to an agency spokesperson, there was a spike in disagreements as COPA closed about 200 cases in December 2023 and January 2024 — before a provision of the latest Fraternal Order of Police union contract took effect, requiring the agency to close all investigations within 18 months.
Facing a backlog of non-concurrence cases, the spokesperson says agency will consider “the age of each case and the likelihood of achieving [a] meaningful outcome through arbitration or the police board process,” referring to the two venues in which serious misconduct cases will now be decided.
COPA’s investigations were seldom challenged by police leaders until Fred Waller was hired as interim police superintendent in May 2023. In less than five months, Waller won concessions in four of the six cases he challenged.
The trend has continued under Snelling, Waller’s successor and protege, who has disagreed with COPA’s conclusions in 40 closed disciplinary cases. In most, Snelling used the non-concurrence process to limit discipline.
In April 2024, Snelling lambasted Kersten, COPA’s then-chief administrator, for commenting publicly about the death of Reed, who was fatally shot by tactical officers after shooting their partner.
Snelling says his conflict with Kersten had “zero impact” on his interpretation of COPA’s findings in other cases and whether to challenge them.
Snelling says it’s important to ensure that “officers are not being misjudged in the way that they’re responding on the street, especially when they’re making split-second decisions.”
He says he’s personally involved in reviewing COPA cases, with lawyers and investigators helping him each case, including body-camera footage and relevant laws.
“Any time that I see something in a case where I know that the facts have not been proven and they’re not evident, it’s a case where we’re going to have a hard time trying to hold an officer accountable for something that we have not proven,” Snelling says.
He says his pushing back against COPA “means that the system is actually working.”
‘Not taking its obligations seriously’
But Futterman says it’s troubling that Snelling has done that as much as he has and that COPA has responded by dramatically altering its disciplinary recommendations.
“The police department and superintendent should be giving an appropriate deference to COPA’s factual findings and recommendations,” Futterman says.
Alexandra Block, a lawyer with the ACLU of Illinois, says Snelling’s series of challenges “suggests that CPD is not taking its obligations seriously to hold officers accountable.
“The first thing we deserve is an explanation from COPA about why they’re changing their mind in these cases,” Block says. “If there was some serious flaw in COPA’s initial investigation or recommendation, that should be explained.”
In the only case involving someone being shot and wounded in which COPA reversed its disciplinary recommendation, Ruiz shot Raymond Comer on Aug. 12, 2022. A police surveillance camera had caught Comer carrying a gun in the 2100 block of West Adams Street, where other people had also been seen “with rifles, drum magazines and handguns,” COPA said in a report.
Ruiz and four other officers in unmarked vehicles found Comer sitting in a Pontiac Grand Prix with the door ajar, according to COPA. Ruiz told authorities he saw Comer reach for a gun in his back pocket and that he told him to stop before firing 11 shots a second after stepping out of a police vehicle.
Struck five times, Comer was paralyzed, and one of his legs ended up being amputated.
A handgun was found in the Pontiac, and Comer pleaded guilty to felony gun possession. State prison records show he was sentenced to five years and paroled in February.
COPA initially found that Ruiz violated a department policy that bars officers from shooting at people who are “not clearly visible.” The agency said Ruiz had closed Comer’s car door “and pushed back to create distance” after firing the first shot toward the Pontiac, which had heavily tinted windows.
Ruiz and the other officers also failed to activate their body cameras quickly enough, COPA found.
In a Jan. 26, 2024, report, Kersten and her deputy, Sharday Jackson, pushed for Ruiz’s firing and called for suspensions up to 10 days for the other officers.
In Snelling’s rebuttal, the superintendent argued that Comer’s door was cracked open and that Ruiz saw Comer raise his gun.
Snelling wrote that COPA’s assessment “completely disregards common sense” and called the shooting “objectively reasonable, necessary and proportional.”
“COPA appears to argue illogically that when a person closes their car door and conceals themselves behind the tinted windows of their vehicle — while armed — any risk of danger to police officers posed by the firearm is eliminated,” Snelling wrote on April 10, 2024 — a day after COPA released the jarring videos of the Reed shooting.
He recommended one-day suspensions for all five officers for the body-camera violations.
COPA’s supplementary report, signed by White on May 9, 2024, notes only that Ruiz had been exonerated in the shooting.
Comer has filed a federal lawsuit over the shooting.
Months after Comer was shot and paralyzed, Ruiz shot and killed Reginald Clay Jr. during a foot chase into a Garfield Park gangway. Body-camera footage shows Clay holding a handgun before he was shot on April 15, 2023.
Kersten recommended firing, but Snelling called for a two-day suspension. Kyle Cooper, the police board president, broke the gridlock, siding with Kersten and setting in motion disciplinary proceedings.
Disciplinary system in flux
COPA’s string of reversals comes at a fraught time for Chicago’s police disciplinary system, which has been expanded incrementally since Officer Jason Van Dyke killed McDonald, 17, in 2014, with 16 shots.
COPA and the Chicago Police Board work in parallel. COPA investigates accusations of police misconduct and recommends discipline. The police board holds hearings and imposes disciplinary action. Also, a police board member rules on disputes between the superintendent and COPA’s chief administrator.
The police board has ground to a near-halt, though, amid a years-long battle over how and where discipline should be meted out. Last year, Cook County Circuit Judge Michael Mullen ruled that officers accused of serious misconduct can have their cases heard by an independent arbitrator rather than the police board. But Mullen also found that those arbitration hearings must be open to the public. The Fraternal Order of Police appealed, but this month an appellate court affirmed Mullen’s ruling, setting up a likely showdown before the state Supreme Court.
COPA has been mired in uncertainty. Before Kersten stepped down, she faced lawsuits — filed by the union and employees she fired — that said investigations she led were driven by bias against police officers. She won’t comment.
The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, a civilian-led panel with broad oversight powers, dug into complaints from COPA staffers and pushed City Hall Inspector General Deborah Witzburg to investigate.
The panel’s inquiry culminated in January with a letter informing Kersten it was beginning a process that could have led to her dismissal. She responded with a letter that slammed the commission, then resigned in February.
Mayor Brandon Johnson tapped White as an interim replacement while the commission does a nationwide search for Kersten’s permanent replacement.
Fairley says it’s time to reassess the disciplinary system “to understand how well it’s operating and whether or not it’s fulfilling the mission that it was set out to do.”
Futterman says that should start by looking at COPA.
“Without good, high-quality investigations by COPA, there will be no police accountability in Chicago,” he says.