In the 4 ½ years since the city entered into a federal consent decree, the Chicago Police Department’s bureau of internal affairs has opened more than 11,000 investigations into allegations of officer misconduct, according to a Tribune analysis of police data.
Meanwhile, the head of the independent monitoring team that grades CPD’s compliance with the consent decree has said there are “real concerns” about the city and Police Department’s ability to perform timely analyses of data on officers’ use of force.
“They have a plan and they’re working on it, but it is very important to have that up-to-date because that’s where they spot trends,” former federal prosecutor Maggie Hickey said, and staffing challenges continue to hinder CPD’s efforts.
Hickey’s comments came during a Zoom meeting to update the public on the department’s ongoing reforms. CPD was in full compliance with just 5% of the consent decree’s 552 “monitorable” paragraphs, Hickey said last week.
The monitoring team’s next report on police progress will be released in the coming days, Hickey said.
At the same time, the search for the next permanent CPD superintendent continues. The agency tasked with submitting three finalists for the job to Mayor Brandon Johnson has completed the first two rounds of candidate interviews ahead of its July 14 deadline.
The lion’s share of bureau of internal affairs cases come via referrals from the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the city agency that investigates CPD officers’ use of force. Since January 2019, COPA has opened more than 4,000 investigations of its own, city records show.
Internal affairs investigations most often involve officers assigned to the department’s 22 patrol districts, those in full uniform traveling in marked police vehicles. Of the 22 districts, those with higher rates of gun violence tend to see the most misconduct allegations, according to the data.
Officers assigned to patrol in just three districts — those covering West Garfield Park, Auburn Gresham, Roseland, Pullman — were the subjects of 755 internal affairs investigations opened between January 2019 and April 2023, according to CPD information given to the Tribune as the result of a request under the Freedom of Information Act.
In that same time, those three districts recorded more than 850 homicides, while nearly 3,500 others suffered nonfatal gunshot wounds.
Internal affairs investigations involve bribery and corruption, officer substance abuse, criminal misconduct and other alleged violations of CPD rules. As of April 2023, more than 3,600 internal affairs investigations were open.
It was not clear how many police personnel are currently assigned to internal affairs, but a 2021 report from internal affairs Chief Yolanda Talley said the bureau was staffed by 87 officers in addition to 84 sergeants who work cases out of the 22 patrol districts.
A single internal affairs case — a “complaint register” or “CR” — can contain allegations against more than one officer. In fact, more than 16,000 individual officers were named in investigations launched since January 2019.
CPD employs about 11,700 sworn officers, signaling that many have been the subject of multiple internal affairs investigations.
Outside of patrol districts, CPD units subject to the most investigations since 2019 were narcotics and the community safety team, a roving, citywide unit created in 2020 under former Superintendent David Brown that aimed to tamp down flare-ups of violence.
In December 2020, the community safety team counted more than 800 officers among its ranks but has since shrunk to about 90, according to data from the Office of Inspector General.
In 2021, a police lieutenant formerly assigned to the community safety team filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the city, alleging that the former deputy chief in charge of the unit had mandated arrest quotas for officers. That lawsuit is still pending.
Afternoon Briefing
Weekdays
Chicago Tribune editors’ top story picks, delivered to your inbox each afternoon.
That same year, an officer assigned to the community safety team, Ella French, was shot and killed during a traffic stop in West Englewood. French’s partner, officer Carlos Yanez Jr., was also shot and wounded. Two brothers were charged in the shooting and their cases are still pending.
The consent decree is the byproduct of the 2014 murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a CPD officer. Following a Cook County judge’s order that the city release video footage of the shooting, the U.S. Department of Justice opened a pattern-and-practice investigation of the Police Department.
The DOJ announced its findings in a blistering report issued in 2017.
“We found reasonable cause to believe that CPD has engaged in a pattern or practice of unreasonable force in violation of the Fourth Amendment and that the deficiencies in CPD’s training, supervision, accountability and other systems have contributed to that pattern or practice,” DOJ investigators wrote. “CPD has not provided officers with adequate guidance to understand how and when they may use force, or how to safely and effectively control and resolve encounters to reduce the need to use force.”
After the report was released, then-Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan brought a federal lawsuit against the city to force its entry into a federal consent decree. Ultimately, the team led by former federal prosecutor Hickey was selected to monitor the CPD’s compliance — as well as that of the Chicago Police Board, COPA and the Office of Inspector General — with the sweeping, mandatory reforms.
Jason Van Dyke, the former CPD officer who was found guilty of second-degree murder in McDonald’s death, was released from prison in 2022 after serving 3 years.
