Inconsistent and Unfair, Chicago OIG on Police Discipline Process
Remembering the Treatment of Slain Officer Ella French
Yesterday, the Chicago Office of the Inspector General (OIG) issued a report sharply criticized the agencies in Chicago tasked with investigating and addressing discipline in sustained police misconduct cases. The OIG found that the complaint and discipline process in Chicago was inconsistent and lacks adequate procedural safeguards to ensure fairness
One need to look no further than the November 2021 COPA recommendation to suspend slain Chicago Police Officer Ella French to find an example of a police discipline process that is less than ideal. The recommendation was publicly released three months after Officer French was murdered in the line of duty on 7 August 2021. COPA investigation cleared Officer French of the most significant allegations, and sustained two minor allegations. The discipline recommendation related to police actions in February 2019, two and a half years earlier.
One reporting failure, that was actually the responsibility of another officer, who admitted he was responsible. So the sustained finding with this allegation against Officer French was unjust. The second sustained finding concerned an initial delay by Officer French in activating her body worn camera. Yet COPA disclosed no evidence that the delay was anything more than an error - not deliberate misconduct. It bears noting that in early 2019 such camera activation errors were treated as training and counseling matters. The three-day suspension recommendation ignored that Officer French had a spotless disciplinary history, and that other significant mitigating factors.
In handling complaints against police officers, those assigned to investigate must distinguish between error (even tragedy) and true misconduct, and seek to advance what our founder Thomas Lemmer identified as five key pillars: truth, fairness, respect, improvement, and proportionality. Each of these five elements is essential to advancing the legitimacy within the process that simultaneously meets the needs of the community, department, and the officers.
A process that lacks procedural fairness for the accused officers and fails to appropriately examine all mitigating and aggravating neither serves the needs of the officers nor the police department. Rather than advancing the constitutional policing interests of the community, such a failed system actually weakens public safety.
Read our full article here:
https://secure1776.us/news/inconsistent-and-unfair-chicago-oig-on-police-discipline-process/
