Discord in Chicago police board leaves critics questioning competence

CHICAGO (CN) — As the chief administrator of Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability pushes back on pressures for her resignation, some experts fear the discord could impact the office’s efficacy.

Andrea Kersten has been COPA’s chief administrator for the past five years. She was appointed soon after the city received a federal consent decree that demanded reform within the Chicago Police Department.

The current pushback is predictable tension from people who are inherently resistant to police reform, Kersten told a crowd at a monthly luncheon in the Austin neighborhood on Tuesday, according to reporting from local NPR affiliate WBEZ.

Kersten has faced criticism since she took the role of chief administrator, with some calling for her resignation soon after footage of the Dexter Reed shooting was released.

Reed, a 26-year-old Black man, was fatally shot by Chicago police in March after he shot at an officer. In total, police fired 96 shots in less than a minute.

Kersten was met with significant pushback from the Fraternal Order of Police, Chicago’s largest police union, for releasing the footage of the shooting 19 days after it happened. She also briefed alderpeople ahead of releasing it.

John Catanzara Jr., the FOP’s president, said in a YouTube video that Kersten released the footage to divide the community against the Chicago Police Department.

“The more dissension, the more outrage that certain people have for the police, the more apt [Kersten] is to basically feed their hunger for police discipline,” Catanzara said. “When really, a lot of these things are self-created within COPA, and basically gasoline is poured on the fire that they created. It’s disgusting, it needs to stop.”

The FOP in August also filed a lawsuit against COPA, arguing the board pursued biased investigations to uphold excessive disciplinary recommendations.

But the pushback has not just come from police. Former employees Garrett Schaaf and Matthew Hayman filed wrongful termination lawsuits in September, saying they were fired for speaking out against Kertsen’s inherent anti-police bias.

The lawsuit stated many officers were being punished (or recommended for punishment) even after investigations on whether officers’ conduct violated the training and best practices of the Chicago Police Department were inconclusive.

“Kersten did not want the truth to get in the way of her agenda of punishing officers whose conduct violated Kersten’s subjective opinion about their conduct, without regard for the objective facts and in the absence of knowing and understanding the officer’s actual training,” Schaaf said in his lawsuit.

Nor are criticisms just coming from disgruntled former employees. Twelve current employees also signed onto a letter in early September, urging a civilian-led panel to take the first steps in removing Kersten from her post.

The letter — signed by a total of sixteen current and former COPA employees — makes similar claims to the lawsuit. According to reporting from the Chicago Sun-Times, the authors of the letter urged the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability to take a no-confidence vote against Kersten, arguing she has a history of manipulating investigations to align with her own policy agenda.

Some fear that the discord within COPA could undermine its investigations and sow public distrust in the organization.

Devlin Schoop, an attorney at Chicago-based firm Henderson Parks, said it’s clear there’s genuine concerns with the objectivity of COPA’s investigations. He highlighted the importance of public confidence in a police oversight organization.

“You can’t say that someone did or did not engage an objectively unreasonable force if you don’t even know how the Chicago Police Department is training its officers and how to use force and under what circumstances,” Schoop said. “And that has happened. That is ridiculous and it should not be allowed to happen.”

Wayne Beyer, a lawyer who has served as lead counsel in over 300 police misconduct cases, echoed some of Schoop’s concerns about the importance of an independent police oversight organization. He said these groups should not be comprised of solely citizens.

“You can make arguments both ways,” Beyer said. “You can say, well, if it’s a review internally by the police, they’re going to protect each other.”

On the other hand, “citizens may take the opposite view and they will they will favor the citizens version of events,” he said. “But I think overall, having experts — impartial experts — is the best way to do investigations and come to conclusions.”

Other experts echoed Kersten’s perspective: that the growing pressures for her resignation were born out of a faction of police officials who are resistant to change.

“It’s not at all surprising that there are both former employees and current employees when you’re talking about changing the culture of an organization, which so badly needs to be changed, said Craig Futterman, director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic at the University of Chicago’s law school. “There’ll be people who aren’t with that program.”

He added: “When you have an organization with a long history and culture that has been about denying the reality of police misconduct and protecting both the department and police officers from allegations of abuse, it is not at all surprising.”

Futterman said former employees filed these lawsuits and signed that letter because they are averse to COPA’s progress.

“It’s with the purpose of undermining the effectiveness of the agency, as well as the obvious call to fight back against the leadership of the agency that has sought to change that culture,” Futterman said. If anything, he viewed the pushback as a good thing. Without it, “that would be a powerful sign that the agency and leadership weren’t doing their job.”

The CCPSA voted in July to recommend that the Office of the Inspector General investigate Kersten and COPA, but Schoop, the lawyer for the former employees, said that’s not enough. He said he wants the City Council and the Mayor to work to remove Kersten from her post.

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