A dirty city: Police oversight in Chicago is a bureaucratic nightmare

Chicago is home to eight separate entities responsible for police accountability. Los Angeles has one. The results are clear.

Andrea Kersten’s Feb. 13 resignation as head of the Chicago Office of Police Accountability marked another unfortunate chapter in the ongoing drama that is Chicago policing.

As Anthony Driver Jr., president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability put it bluntly following the news of her departure, “I came into this role, God’s honest truth, expecting to find a dirty police department that needed to be cleaned up. What I found was a dirty city — and every aspect of the city of Chicago touches the Chicago Police Department.”

Kersten’s exit

The Sun-Times’ Tom Schuba compiled the controversies leading up to Kersten’s departure, from recommending discipline for slain Chicago police officer Ella French, to facing lawsuits from two former COPA officials, to front-running investigators in the wake of the Dexter Reed shooting.

And veteran City Hall reporter Fran Spielman detailed Driver’s frustrations with the process of holding Kersten accountable, as well as the city’s painfully slow progress toward complying with the federal consent decree put in place following the 2014 police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

The consent decree is a roadmap toward effective, constitutional policing in Chicago. But the Chicago Police Department has an abysmal 9% compliance rate. And there are plenty of roadblocks preventing improvement.

Driver highlighted one in his interview with Spielman: a city law department that too often holds the mayor’s interests above the public interest. Another is government union dominance in Chicago and across Illinois, where Illinois Policy Institute research has shown collective bargaining agreements with police and other unions supersede state law.

But the prime suspect is Chicago’s police governance.

The dysfunctional structure of oversight

Kersten was just one part of a fragmented, confusing, and ineffective system of police governance. At least eight overlapping bodies can claim some kind of “police accountability” function in Chicago, including:

• The Chicago Police Board

  • “The Chicago Police Board is an independent civilian body that decides disciplinary cases involving Chicago police officers.”

• The Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA)

  • “Our vision is to be the leader in police accountability by conducting thorough investigations, to advance the culture of policing and build trust in civilian oversight.”

• The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA)

  • “The Commission and District Councils will bring police officers and Chicago residents together to plan, prioritize, and build mutual trust; strengthen the police accountability system; give Chicagoans a meaningful new role in oversight; and explore and advance alternative effective approaches to public safety.”

• The Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs

  • “The primary goal of the Bureau of Internal Affairs is to conduct complete and thorough investigations into allegations of misconduct by Department members while maintaining compliance with existing Department and Bureau directives, thereby establishing the innocence or guilt of accused Department members.”

• The Public Safety section of the Office of the Inspector General

  • “[The] Public Safety section’s inquiries are focused on the policies, practices, programs, procedures, and training of CPD, COPA, and the Police Board, with respect to constitutional policing, discipline, use of force, and CPD’s integrity, transparency, and relationship with City residents. Additionally, the Public Safety section is charged with studying police disciplinary investigations and hearings, including examining the fairness and consistency of discipline and whether individual misconduct investigations are complete, thorough, objective, and fair.”

• The Chicago City Council’s Committee on Public Safety

  • “The Committee on Public Safety shall have jurisdiction over all matters relating to the Police Department, the Fire Department, the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, the Independent Police Review Authority, and matters affecting emergency city services generally (other than operation of emergency medical facilities), except those matters affecting collective bargaining agreements, employee benefits and pensions”

• The mayor’s office, including the Deputy Mayor of Community Safety

  • “The Deputy Mayor for Community Safety is responsible for coordination and communication between all applicable City departments and officials related to the City's efforts to eradicate the root causes of crime, violence, and harm, and to advance a holistic and comprehensive approach to community safety.”

• The Chicago Police Independent Monitoring Team

  • “The Independent Monitoring Team is responsible for assessing the Chicago Police Department’s and the City of Chicago’s Compliance with the Consent Decree.”

When some part of this system inevitably fails, too many policymakers’ first instinct is to double down.

One recent example: Outgoing Ald. Carlos Ramirez-Rosa (35th Ward) last year introduced an ordinance that would place a referendum on the ballot to expand the size and scope of the CCPSA, while leaving the rest of the entities untouched.

Chicago lawmakers need to look elsewhere for solutions.

In Los Angeles, a model to emulate

Los Angeles has one police oversight body. It’s called the Los Angeles Board of Police Commissioners.

Sitting on the board are five unpaid board commissioners appointed by the mayor and confirmed by City Council.

Reporting to them are the chief of police, an executive director, a small staff, and the Office of Police Inspector General.

As The New Chicago Way co-author Ed Bachrach and I wrote in the Chicago Sun-Times, this model helped bring LAPD from among the most infamous big-city police departments in America to among the best:

In the 1990s, the Los Angeles Police Department was the nation’s worst. There was the beating of Rodney King and the acquittal of the offending officers, riots and the Rampart police corruption scandal that involved nearly 200 cops. In the midst of all this, the Los Angeles City Council appointed the Christopher Commission to study police failures. Along with its recommendations came a consent decree.

Those measures alone were not enough to create an effective organization. It was the work of city charter commissions in 1995 and 1999 that put the inspector general under the authority of the police commission and made sure it reported directly to the board. Those voter-approved charter changes gave the inspector general significantly enhanced powers.

One example is worth noting. The inspector general’s office has three divisions: complaints, audits and use of force section. When there is an incident involving police use of force, even if there is no death or injury, a member of the inspector general’s use of force section, along with the department’s Force Investigation Division, arrive on the scene while officers are present. The inspector general’s staff observes the work of the department’s investigators to make sure their work meets professional standards.

What do the results look like?

In 2023 Los Angeles experienced 323 homicides, or 8.4 per 100,000 residents. Chicago had 617 and 22.5 respectively.

With every killing, Chicago officials react somberly and predictably. But with the stark contrast in organization and results between Chicago and Los Angeles, any reasonable citizen would be justified in asking if our leaders are serious about professional policing, or if they prefer to keep it political.

For a deeper discussion of how LA improved their police governance and achieved compliance with their consent decree, listen to our podcast interview with Richard Tefank, the longtime executive director of the Los Angeles Police Commission.

And for a deeper dive into how a city charter can improve Chicago governance, register for the Chicago Charter Symposium at Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law on Monday, March 24.

Time for real reform

Chicago’s convoluted oversight structure produces too much political infighting and not enough accountability or transparency.

It’s not just inefficient – it actively prevents meaningful police reform.

Chicago’s leaders should end this bureaucratic nightmare.

It’s time to streamline oversight and genuinely professionalize policing governance.

Otherwise, Chicago policing will remain mired in dysfunction, compromising safety and public trust for political gain.