A civilian oversight panel voted unanimously Monday to push Chicago’s independent watchdog to probe “the quality and integrity” of investigations led by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and allegations of retaliation against whistleblowers.
Anthony Driver, president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, said the referral to Inspector General Deborah Witzburg was based on “information from multiple knowledgable sources that raised serious concerns” about COPA’s operations.
“The information we have received concerns the quality and integrity of COPA’s investigations, the quality and integrity of COPA’s disciplinary recommendations and retaliation against COPA employees who have raised concerns about COPA’s investigations and recommendations,” Driver said during a special commission meeting at JLM Abundant Life Center in East Garfield Park.
“The commission has received complaints from multiple credible sources, and the information they have provided is consistent,” he added.
Earlier Monday, Witzburg told the Sun-Times that her office was awaiting “any referral that comes from the commission.”
“We look forward to working together,” she added. “We don’t have any other comments at the moment.”
Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg speaks at a City Club of Chicago luncheon on Nov. 6, 2023. Her office said it reviewed the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs investigation into officers with ties to the Oath Keepers and found the investigation suffered “from deficiencies materially affecting its outcome.”
Jim Vondruska
A COPA spokesperson declined to comment.
The vote comes after Police Supt. Larry Snelling has repeatedly slammed COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten’s handling of the investigation into the deadly police shootout involving Dexter Reed, who was killed in a hail of bullets in March after wounding a tactical officer.
Snelling’s beef initially centered on COPA’s decision to publicly release a letter from Kersten asking the superintendent to relieve the officers involved in the shooting of their policing powers. In the letter, Kersten questioned whether the officers had lied about the reason for the traffic stop that led to the gunfight.
The feud boiled over at a Chicago Police Board meeting in April, when Snelling criticized Kersten’s account of the shooting as “misleading at best.”
“I’ve made no statements about it because I don’t want to poison the well when it comes to this shooting,” Snelling said, adding that COPA “doesn’t exist to create a bias” and warning that any possible impropriety “jeopardizes the integrity of that investigation.”
John Catanzara, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, broadly blasted Kersten’s “insane discipline recommendations” in a YouTube video on Sunday and urged the commission to “do something about it.”
However, sources said the commission’s vote has “absolutely nothing to do with” the longstanding allegations of bias raised by the FOP.
The police union previously slammed COPA’s investigation into explosive claims that Chicago cops engaged in sexual misconduct with migrants. Catanzara referred to the probe as a “witch hunt,” and it was eventually closed without any finding of wrongdoing.
As the investigation was playing out in July 2023. Kersten sent a letter to Catanzara claiming a union official had called COPA Deputy Chief Sharday Jackson asking about the status of the probe and threatening to file a complaint against her with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
Catanzara quickly shot back, arguing that the union official didn’t threaten Jackson and merely sought to learn whether COPA was following its own rules and the union’s contract.
Catanzara raised concerns that a COPA investigator had contacted an officer’s ex-partner “under the guise” of investigating another disciplinary case. He claimed the investigator ultimately started asking questions about migrants that “had no relations to the stated purpose of the call.”
Weeks after the testy exchange between Kersten and Catanzara, Inspector General Witzburg was sent a letter purportedly from “several concerned COPA employees” raising alarms about the agency’s investigatory tactics in the case. Those allegations are only a “very small” part of the broader allegations that prompted the commission’s vote, a source said.
In Witzburg’s first report as inspector general in June 2022, she warned that COPA and the police department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs didn’t have policies in place to ensure that officers accused of misconduct get fair and consistent penalties.
The letter accused Jackson and the supervising investigator, Kimberly Edstrom-Schiller, of telling staffers to document investigative steps in a document outside of the agency’s case management system “to streamline communications and ensure that only select information becomes part of the official record.”
Jackson, Edstrom-Schiller and other senior COPA officials also allegedly failed to properly memorialize “off-the-record conversations with witnesses” and others involved in the investigation, according to the letter. And Jackson and Edstrom-Schiller allegedly told staffers to take similar statements.
Kersten previously said the union’s actions amounted to an “inappropriate attempt to interfere” in the probe. She also rebuffed the whistleblowers’ claims by saying she welcomes a review of COPA’s investigation.
“I think that the work speaks for itself,” she said.
