Dexter Reed killing exposes struggle over how Chicago investigates police shootings

The jarring video of four Chicago cops firing 96 shots at Dexter Reed and killing him after he shot an officer during a traffic stop last month is putting the city’s complex machinery for investigating such shootings under a microscope once again.

A state law, the 2016 Police and Community Relations Act, says an independent law enforcement agency — other than the one involved in the shooting — must investigate such cases.

In Chicago, though, no independent law enforcement agencies investigate police-involved shootings for possible crimes.

The Civilian Office of Police Accountability, which isn’t a law enforcement agency, investigates whether Chicago officers should face administrative discipline for alleged misconduct in police shootings. But it doesn’t draw conclusions about potential criminal conduct by cops in those cases.

Instead, COPA hands over its evidence — without any recommendations — to the Cook County state’s attorney’s Law Enforcement Accountability Division, which then reviews the evidence to see whether criminal charges are warranted.

When LEAD’s attorneys think criminal charges are justified against a Chicago police officer, they present the evidence to the state appellate prosecutor’s office for a second look.

“We’re not saying whether or not we think charges are appropriate,” Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of COPA, said in an interview. “We are leaving that to the state’s attorney’s office for their review.”

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Legality is hazy

But the legality of that arrangement is hazy under the Police and Community Relations Improvement Act, according to some legal experts, who say the law should be revised to give COPA the specific legal authority to investigate police-involved shootings for potential criminal conduct by cops.

Meantime, Mayor Brandon Johnson’s administration and the Illinois State Police say they’re in preliminary negotiations for a different solution: to have the State Police handle those investigations.

“The Mayor’s Office for Community Safety has been working in collaboration with the Illinois State Police, CPD, Department of Law and COPA to draft a scope of services in a memorandum of understanding, which is still in the preliminary stages of development,” said Tiernán Gordon, a spokesperson for the mayor.

Melaney Arnold, a spokesperson for the State Police, said “over the last several years, ISP has had preliminary discussions with the city regarding possibly developing a pilot.”

For years, many suburban police agencies have used the State Police to conduct such independent probes. The idea of having the State Police do that in Chicago, too, isn’t new.

As the Sun-Times reported in 2021, security consulting firm Hillard Heintze offered then-Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration five options.

Under one of them, the Illinois State Police task force — which works with the Cook County sheriff’s and state’s attorney’s offices to conduct such criminal investigations for suburban police departments — would also handle Chicago’s shooting cases.

Hillard Heintze, in its 2020 analysis, estimated that option would cost $33 million over five years, plus up to $50 million for an office in Chicago for the task force. It was the “most feasible,” the consultant said.

Another option was to create a city-led task force that would include the State Police and other outside law enforcement agencies. But the consultants said the “best option” would be for the city to get the Illinois General Assembly to amend state law to specify that civilian COPA employees can conduct those criminal investigations.

Lightfoot didn’t act on the Hillard Heintze report.

Tyler Pasciak LaRiviere/Sun-Times

Opposition by FOP

Chicago’s Fraternal Order of Police is opposed to the current way police shootings are investigated.

The FOP believes COPA shouldn’t be investigating police shootings at all — based on the language in the Police and Community Relations Improvement Act. The FOP sued COPA in 2019 in Cook County Circuit Court to end the practice. The lawsuit is pending.

If the FOP were to win in court, “it would mean that COPA is prohibited from conducting its administrative investigations” of police-involved shootings, Kersten said in a deposition in the case.

That, she said, would be “in opposition to the principles enshrined in the consent decree, principles set out in the [Department of Justice] investigation that led to the consent decree and decades of community outcry with respect to these issues and issues of police officer conduct in general.”

The 2019 consent decree — prompted by the police killing of Laquan McDonald in 2014 — has required massive, ongoing reforms to the Chicago Police Department.

Charlie Beck, a former chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, said the lack of urgency to solve the legal issues surrounding investigations of police shootings may stem from the number of entities involved.

Beck, who served as Chicago’s interim top cop under Lightfoot’s administration, said Chicago’s system for investigating police shootings has been bogged down from having so many agencies involved in the process.

“Many times when Chicago has a crisis, they invent a new layer instead of fixing the layers beneath,” he said. “In other words, every time the roof leaks, they threw a new roof on. So pretty soon, you’ve just got five leaky roofs.

“The old adage is: If everyone’s responsible, then nobody’s responsible.”

‘Grave Concerns’

The fallout from Tuesday’s release of the video from Reed’s shooting on March 21 in Humboldt Park comes about a month after police Supt. Larry Snelling accused Kersten of overloading him with recommendations to fire other officers.

A law enforcement source said their only communication about the Reed shooting was through a letter Kersten sent Snelling urging him to relieve the officers who opened fire of their policing powers.

In that letter, Kersten raised “grave concerns” about the officers’ use of deadly force and questioned whether police lied when they initially reported Reed was stopped for a seat belt violation.

At a Friday news conference, Snelling repeatedly criticized COPA’s handling of the investigation, including the release of Kersten’s letter to news outlets and the agency’s publicized comments on the circumstances of the shooting before interviewing the officers.

In a news release Tuesday that accompanied footage of the shooting, COPA stated Reed was stopped “for purportedly not wearing a seatbelt.” But when Kersten wrote her letter to Snelling on April 1, she noted “the available evidence calls into question the veracity of this account” given that Reed’s GMC Terrain had heavily tinted windows.

Snelling complained “those who are putting that information out into the media are doing so irresponsibly,” adding he wouldn’t speculate about what happened until officers provide official statements.

In an interview, Kersten said her office was merely reporting the account given by a police supervisors at the scene of the shooting.

But as Snelling views the investigation, officials are “setting this on fire, and we’re throwing fuel on it before we know all the facts.”

“We should let a proper investigation play out, and it should be fair across the board,” he told reporters at the news conference with Mayor Johnson.

“Nothing and no one should be judged in a court of public opinion,” he said. “So my concern is that the integrity of the investigation isn’t jeopardized and all of the evidence is collected and looked at properly.”