Vol. 2, Issue 9: Tracking IPRA, Policy and Practice

A group of young women raise their hands in solidarity with fellow marchers protesting the killing of Paul O’Neal. Videos taken from police officers’ body cameras showing the events that led to the killing were released on Friday.

Eva Lewis, organizer of the march to protest the killing of Paul O’Neal, speaks to the protesters assembled for the march. (Photos by Vidura Jang Bahadur)

At Issue: Policy vs. Practice

Video of the police killing of 18-year-old Paul O’Neal—released by the Independent Police Review Authority on Friday, a week after the incident—left Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson with “more questions than answers.”

That was not true for everyone. An attorney for O’Neal’s family said the video showed “cold-blooded murder” and a “cover-up.” Protesters took the incident as evidence that, despite increased attention on the issue, young Black men are still being targeted by police.

As Johnson noted—and the Chicago Tribune has detailed—the record of the incident reveals multiple violations of department policy by officers, including restrictions on shooting at vehicles, shooting fleeing suspects, and firing at suspects when others are in the line of fire.

Johnson stated that he did not know what training was given to the officers involved in the incident regarding a 2015 update to the department’s use-of-force policy on shooting into vehicles.

The Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) released the videos within one week of the incident—far in advance of the 60-day deadline established under a new video release policy adopted earlier this year. First Amendment advocates had criticized the 60-day delay as too long.

The officer who killed O’Neal, whose name has not yet been released, also failed to activate his body camera.

Police Video. Last week, the Leadership Council for Civil and Human Rights released a body camera scorecard rating the policies (or lack thereof) of police departments nationwide. The Chicago Police Department received the fewest negative marks of any department.

Chicago received high marks for making its body camera policy easily accessible on its website, clearly defining when officers must record, protecting vulnerable individuals (such as victims of sex crimes), limiting the retention of footage, preventing tampering and misuse, and making footage available to individuals filing complaints. However, implementing these policies effectively remains a challenge.

Chicago fell short in two key areas: failing to require officers to file reports on incidents before viewing footage and failing to impose strict limits on the use of biometric techniques, such as facial recognition.

Procedural Justice. Another gap between policy and practice was highlighted in a New York Times discussion of the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) procedural justice curriculum, which is now being implemented in six cities as part of a federal pilot program. The curriculum is based on the theory that people are more likely to view legal authority as legitimate when they are treated respectfully by police officers. Some studies indicate that this approach can also reduce crime rates.

However, in Chicago, the training was not reflected in department policies, according to the retired police lieutenant who designed it. Instead of integrating the training into its practices, the department continued emphasizing “stop-and-frisk” tactics until a recent legal settlement, said Lt. Bruce Lipman, who has since retired. This approach is among the most “harmful” to police-community relations, according to author Tina Rosenberg. While CPD leadership publicly embraced the rhetoric of procedural justice, on the ground, it employed “hyperaggressive” policing strategies.

Rosenberg inaccurately claimed that former Superintendent Garry McCarthy supported the Ceasefire violence reduction program. James O’Shea provides a more accurate history, calling for sustained support for such programs.

Rosenberg concluded that “procedural justice is an important tool, but it works slowly.” However, she also quoted Jamie Kalven of the Invisible Institute: “The procedural justice stuff is fine in itself, but accountability should have priority.”

In April, the Marshall Project examined the contrast between Chicago’s national “reputation as a laboratory of police science” and the local reality of its failure to hold abusive officers accountable.

IPRA Workers Speak Out. A Chicago Tonight report, IPRA Workers Fight to Keep Agency Intact, mischaracterized the position of the union representing investigators at IPRA, according to a representative who spoke with View From the Ground.

“The story does not accurately report our position,” said Jo Patton of AFSCME Council 31, which represents about 60 IPRA investigators and other staff members.

“We are not trying to maintain IPRA as it is currently configured,” she said. “We are saying that whatever new oversight framework is created, police accountability in the city of Chicago will benefit from having experienced civilian investigators.”

She noted that the mayor’s Police Accountability Task Force report presented “no evidence of bias or poor performance” by IPRA investigators. Instead, it identified “systemic” issues, including legal constraints on investigations and management problems such as inadequate staffing, mandates from the chief administrator to alter findings, and the use of “mediation” to reduce disciplinary recommendations.

Wholesale replacement of IPRA’s “trained, educated workforce” would be both unfair and inefficient, Patton argued.

Communities Step Up. Following the Fraternal Order of Police’s (FOP) call for its members to decline voluntary overtime over Labor Day weekend, a coalition of community groups is organizing a Community Peace Surge in ten high-crime areas. The initiative will include various community events and resident crime watches.

“The signal that the FOP sent with that flier and those remarks is reverberating through communities across Chicago,” said Phillip Jackson of the Black Star Project. “The intention, the spirit of those words were, ‘Until you respect us, we are not going to serve you,’ and that is what we are rejecting.”

Bigger Picture. With protests continuing in Chicago against a proposed ordinance that would classify attacks on police officers as hate crimes, Pew Charitable Trusts examined similar efforts nationwide. The Anti-Defamation League, which supported the original hate crimes legislation, opposes so-called Blue Lives Matter laws, arguing that all 50 states already have statutes that increase penalties for attacks on police officers. The organization asserts that hate crime protections should be reserved for “people’s most precious identity categories.” Supporters of the legislation argue that such measures serve as deterrents and “send a message.”

While Chicago’s law department has faced criticism for failing to disclose records of police misconduct in civil rights lawsuits, the Associated Press found similar patterns across the country. In multiple cities, municipal attorneys have “deliberately hidden important facts, delayed their disclosure, or otherwise sought to subvert evidence in civil cases.”

Writing in USA Today, former Madison police chief David C. Couper stated, “I struggled with my union in Madison for eight years over my efforts to change police use-of-force policy and to hire more female and minority officers. … The unions have exerted and will continue to exert a lot of muscle to prevent almost every effort that’s on the table to reform police policy.”

Tracking IPRA. Of the five community meetings scheduled to discuss the upcoming reform of Chicago’s police investigatory organization, four remain throughout the month of August.

On Monday, Invisible Institute director Jamie Kalven appeared on Chicago Tonight to discuss pending changes at IPRA with Carol Marin and IPRA Chief Sharon Fairley.

A new public tool aimed at providing context around police accountability—the IPRA Tracker—launches today, developed by the Invisible Institute and City Bureau. City Bureau, a Chicago-based journalism lab, has also launched a Kickstarter campaign to fund a public newsroom on the South Side, where community members and journalists can develop skills and share ideas.