During the 2018 trial of four Chicago police officers charged with conspiring to cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald, a witness for the prosecution made an enduring impression on me. A sergeant, he spoke with clarity and authority about reporting requirements under the Chicago Police Department’s use of force policy. When defense attorneys tried to rattle him, he remained calm and unruffled. His name was Larry Snelling.
Last month, Snelling, now CPD’s superintendent, brought the same rhetorical force to a statement before the Chicago Police Board in which he sharply criticized the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, or COPA, for “unfair” investigations containing “speculation” and “personal opinions.”
COPA’s “egregious” disciplinary recommendations, Snelling argued, result in a cascade of negative consequences. Officers are afraid to do their jobs out of concern that they may be subject to excessive punishment for their “mistakes.” That leaves the public at risk, he asserted, and contributes to a negative narrative about the department that defeats its efforts to build the trust with community members on which public safety depends.
“We’re spinning our wheels right now,” Snelling said of the reform process. He acknowledged that “as a police department, we have failed in the past by not removing those people who should not be here, who have brought shame on our department,” and he vowed that if officers engage in misconduct on his watch, their biggest worry won’t be COPA; it will be him.
Andrea Kersten, COPA’s chief administrator, was present. Under her leadership, the rigor and timeliness of COPA investigations have steadily improved in recent years. When the time came for her to speak, she offered a point-by-point rebuttal to Snelling’s criticisms.
COPA, Kersten said, is “one voice” in the larger system of police accountability. Its recommendations are subject to review by the superintendent. In those instances in which the agency and superintendent cannot agree, the matter goes to the police board for resolution. Charges are then brought by the Department of Law, and a hearing is held before the police board or an arbitrator. COPA’s role, as she put it, is to “start a conversation.”
In the course of Kersten’s remarks, it became clear what in all likelihood had provoked Snelling’s ire. Under the recently ratified contract between the Fraternal Order of Police and the city, COPA is required to conclude investigations within 18 months. In light of that requirement going forward, COPA was given a 45-day window to conclude every pending investigation over 18 months old. As a result, it had in January delivered an unusually high number of investigations to CPD for review by the superintendent, including 19 recommendations of “separation,” or termination, on a single day.
Is it possible Snelling was unaware of the FOP provision? In any case, Kersten assured him, “You’ll never again have a day in January where you receive a whole bunch of separation recommendations.”
She went on to correct the impression left by the superintendent’s remarks that COPA overreaches in its disciplinary recommendations by providing statistics on the agency’s annual output. Last year, COPA concluded 1,814 investigations. In only 329 of these did it recommend discipline of some kind. (“A big part of COPA’s job,” she noted, is to clear up complainants’ “misunderstandings about what is lawful and proper police conduct.”)
Of the 329 cases in which COPA recommended discipline, the superintendent disagreed in 71 instances.
The majority of those disagreements were about the discipline recommended as opposed to the investigative findings, and in more than half, COPA deferred to the superintendent’s judgment. The office and Snelling were thus able to reach agreement in all but a tiny percentage of cases.
Kersten then turned to the heart of the matter: police shooting cases. These are the cases that command the most public attention, and they are the cases in which disagreements between COPA and CPD can be most intense and deeply felt.
In his remarks, Snelling had spoken of the “split-second decisions” officers must sometimes make in the heat of the moment “with a gun pointed at you” or “with someone coming at you with a knife.” Officers “have been called murderers” for “simply trying to protect themselves or protect someone else,” he said. The impact on their mental health can be profound. Some “become suicidal,” he said.
In reporting on police shootings, I have had occasion to study video footage of officers in the moments after they have taken a life. Without creating a false equivalence with the individual who is dead or dying, it’s possible to see how traumatic this can be for officers.
Some seem utterly disoriented as if carried by the accelerating momentum of an interaction to a place they never intended to go. Allowing for the reality that there are situations in which deadly force is warranted, can changes in policy reduce the likelihood of arriving at that fateful moment in situations where it can be avoided?
Kersten spoke to this question. COPA’s investigations in such cases, she said, are designed to “slow down” escalating interactions.
“De-escalation?” Snelling interjected. “You don’t have to explain it to me. I wrote it.”
After the Laquan McDonald incident, he explained, he had “designed force mitigation training” that had resulted in a decrease in police shootings and an increase in officers providing aid to victims after shootings occur.
At this point, a dynamic essential to the police reform process became clear: COPA works on a case-by-case basis to make operational the reforms that CPD has formally adopted but does not always realize in practice. Such is the nature of institutional change.
That is not to say that policy can answer all questions. Snelling observed that “we can’t write a scenario for every single situation” an officer might confront. So it’s essential to “clearly understand what the officer is dealing with at the time and make a fair decision and judgment on how that officer responded.”
The argument at the police board meeting was unexpected. Snelling and Kersten had, as she put it, gone “off script.” Watching the video of the proceedings, one feels the tension in the room. Yet one also gets a glimpse of untapped possibilities in the back-and-forth between these two formidable public officials.
Nothing would do more to correct misperceptions on the part of community members and officers about the nature of the reform effort than to have more public exchanges such as this one.
Both Snelling and Kersten spoke of the need for closer communication between their agencies. It’s equally important that their dialogue be available to the public. The point is not that they would inevitably agree. On the contrary, it is that the dialectical tension between their perspectives would serve to illuminate the underlying issues and competing values at play in the ongoing effort to reform CPD.
Jamie Kalven is founder of the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization on the South Side. He received the 2022 I.F. Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from Harvard University.
