With Andrea Kersten’s announcement that she is stepping down as the leader of Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, it is important to recognize where we are with police accountability in the city.
What COPA has achieved is nothing short of historic.
This is the first time in the history of Chicago that the agency responsible for investigating police misconduct has sought to hold officers accountable when they abuse their power and hurt people. It is the first time that agency has strived to conduct independent, unbiased and high-quality investigations and to make their work available to the public. It is the first time that agency has endeavored to provide timely and accurate information to the public when police officers kill community members.
COPA’s efforts represent a dramatic break from the long history of police impunity in Chicago. Before COPA, police misconduct investigations had been a cog in the Chicago Police Department’s machinery of denial that served to protect police officers from accountability. While COPA’s investigations have been far from perfect, they are demonstrably superior to anything we’ve seen in Chicago history and they have been steadily improving over time.
In each of the last three years, COPA has recommended more meaningful discipline when officers abuse their power than its predecessors had proposed in the previous four years combined. COPA has also regularly released information about incidents of public concern and generated public reports on each of its investigations. With increased transparency and accountability, the number of people shot and killed by Chicago police decreased dramatically and complaints of CPD abuse have decreased by more than 25%. In contrast to the weekly instances in which Chicago police shot community members in the years before the creation of COPA, Chicago police killed five people in 2023 and two people in 2022. Still too many, but light-years from where we were less than a decade ago.
It is unsurprising that the first agency in Chicago history to effectively hold police accountable has been the target of attacks by the Fraternal Order of Police and disgruntled investigators who remain committed to the old ways of shielding officers from accountability. Nonetheless, it was disheartening to see Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling echo the FOP’s false claims that COPA is biased against police and that police transparency and accountability endanger public safety and destroy police morale. The FOP and superintendent were particularly incensed that COPA was too honest with the public — too transparent about police officers’ stated reasons, which were apparently false, for stopping Dexter Reed. The actions they took led to an exchange of gunfire that left Reed dead and an officer wounded. Even more disturbing, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability (CCPSA), the agency created to establish community oversight over the police, has also followed the FOP’s lead in questioning COPA’s work to hold officers accountable.
The premises behind these attacks — that police transparency and accountability are bad for police and make us all less safe — are not just false. They’re also dangerous.
Research has consistently shown that police transparency and accountability are not only essential to ending CPD’s pattern and practice of civil rights violations. They also are necessary to make communities safer. Good police officers know that they work for the people of Chicago. They embrace public scrutiny. They know it comes with the job. They know that being entrusted with the awesome powers to protect and serve — the power to arrest, use force and even kill — comes with accountability to the community. And any police officer who fails to understand that fundamental principle of policing has no business with a badge and a gun.
Among the most important lessons to be learned from the Police Department’s cover-up of the police murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald is how much honesty and transparency matter. When the department’s false narrative was exposed, we all saw the impact on public trust and the capacity of police to effectively investigate violent crime.
We fear that the FOP’s and the superintendent’s attacks on COPA will discourage talented individuals committed to transparency and police accountability from applying to replace Kersten to lead COPA. Is this what happens when COPA pursues independent, rigorous investigations into police abuse? Why would anyone committed to these principles accept the job? How could they succeed?
The future of police accountability in Chicago is in peril. While the FOP continues to deny the reality of CPD abuse and resist change, COPA, unlike CPD, has achieved 90% compliance with the requirements of the federal consent decree. We need to build on COPA’s achievements, not dismantle them. We cannot afford to allow the attacks on COPA and its leadership to turn back the clock.
As we begin the process of selecting COPA’s next leader, we call on the CCPSA, the mayor and the City Council to stand behind an independent and rigorous COPA committed to police transparency and accountability.
Our lives — and our city’s future — depend on it.
Craig B. Futterman is a clinical law professor at the University of Chicago Law School who directs the law school’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project. Harmela Anteneh is a second-year law student at the University of Chicago. Amber Hunter is a law student at the University of Chicago.
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