View from the Ground: Stepping up discipline – and evading it

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View from the Ground (CIMC Repost)
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The city’s inspector general delivered a report on a continuing investigation into the coverup following the shooting of Laquan McDonald, and fallout continued through the week. The report has not been made public.

News of the report came the same day that the retirement of Deputy Chief David McNaughton was announced. The Sun Times reported that McNaughton was “forced out” and was one of the ten officers Inspector General Joe Ferguson recommended firing in the coverup.

McNaughton approved a report finding Officer Jason Van Dyke was in compliance with use of force policies when he shot McDonald on October 20, 2014. McNaughton used language that was contradicted by dashcam videos of the shooting.

Preemptive retirement. For the Sun-Times editorial board, McNaughton’s retirement recalled the retirement of four officers involved in the bungled investigation of the killing of David Koschman in 2004 by a nephew of then-Mayor Richard Daley. They evaded discipline – and maintained their pension rights – by retiring while the investigation dragged on.

Similarly, Officer Dante Servin kept his pension and evaded disciplinary action when he resigned two days before a Police Board hearing on a recommendation that he be fired for the shooting death of Rekia Boyd in 2012.

On Tuesday, First Deputy Superintendent John Escalante resigned to head the campus police at Northeastern Illinois University. Escalante was chief of detectives in 2014 but was not named by the inspector general, according to report.

On Thursday Chief of Detectives Eugene Roy retired, three months ahead of his mandatory retirement date, as Superintendent Eddie Johnson announced the replacement of top brass. The same day Johnson moved to fire seven of the ten officers named by Ferguson, saying they had violated Rule 14 prohibiting officers from lying in investigations. According to the Sun Times, another officer whom Johnson intended to fire – in addition to McNaughton – resigned preemptively.

The decision to recommend the firings represents “an important and necessary step,” Craig Futterman of the University of Chicago Law School told the New York Times, “but it can’t be a one-off. It has to be a consistent practice that if you lie, you are fired.

“The sad fact is that lying has become a regular and entrenched practice when police misconduct occurs, and disciplining officers for engaging in the practice has rarely happened,” Futterman said. He added that disciplinary action must reach beyond the rank-and-file. “The code of silence...goes far higher in this case,” he said. “It’s even more important that those at the top of the food chain be held accountable.”

On Friday – in a press release issued minutes after the superintendent concluded a press conference on another subject – CPD announced Johnson was replacing about a third of the department’s district commanders.

The inspector general’s investigation now turns to then-Superintendent Garry McCarthy and his executive staff – who viewed video of the McDonald shooting the day after the incident – and whether they ignored conflicts between incident reports by officers and the evidence of the video.

Taser death. In another case where, like McDonald’s, the city has paid out millions to settle a wrongful death lawsuit, the Independent Police Review Authority recommended suspensions of 28 to 120 days for six officers involved in the 2012 death of Phillip Coleman, who was shocked multiple times by a Taser after being arrested during a mental breakdown.

The Sun Times reported that the longest suspension was recommended for Sgt. Sean Tulley. But according to the Chicago Reporter, “IPRA said it would have recommended dismissal for a third sergeant who retired in February 2014, and asked instead that the superintendent ‘take any and all action to prevent him from future employment with the City of Chicago.’”

IPRA “found that the officers’ biggest error was not their use of a Taser, but their failure to recognize that Coleman was in need of mental health treatment, not arrest and lockup,” according to the Reporter. IPRA previously found no wrongdoing in the case, but reopened the investigation after video of Coleman’s death was released late last year.

Also last week, a state appeals court overturned a Cook County judge’s 2012 ruling which blocked CPD from firing two officers in a 2006 beating incident at a taco stand on the Northwest Side. In 2011 the Police Board accepted a recommendation from then-Superintendent Jody Weis that the officers be fired.

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