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During the 2018 trial of four Chicago police officers Accused of conspiring to cover up the murder of Laquan McDonald, a prosecution witness left a lasting impression on me. As sergeant, he spoke with clarity and authority about the reporting requirements under the Chicago Police Department’s use of force policy. When defense attorneys tried to get on his nerves, he remained calm and unfazed. His name was Larry Snelling.
Last month, Snelling, now CPD superintendent, brought the same rhetorical force to a statement. before the Chicago Police Board in which he harshly criticized the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, or COPA, for “unfair” investigations that contain “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 because they fear they may be subject to excessive punishment for their “mistakes.” That leaves the public at risk, she said, and contributes to a negative narrative about the department that thwarts its efforts to build trust with members of the community on which public safety depends.
“We’re going around in circles 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 embarrassed our department,” and promised that if officers commit misconduct during their tenure, their biggest problem will be the concern will not be COPA; It will be him.
Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of COPA, was present. Under her leadership, the rigor and timeliness of COPA’s investigations have steadily improved in recent years. When it came time to speak, she refuted Snelling’s criticisms point by point.
COPA, Kersten said, is “one voice” in the broader system of police accountability. His recommendations are subject to review by the superintendent. In those cases where the agency and the superintendent cannot reach an agreement, the matter goes to the police board for resolution. Charges are then filed by the Law Department 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 statements it became clear what had most likely provoked Snelling’s anger. Under the recently ratified contract between the Fraternal Order of Police and the city, COPA must conclude investigations within 18 months. In light of that future requirement, COPA was given 45 days to conclude each outstanding investigation of more than 18 months. As a result, in January he had turned over an unusually high number of investigations to CPD for the superintendent’s review, including 19 “separation” or termination recommendations, in a single day.
Is it possible that Snelling was unaware of the FOP provision? In any case, Kersten assured him: “You will never again have a day in January when you receive a bunch of separation recommendations.”
He went on to correct the impression left by the superintendent’s comments that COPA goes overboard in its disciplinary recommendations by providing statistics on the agency’s annual output. Last year, COPA concluded 1,814 investigations. Only in 329 of them did he recommend some type of discipline. (“A big part of COPA’s job,” he noted, is to clarify complainants’ “misunderstandings about what is legal and appropriate police conduct.”)
Of the 329 cases in which COPA recommended discipline, the superintendent disagreed in 71 cases.
Most of those disagreements concerned recommended discipline as opposed to the investigation’s findings, and in more than half, COPA deferred to the superintendent’s judgment. In this way, the office and Snelling were able to reach an agreement in all but a small percentage of the cases.
Kersten then moved on to the meat of the matter: cases of police shootings. These are the cases that attract the most public attention, and are the cases in which disagreements between COPA and CPD can be most intense and deeply felt.
In his comments, Snelling had spoken of the “split-second decisions” that officers sometimes have to 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 someone else,” she said. The impact on your mental health can be profound. Some “become suicidal,” she said.
In reporting on police shootings, I have had the opportunity to study video footage of officers moments after taking a life. Without creating a false equivalence with the individual being dead or dying, it is possible to see how traumatic this can be for officers.
Some seem completely disoriented, as if the accelerated momentum of an interaction is taking them somewhere they never intended to go. Given the reality that there are situations where lethal force is justified, can policy changes reduce the likelihood of reaching that fateful moment in situations where it can be avoided?
Kersten spoke about this question. COPA investigations in such cases, she said, are designed to “slow down” the escalating interactions.
“De-escalation?” —Snelling intervened. “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 occurred.
At this point, an essential dynamic for the police reform process became clear: COPA works on a case-by-case basis to operationalize the reforms that the CPD has formally adopted but does not always carry out in practice. That is the nature of institutional change.
That does not mean that politics can answer all questions. Snelling noted that “we can’t write a scenario for every situation” an officer might face. Therefore, it is essential to “clearly understand what the officer is facing at that moment and make a fair decision and judgment about how that officer responded.”
The discussion at the police board meeting was unexpected. Snelling and Kersten, as she said, had gone off script. Looking the video of the process, you feel the tension in the room. However, there are also glimpses of untapped possibilities in the tug-of-war between these two formidable public officials.
Nothing would do more to correct misperceptions by community members and officials about the nature of the reform effort than having more public exchanges like this.
Both Snelling and Kersten spoke of the need for closer communication between their agencies. It is equally important that your dialogue is available to the public. The point is not that they would inevitably agree. Rather, the dialectical tension between their perspectives would serve to illuminate the underlying issues and competing values at play in the current effort to reform CPD.
Jamie Kalven is founder of the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization on the South Side. He received the 2022 IF Stone Medal for Journalistic Independence from Harvard University.
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