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4.2.1 Complexity of System

Oversight can only be as effective as it is accessible, if barriers have to be overcome to feel the benefits of oversight, people are unlikely to be trusting of it. Decades of reforms and additions have rendered Chicago’s system excessively complicated. As investigations progress, complainants must grapple with complex legal concepts such as standards of evidence, affidavits, jurisdictions, and the seemingly endless interagency technicalities and lengthy periods of waiting at every step.

As mentioned previously, some inherent but unpopular aspects of oversight can be overcome with transparency and honesty. Whilst this is implementable at an interpersonal level, directly to case stakeholders, it is harder to communicate en masse. As such, increasing effort is being directed to public outreach and education. COPA devotes an entire unit to the task, holding sessions in community centres and schools to educate and involve the community, as does the OIG. Furthermore, the CPB has been using its monthly public meetings to do outreach and education on oversight:

31

“I try to make sure that first of all, that they understand the process. So many people just have a general idea, [they] don't really know how the process works”

[P3]

This quote captures the essence of the complexity issue. Most people understand the basics of the system and its abilities, however, because the system was incrementally built over decades, it is rife with technicalities. Outreach and education efforts are essential and beneficial, but such efforts are hampered by the endless specificities that emerge. For example, why court orders block certain COPA video releases, or why affidavit requirement overrides are seemingly underutilised given how many cases are closed for a lack of one.

There are legitimate answers to these questions but addressing them is an effort akin to fighting a hydra. As long as the system is incomprehensible, the natural pessimism and distrust of the present iteration of oversight are harder to overcome.

4.2.2 Interagency Inefficiency and Competition

With the oversight system being comprised of several agencies operating in a highly scrutinised environment, participants expressed concerns about the relationships between agencies, specifically the efficiencies and sense of competition that the crowded system creates.

An illustrative example of interagency inefficiency occurs after COPA sustains a complaint with findings, meaning the case is passed to the CPD superintendent for review. The superintendent has up to 90 days to pass judgement on COPA’s recommendation, either agreeing with it or passing it to the CPB for adjudication. In this potentially 90-day long period, COPA cannot publish or inform stakeholders of their findings and recommendations as per the OIG’s instruction. Not only does this kind of auditing provoke the feeling that one’s actions are being scrutinised and critiqued, but such delays are more frustrating for case stakeholders and damaging to the oversight system’s reputation when cases are high profile.

32 2021 saw one of the most high-profile cases of misconduct since Laquan McDonald with that of Anjanette Young, a young, black woman who was handcuffed naked to a radiator in her apartment when CPD mistakenly raided her home during the night. Timeliness was a source of major criticism for COPA, yet the investigation lasted the standard ~18 months that all cases were taking, in addition to an almost 6-month delay from the incident not being reported to COPA. Not only were COPA unable to enforce their discipline recommendation unilaterally, but they were also unable to pass the case directly to the CPB due to the superintendent’s review role, and they were further limited by the OIG ruling that their recommendation or finding cannot be revealed even only to victim’s families. When incidents such as this become public and an agency is under the microscope, some participants expressed dismay about the reactions of other actors:

“There's a difference between an untimely investigation because you're negligent in investigating a case versus you simply have a math problem, you have more cases than you have bodies… [nobody says] this is an untimely investigation so I'm gonna get them the resources that they need so that they can do these investigations quicker… that's not working to the benefit of all of the agencies and at the end, it projects a negative opinion of the oversight system”

[P4]

participants accused other actors of joining in the blame game rather than constructively identifying the problem, ultimately damaging the public perception of the entire oversight system. Whilst this specific account must be treated with due scepticism given the self-preserving interests of each actor and agency, it speaks to a broader culture which is not one of solidarity or cohesion, certainly not one which is conducive to the goals of rebuilding trust in oversight.

A final example of inefficiency and competition in Chicago’s oversight system is the policy recommendation space. The OIG by definition is the typical origin of policy analysis for the

33 police department given its audit role for all city agencies. As such they have unilateral power to investigate any systematic concern in the police department and publish reports with recommendations for the department to improve its operations. COPA has taken on a similar remit with its growing police research and analysis division. In addition, the CPB also has powers to perform policy research and analysis for the police department although it has not elected to use this power until recently. Indeed, the consent decree dictates that all three agencies must implement a quarterly joint meeting to discuss their respective analyses and recommendations. Whilst each agency has its own useful perspective, such as COPA generating topics and data from across its investigative section, having three discrete agencies produce policy reports for the police department may be redundant when labour-power and budget constraints are consistent limitations of Chicago’s oversight agencies according to participants of this study.

4.2.3 Accountability links broken

As discussed previously, COPA is the face of oversight for much of the associated public and political discourse, it is the first point of contact for most complainants and media coverage of incidents. However, the agency has less control over the outcomes of investigations than most onlookers may assume given the amount of attention they receive. In democracies, government agencies are supposed to be accountable to the public, however, the more that responsibilities are distributed across bureaucracies, the more that accountability is reduced for the public (Walsh & Conway, 2011; 71). For stakeholders in civilian oversight this is potentially damaging for their trust in the system as any single agency’s responsibility for a case is diffused into the broader bureaucracy of oversight:

“…every single one of those people can touch that report, and that investigation, at some point, I don't know how that benefits the impacted parties.”

[P4]

34 Taking timeliness as an example, even once COPA has completed its role in investigating a serious complaint, if it is passed off to the CPD superintendent for review, COPA is no longer in control. Yet, COPA remains functionally responsible as far as the public or complainants are concerned, especially since they are the source of ongoing communication:

“So, we had 'em, they trusted us, they're with us, they're participating, and we're done.

And we sometimes lose every ounce of credibility that we had with the family in those four months, because it's those four months that they have to wait before they can be told the outcome or before they can receive a copy of the report”

[P4]

Whilst this problem can be partly attributed to public understanding of the oversight system, the technicalities and idiosyncrasies of the process are likely of little concern to victims given their need for justice. As the labour of police accountability is divided across so many agencies, the responsibility that one single agency or representative carries is diluted, weakening the accountability of oversight to its key stakeholders. In establishing COPA, significant efforts were made to improve the communication and accessibility of the new agency compared to its predecessor. However, in so doing, COPA is now positioned as the default bearer of responsibility for the entire system, despite investigative outcomes often being determined elsewhere, possibly to the detriment of the entire system’s credibility.

4.2.4 Deterrence ideology

Police accountability systems across the United States almost universally mirror the standard deterrence ideology found in traditional criminal justice. Under a deterrence framework, deviance is supposedly discouraged once the threat of punishment outweighs the benefits of law-breaking. Applying this premise to police accountability, once the threat of discipline for misconduct becomes so great and realistic, misconduct will cease. Deterrence ideologies are underpinned by a normative belief that punishment for offenders is justice for victims, an increasingly contested view (Beale, 2003; Place, 2018).

35 Developments in the Chicago oversight system have always come as a reaction to particularly high-profile and egregious incidents, meaning that past reforms do not reflect the nature of the vast majority of misconduct complaints. Taking the murder of Laquan McDonald, the fact that the officers’ actions were demonstrably indefensible thanks to (eventually released) video footage naturally prompted calls for a punitive response. When COPA was designed in the aftermath of the incident and in response to the failure of IPRA to prevent misconduct, its policies reflected the concerns around the McDonald murder, e.g., the mandatory video release policy for officer-involved shootings.

Punishment and deterrence were again enshrined as the only tools to give justice to victims and prevent future misconduct. Whilst increasing efforts in the aforementioned policy analysis and recommendation area go some way to providing an alternative method to reduce misconduct, implementing those recommendations generally rests exclusively with the police department (with the exception of some OIG findings):

“If oversight only exists pursuant to an officer's actions, i.e., reactive, the ability to create that cultural change that's needed globally, regionally, and at the actual department level, we’re not gonna get there”

[P4]

Swathes of literature point to the inadequacy of punitive justice as a means to heal the wounds of crime generally and police misconduct too (Doak & O’Mahony, 2012). Given that only ~2.5%

of cases investigated by COPA are officer-involved shootings, it is untenable to prioritise punitive measures in every investigation. Not only does this devour resources to meet standards of evidence to warrant punishments, but it does not necessarily provide meaningful justice to victims nor prevent future misconduct.

36 5. Discussion

This study highlights several aspects of the Chicago civilian oversight system which deliver procedural justice to complainants and police officers. Participants reported genuine motivations to help people and fix systems which encourages trustworthiness as does treating people with respect and dignity. Furthermore, honesty, transparency and active listening were found to be strong foundations on which to build a successful oversight system in Chicago as these elements have been found to encourage satisfaction, cooperation, and compliance.

However, several factors were found to reduce the impact of the positive elements.

Firstly, the iterative and reactionary reform cycle which has produced the current system is proving increasingly bloated and inefficient, not least with the latest addition of yet another civilian review board scheduled to begin operation in 2022. Complainants face accessibility barriers owing to the system’s complexity, and interagency competition and tensions distract and detract from the work of oversight. The links between stakeholders and justice are frequently interrupted, obscured, and compromised altogether. Discipline and deterrence may be popular, especially for high-profile cases, but prioritising these ends to the exclusion of others eliminates the possibility of alternative and more efficient routes to justice for many types of complaints. These issues in combination limit the effectiveness of the procedurally just practices in improving public trust in oversight. This section provides some preliminary recommendations to augment the deliverance of procedural justice in Chicago civilian oversight.