CPD Doesn’t Take Lying Seriously

Despite promises to the contrary by the Chicago Police Department and the agencies that make up the police accountability system in Chicago, lying while undertaking your official duties as an officer isn't taken all that seriously. The CPD's rule 14 bars any officer from knowingly submitting a written or oral false report. In other words, they are not supposed to lie. A recent report issued by the Chicago Inspector General's office details how the CPD and the police accountability system are utterly inconsistent in how they respond to officers lying in their official duties. While all the agencies talk publicly about the importance of integrity and truthfulness, they are not taking violations of rule 14 anywhere as seriously as they want people to believe they are. The integrity of the CPD and the police accountability system is vital to building trust between communities and the CPD. Despite this reality, the Office of Inspector General's Public Safety section continues to churn out report after report demonstrating how little attention the agencies pay toward accountability. Today's episode discusses these issues with Chicago's Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome back to the pod. I'm your host, Tracy Siska. I'm also Executive Director of the Chicago Justice Project. You want to find out more about our work, chicagojustice.org. Get involved, cjpnation.org. And if you want to support our work, go to our Patreon. Links for all these will be in the notes. First time listening to the pod, please subscribe. If you're watching this on YouTube, smash those subscribe and like buttons. Also hit the bell, and you'll be alerted every time we post new content, which is what we're going to be talking about right here. We got some changes coming soon to our content production. For the pod, it's just going to be interviews for our YouTube channel. You're going to get the reaction videos and reactions to media coverage on crime and violence, reactions to policy that will all be on our YouTube channel. On our Patreon, we're we're just starting posting this week explainer videos. We're going to talk about, we're going to basically go in depth about concepts and words and phrases that are um misused, misunderstood, and exploited by politicians. Our first one is going to be on defining violent crime in Chicago. That somehow tried to be switched by the political class in Chicago for some reason. We're going to tell you all about it. Later this week, we'll start posting our first Explainer video to a Patreon. Please check it out. What are we covering today? We're going to talk about the Office of Inspector General, City of Chicago. Actually, uh the Rule 14 violations. How we're going to do that? We got an interview with Deborah Wittsburgh, the City of Chicago Inspector General. It's a very, very important report that they put out. So what does Rule 14 say, and what is it? Well, it is the City of Chicago, the Chicago Police Department's set of rules. And Rule 14 says any officer, um, officer basically barred from providing a false statement, whether written or oral in any investigation, in any report, in any part of their work. The problem with this is the report proves out it's just inconsistency, breeds corruption, and clout conspiracies in. Right. And the reality is the police vulnerability system in Chicago really can't explain the differences in these rulings. And there's not enough transparency for the people to figure it out for themselves. So conspiracies fill that void. We get into all this with Deborah Witzburg, the Chicago Inspector General. Enjoy the conversation, and I'll be back with you after the interview. Deborah Witzburg, thank you so much for jumping on again with us. We really appreciate it. Thanks for having me. So, ladies and gentlemen, we're going to talk about some amazing work that the Office of Inspector General just did related to Rule 14 violations. And we're going to get into one of that is more technically, but basically, it's my version of it is lying or filing a false police report when you're an officer during an internal investigation. So, first of all, thanks for doing this research. It's amazing. And in my opinion, for Chicago, it's long, long overdue. This kind of issue, because I've been dealing with the police accountability system in Chicago since about 1996 and researching it and trying to make it better. And it's always baffled me how officers get found have sustained allegations for lying or filing a false report, and it goes all the way through the accountability system, they're found guilty of everything and they keep their jobs or they get minor suspensions. And what you're going to talk to us about later in this thing is sometimes those suspensions miraculously just get expunged. And just for everyone's context, this also happened during Mayor Lightfoot's term. And for those who don't know her, she's got a reputation when she was at the Office of Professional Standards, and that was the precursor to the independent police, independent police review authority. It was in the predecessor of the Citizen Office of the Police Accountability, which we currently have, where she had this mantra of you lie, you die, you lie, you get fired. And she brought that with her when she was head of the police board, supposedly, and she brought that into the mayor's office. We'll see. Just for a little more context, she hired David Brown, superintendent from Dallas, and we uncovered he had a suspension in his fifth year, I think, of being on the force for lying during an internal investigation. So the you lie, you die must only apply to people that are not employed by the mayor's office. Okay, that's my rant for the day. So, Deborah, can you give us what does in more detail and more professionally than I did? What is Rule 14?

SPEAKER_01 4:36

Yeah, absolutely. Rule 14 is one of the Chicago Police Department's rules of conduct, and it prohibits the making of a false report, written or oral. And that rule is understood to mean not only statements made, reports made during during an internal investigation, but during the regular course of police work, or in fact, in any one of a number of other settings, in a court proceeding, um, you know, even if that's a divorce or a bankruptcy or something, something in the kind of personal life of an officer, a member of the police department, any any false statement uh can constitute a rule 14 violation, as can a material omission, right? And we put people on the witness stand, we make them swear to tell the whole truth. And the practice around Rule 14 has come to a similar recognition, which is that a material omission may also constitute a false report. Now, in order to prove a violation of Rule 14, according to the collective bargaining agreements that govern the police unions, uh a false statement must be willful and material. So an agency pursuing a Rule 14 violation must must be able to prove all of those things that the statement is false, it was made willfully, and the the false statement is material to a fact under investigation.

SPEAKER_00 5:56

Okay, so quickly, it is uh, and this unfortunately, ladies and gentlemen, this is gonna be an acronym-heavy um discussion, probably. I am full of the acronyms of the system I've been looking at for so long. Can you give us a brief summary of the sketch of the police accountability system in Chicago? Because it's each agency is touched by this report.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Absolutely. And this is this is a good question that is really foundational to trying to understand sort of the processes and practices here. So most allegations, most complaints against a member of the of the Chicago Police Department are investigated by either the Civilian Office of Police Accountability or COPA or the Bureau of Internal Affairs, which is within the police department. Um COPA, the first of those, acts as the clearinghouse for all complaints against CPD members. So wherever someone makes a complaint against a CPD member, that complaint is routed to COPA for tracking and the assignment of a number. And then COPA makes a subject matter jurisdiction determination. Certain subject matters, certain uh kinds of complaints are allocated to COPA and its jurisdiction under the Municipal Code of the City of Chicago. So things like bias-based verbal abuse, excessive force, Fourth Amendment violations, etc., COPA has subject matter jurisdiction over those and they retain those complaints for investigation. Complaints which fall outside of COPA's statutory subject matter jurisdiction, once they have processed those in their clearinghouse capacity, COPA sends those to the Bureau of Internal Affairs for investigation. And so complaints that go to the Bureau of Internal Affairs are sort of everything that falls outside of COPA's categories. And so those that tend to be things like operational violations, um, you know, disobedience of department policies, residency violations, abuse of a medical role, et cetera. Rule 14 violations might arise in the course of investigations being conducted by either one of those agencies. So both the Bureau of Internal Affairs and COPA regularly have occasion or at least opportunity to investigate and pursue Rule 14 violations. When either of those investigating bodies is done, when they've completed their work, there's a decision-making process for the superintendent as head of the employing agency. Um, and then the most serious of police misconduct cases get adjudicated before the police board, which is a decision-making body. Um it actually performs a number of different functions, but as relevant for our conversation today, that is the body that adjudicates disputes in the most serious of police misconduct cases and can either um accept the disciplinary recommendation made by an investigating agency or can impose a different discipline.

SPEAKER_00 8:43

Right. And this will all become very important in a minute about that structure and how it this all touches each of those agencies. So can you tell us why this report, why now? Was there some obligation of your office to do it, or did someone write a letter and ask you to do it? What was it?

SPEAKER_01 9:03

Yeah. Um, well, really a combination of things I will say. Most immediately, this report, our study of the enforcement of Rule 14 was mandated by the consent decree that was entered in Illinois versus Chicago. The Office of Inspector General and our public safety section has a number of specific obligations under the consent decree, including obligations to study a number of different topics. And again, the enforcement of Rule 14 is one of those topics. Now, um, this is a critically important issue, which um it is certainly on our radar outside of the consent decree, was on our radar in an area of concern before the consent decree was enacted. But this report is specifically mandated by the consent decree.

SPEAKER_00 9:46

Okay, so there's all kinds of findings, but this overarching one overarching one that I want to talk about here struck, and I'm gonna quote from the report, right? What it says structural failures in Chicago's police accountability system allow CPD members with Rule 14 histories to remain in position positions with duties that depend upon their truthfulness and credibility. So I see that, and it kind of makes sense to me, but my my my account, my police accountability person says, are there duties within the, I guess my I'm gonna nitpick with that language a little bit and say, are there duties in the CPD that are not do not depend upon their truthfulness and credibility?

SPEAKER_01 10:30

Well, I look from a common sense perspective, no, all of us who work in the public trust have obligations around truthfulness and credibility. And so in a common sense way, no, there are no positions which don't require that. What that finding is really getting at is the fact that there are very practical constraints around what work can or should be done by a member of the police department who has a history of violating Rule 14, specifically around the fact that those people cannot testify in court in a criminal prosecution arising out of their police work. And so if those people are assigned to duties in the police department, which might cause them to make an arrest or write a police report, um they they cannot participate in the prosecution of the underlying crime. And so that, so, so, and that, and that I should say, is really what makes this not only a problem that has to do with accountability and transparency and reform. This is a problem that goes to CPD's ability to carry out its core law enforcement functions. If we cannot prosecute the crimes for which we arrest people, the department cannot perform effective law enforcement.

SPEAKER_00 11:45

Yeah, absolutely. And um, I want to go into each of these agencies: BIA, the Bureau of Internal Affairs, POPA, Citizen Office of Police Accountability, and the Chicago Police Board, all state stated to you and state to the public hey, a sustained Rule 14 violation, filing this false police report, is um is enough to seek the termination or should result in the termination of an officer. Let's go agency by agency here. The Bureau of Internal Affairs, is that how it's always been done? Or is that how it's been done, at least I think since 2008 with the legislation that created uh the independent police review already at the time? Is that always been the case since 2008 for the Bureau of Internal Affairs?

SPEAKER_01 12:29

No. And and to jump ahead a little bit here, I'm happy to go through agency by agency, but but you're exactly right. Each of the agencies involved here has made a policy statement, you know, accepting or agreeing with the notion that uh having violated Rule 14 disqualifies someone from being a member of the police department and that and and the that person should be fired. So everybody is sort of talking the talk. And the question that we really look to get at here is whether the agencies are walking the walk, whether we are meaningfully enforcing Rule 14. And that looks like a couple of different things. And so the the first exercise here, um, and apologies, I'm then happy to go back to each agency, but the exercise here is really to look at what enforcement looks like and therefore what under enforcement might look like, and how we recognize that when we see it. It's hard to know what we don't know, right? And so it's hard to sort of measure the negative space if a rule is under enforced. What we landed on to look at was really whether violations of Rule 14 are appropriately pursued, punished, and published. That is, are the investigating agencies pursuing Rule 14 violations when the evidence suggests that somebody may have lied? Are the investigating agencies recommending and is the police board upholding separation firing as the appropriate penalty for a violation of Rule 14? And is the police department, is the city publishing or sharing information about that so that an officer's Rule 14 history is appropriately disclosed to criminal defendants and litigants who are entitled to that information. And so what we found on this point of like, well, what are the agencies actually doing? Um, we found a combination of problems where, despite everybody's public policy statements to the contrary, the investigating agencies, the Bureau of Internal Affairs and COPA, are not consistently or not uniformly recommending separation. And the police board is not uniformly upholding separation for people who have violated Rule 14. There's I then I think a separate question about the sharing of that information and the failure of the controls around that process.

SPEAKER_00 14:45

The CPD has failures of sharing information negative about officers. I am shocked. But to get back to this um, you know, about whether or not each person who violates Rule 14 is getting punished similarly. I have had issues and I go back and forth on them. And this at the hearing in the police board, the officer is allowed to introduce it's like a court hearing, they're able to introduce mitigating information. And sometimes that mitigating information is a boss or other officers uh coming and vouching for how great this person is. And that reminded me, as I read your report again this morning, of victim impact statements in trials. Like I think victims should be able to give statements, but I don't think, for example, let's take, I guess let's take a murder, right? One mother gets up and is able to give a victim impact statement about what it did to her to have her child murdered and one isn't. Are they being punished differently because the mother was able to get up and one wasn't? And if that's the case, then the woman who wasn't able to get up, why is she being having less justice because she was able to give that statement? And then why did the offender getting punished different than the other offender when they have similar incidents? Right. And so I see this. So if an officer has a buddy or two to come up, or a boss or two like him to come up and vouch for him, he can lie all he wants, but he can keep his shot. Where a guy who lied less possibly, but didn't have anyone come in gets fired.

SPEAKER_01 16:23

Yeah. So I this I think is a critically important question, and it gets at a core principle of accountability and discipline, which is that each case is different, and the facts of each case must be considered individually and specifically and on a case-by-case basis. Where I think that analysis and the kind of the case-specific perspective ends is at the point of discipline. Because we need the police department to work, we need it to both be accountable and transparent, and we need it to perform effective law enforcement. Any lie is disqualifying. So we cannot live in a world where some lies are okay and others are not. And so I think, you know, the questions that you raise and the concerns you point out about consistency and fairness of discipline are deeply important ones. And those are considerations we should be taking into account across all kinds of disciplinary cases. For example, you know, we see discourteous treatment cases. We see cases where somebody gets a rule violation sustained because they're rude, because they're unhelpful, or they sort of behave in a way which is unbecoming of the badge. And we see a huge range of punishments in those cases. And there's some stuff to worry about there about whether people are being punished in a way that's fair and appropriate and appropriately kind of guided by policy. Um, because not all of those situations are created equal in terms of severity and impact and so on. Lying is different. Rule 14 is different. Any lie disqualifies someone from being an effective member of the police department, and people who violate the rule should be fired.

SPEAKER_00 18:01

Yeah, and this this takes me back to this report should be ammunition for a responsible union that is looking to take care of all their officers rather than make them ruin all their lives to stand up for the worst among them. Um, Jason Van Dyke being one of them, in my opinion. Like for the average officer, they have no faith in the police accountability system. They think politics comes way too much into it. And where you have people like who have Rule 14 violations, and one gets fired and one gets a slap on the wrist from the police board, that brings in a variance that in Chicago is always explained by corruption. And it may be corruption. Um God, who was the guy who kept his job for five years and tried to come back? I forgot, oh, um, I forgot his name, it'll come to me. But that is that kind of conspiracy conspiratorial thinking, whether right or not, it is uh throughout the police department. And when you get these decisions that you can't explain, yeah, it just adds fuel to the fire.

SPEAKER_01 19:18

Yeah, I I think that's right. I think um, you know, I I talk about slot, you've heard me say this before. I the the city in general, and certainly the police department specifically, operate at an enormous deficit of legitimacy. And one of the things that means is that the city and the police department have not earned the benefit of any doubt. And that's sort of what you're getting at, right? That there are the the we have not earned anybody's best assumptions here. And so when something happens that looks surprising or unfair or inequitable or uneven, um all the city has earned here is is for people to have assumed to assume the worst.

SPEAKER_00 19:57

Right. And that quickly gets filled up.

SPEAKER_01 20:00

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 20:00

Right. Um, for sure. All right, so we're gonna turn to one of the places where I think there is the least transparency in the entire police accountability system and entirely policing in the city. And that's the C CPD's management and labor affairs section and the city's labor affairs section. Um, so can you explain really quickly? So for our audience, only the most severe cases for like termination and long suspensions automatically go to the police board. Otherwise, the officer can go through the grievance process of the collective bargaining agreement or CBA and go through that process. That has been opaque as all can be. Um, I think Deborah's been on the show talking about a report she did about this before, um, and I'll link to it. Um, so can you explain how the grievance process works? Because it gets very important about what's going on here.

SPEAKER_01 20:50

Yeah, the grievance process is one of actually a number of different avenues by which an officer can challenge sustained misconduct findings and recommended discipline. It's basically an appeal mechanism whereby an officer appeals a finding and a disciplinary recommendation, and that goes before an arbitrator for sort of a miniature trial.

SPEAKER_00 21:16

Right. And um, I was told, I think, by years ago by Alana Rosenzweig, the original chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority, that it was so bad that they knew anytime something got grieved, it would either get reversed or reduced. Um, which is just bad. So I want to read something from your report and I have you comment about it. Through its review of files, your review, from investigations closed between January 2008 and May 2021, the Office Inspector General identified nine CPD members who had their sustained Rule 14 violations expunged from their disciplinary history as part of a settlement agreement. Okay, so the person grieves it. And the police accountability system and the officer get together to come to a settlement agreement. All right. I have to ask in incredible frustration, and I'm trying to hold back. What the hell are they doing? Expunging they found someone sustained lying. They don't go to terminate them, they just give them a suspension. Wait a minute, they already said everyone who gets a Rule 14 violation, that's termination. So how does going on there? And then what is the motivation of the police accountability system, if or a BI or COPRA BIA, to go into a settlement agreement? Is the arbitration process so slanted in the officers that they're coming up with these settlement agreements that are like seem like 99.9% in favor of the officer?

SPEAKER_01 22:49

Well, uh, the question of why the agencies engage in that or why the city does that's a question for my colleagues in those agencies or at the law department. Um, I can't answer that. Uh otherwise, I you know, I agree with that assessment. Those settlement agreements work basically like plea bargains. It's basically an agreement to a resolution that avoids further proceedings or further challenge. Um, and as you say, we look in our report at some of those cases where part of what's agreed to, part of the settlement agreement, is the quote-unquote expunging. And I'm a little careful about that word, the expunging of the Rule 14 violation. I'm a little bit careful about that because expunging means something very specific when we're talking about criminal records getting expunged under state law. This is not exactly that. Um it's a little bit unclear what the actual impact is of this kind of expunging. And I what I mean there is to say it is not clear to me what a Rule 14 violation being expunged during a settlement process, what that means for the city's or the government's disclosure obligations under Brady versus Maryland in a criminal proceeding. So Brady versus Maryland says that it interprets the United States Constitution to say that a criminal defendant is entitled to evidence which might be exculpatory, which might make them look less guilty of the crime of which they're accused. And that through subsequent case law has been read to include information about the credibility of a witness, including a police officer. And so all that is to say if a police officer has that, that's why, that's why they can't testify in court in a criminal prosecution if they violated Rule 14, because they would have to disclose it to the defendant and then would have no credibility on the witness stand. So back to the expungements, you know, if if these are officers for whom a Rule 14 violation has been sustained, that means the city, the government has made a finding that they lied. It's not clear to me that taking the back of a pencil and erasing that off of their disciplinary history has anything at all to do with the government's obligation to disclose that information in a criminal prosecution.

SPEAKER_00 25:09

Does it have to do with their ability to use that as an aggravating factor in future discipline?

SPEAKER_01 25:16

Yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:17

That's why, that's why they want it.

SPEAKER_01 25:20

Well, that's why the officers want it. Sure. Yes, yes, yes.

SPEAKER_00 25:23

Right. Yeah, that's why the officers want it.

SPEAKER_01 25:25

Yeah.

SPEAKER_00 25:25

Um, okay. So frustrated. They don't disclose it anyways. It's very hard to find that they have the Rule 14 violations sustained, and then they're expunging them, anyways. For some plea bargain that is mind-boggling. I don't care what, I don't understand why the city doesn't just want to fight it, but that's a whole nother issue. All right, so there's a uh a headline gripping number that you put out, which is a hundred. I just want you to comment about it. 110 officers recently are currently employed by the CPD with Rule 14 violations. And are they employed in jobs where they would may or will have to possibly testify in court?

SPEAKER_01 26:00

Yes, those that group of people includes beat officers, it includes detectives, it includes people on federal task forces, et cetera. People who have been promoted since they were found to have violated Rule 14, um, people for people who have more than one Rule 14 violation, um, etc.

SPEAKER_00 26:21

I gotta say, it was pretty funny um in your report. I'm sure you didn't write it for that reason, but um David Brown, there's a quote from David Brown in there about if you lie, you can't be an officer. And that cracks me up, considering in his fifth year in the job in Dallas, he got found to be lying during an internal investigation at multiple times, including to the city during a lie detector. It's all over there. So it's just a little bit of like hypocrisy. So, anyways, this is it is Chicago. One, why wouldn't we have a uh a superintendent that got caught lying during an internal investigation that is then handing down discipline on other cops that determinate their jobs who lie during an internal investigation? It's wonderful. Okay, we're gonna turn the last couple of questions to the collective bargaining in the CPD hiring plan here. And I have a quote I want to read because this is just mind-boggling. In a July 2021 interview with OIG, CPD's General Counsel stated that the collective bargaining agreement prohibited the use of disciplinary histories for tests-based assignments and promotions. Further, in September 21, a few months later, CPD's general counsel stated the department's hiring plan, specifically Charter 3, paragraph nine, also prohibits the use of disciplinary histories for tests-based assignments and promotions. Deborah, is that true?

SPEAKER_01 27:33

Um, uh I'm not the department's lawyer. Um the collective, I don't read the collective bargaining agreements quite the same way. Um, the fact of the matter is that if that's how the city and the department reads them, then those terms should be renegotiated. None of us, none of the rest of us, um work in jobs where our disciplinary history would be irrelevant to the question of a promotion.

SPEAKER_00 27:59

Um I worked at UPS, I was at Teamsters. If I got busted for lying during something like that, there's no way I would have moved up at UPS. It would have just been end, and everyone else in every other job in America would be canned. Or at least you would never get a promotion above where you were. Okay. So what does it say about? Well, I'm gonna skip that one because I don't, I don't know. I just think that there's can it possibly be that the CPD has just stayed with this for years and the city has stayed with this for years in the collective bargaining? They knew they couldn't use these um their disciplinary and promotions, and they never went to touch it. Lightfoot didn't, Rom didn't, Daly didn't, they all left it there. So they could just the CPD just keep promoting bad officers.

SPEAKER_01 28:45

Again, you know, I I I won't answer for them. I I don't read it quite the same way that they do.

SPEAKER_00 28:51

Um if it's if it's that way, it's probably worse for them. You could argue it's worse either way, but if it if it is that way and they did nothing to change it, if they're right and they've done nothing to change it over the last 20, 30, 40 years, that's upsc it's obscene either way, but it's just really sad. Because yeah, you want someone found to misuse a gun and or lie or beat someone. I mean, that's definitely someone you want to be able to take a general test and promote throughout the ranks. Someday they can go lead another national level department. Okay. So that's both to, and I just want to get this clear the way they read it, it's both that their disciplinary history does not affect both test-based promotions and is are there non-test-based promotions, or is well, it's clout, right? Those are clout promotions. Yes. On our podcast, we call them clout, but yes, their name is actually merit. Um what's wrong? If that is the case, what's what's wrong with that?

SPEAKER_01 29:50

Well, um, you know, all the things you just said about the way that lying would be handled in a different job. Um, I I think it is also, you know, the police department is a chain of command organization. Um culture rolls downhill, accountability should roll uphill. Um, and we cannot expect leaders in the police department to uh improve to sort of like do any better for the people under the their command than they have done themselves, uh, in terms of living out the principles of the police department.

SPEAKER_00 30:28

You know, years ago when Jody Weiss, this is 2009, 2000, yeah, 9 to 11 time, when Jody Weiss, um, there was a draft general order going around when he was uh instituting the assault rifles to all officers. And I got a call from a very high-ranking officer who said, I need to meet with you now. Come here at this time, let's meet. And he hands me this and he's like, You've got to stop this. You've got to stop this. And he goes, This is what the most important thing about this draft. Look at the last page. And I said, Sure. And the last page said, supervisors have no role in which of their officers can carry the assault rifle once they test pot for it. And he's like, the and he's like, they're relieving my ability to know my officers and know which ones should be good with it. I know their histories, I know if they've misused the weapon, but I have no control over that. And that's what a lot of this reminded me of. It's like we have our head in the sand, almost on purpose to some extent. It's very, it's very frustrating. And you see, ladies and gentlemen, they don't you can go on to read the rest of the report. It's amazing you should read it. There's all kinds of stories, um, more detail about certain cases all the agencies did not uh fire someone, even though they have a sustained Rule 14 violation or didn't recommend firing. Um, but you understand, like the other part, and um Deborah brought it up is that they don't really track this either. So then when it comes time for them to testify in court, they're not handing it to prosecutors. You know, it's for Brady evidence so that the the defendants in the cases can get this is like, hey, the officer that arrested you and wrote this report, oh, he's he's got a history of lying. Right? That may that may alter the way the defense attorney wants to attack the case. And it may have the defense attorney more credibility in what the defendant's saying. All right, Deborah, I'm gonna put you on the spot here a little bit of your recommendations. There are many in here. What do you think are the most important ones?

SPEAKER_01 32:36

That the investigating agencies pursue the separation of people they find to have lied.

SPEAKER_00 32:42

Boom. There it is. I know it sounds simple, but ladies and gentlemen, it is we're recording this on June 6th of 2023, not June 6th of 1993. And what do we what is the inter Office of Inspector General asking for? That the police live in the and the in the police accountability system live up to their rhetoric, right? And when they sustain allegations of cops lying, that they be fired. And remember, this is all in the context of what I would say a very extreme right-wing police union of the FOP, who thinks, and um uh unfortunately, a large number of the members in the force who think the police accountability system is way too hard on them. So when you go read that report, you listen to this, think about the fact that that is an overwhelming pervasive way of thinking about the police accountability system within the police department. They also think it's very arbitrary and very clouded. And we talked about why that could be. All right, Deborah, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.

SPEAKER_01 33:43

Of course, thank you.

SPEAKER_00 33:47

Okay, I'd really like to thank Deborah for joining on joining. Once again, I'd really like to thank Deborah for jumping on with us. I really appreciate her time. 2023 and the system is still broken, ladies and gentlemen. They're mediating settlements for lying. You're a cop, you get caught lying, and they're mediate it and reduce the charge, and sometimes expung the chart, expung the chart, expunge the charges from the record so it can't be used against them in future investigations. It's really unbelievable. Remember, as I said in the interview with Deborah, LIFA was supposedly this you lie, you die police accountability person. First at the Office of Professional Standards, second, um, at the um as president of the Chicago Police Board. Really, nothing has changed during his time as mayor, right? Her police department was getting an immediate settlements for cops that lie. So I guess it didn't really, she's not really the lie you die type of person. Okay, thank you all for listening. I really appreciate it. We'll be back next week with reporters Kelly Garcia and Kellos Belosteros from Chicago or Black Club Chicago discussing the work on the Cook County Juvenile Detention Center. I will see you all then. Please check out our Patreon, um, support our work and get the explainer video that'll be up in a few days. Thank you very much how the