Police Abuse Complaints By Black Chicagoans Dismissed Nearly 99 Percent Of The Time
Investigators Rarely Sustain Allegations Of Any Kind
Long before Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke shot and killed a black teenager, sparking a public outcry and now a Justice Department probe into the city’s troubled police department, he had established a track record as one of Chicago’s most complained-about cops.
Since 2001, civilians have lodged 20 complaints against Van Dyke.
None were sustained by investigators.
While it may seem surprising that so many complaints against one officer would be tossed out, a Huffington Post analysis of four years of city data released by the Invisible Institute, a nonprofit journalism organization, reveals that there are more than 180 city police officers with more complaints than Van Dyke who weren’t disciplined at all over that time.
Most of those complaints were made by black residents, whose allegations of police misconduct are dismissed at nearly four times the rate of complaints filed by whites.
Of 10,500 complaints filed by black people between 2011 and 2015, just 166 — or 1.6 percent — were sustained or led to discipline after an internal investigation. Overall, the authority sustained just 2.6 percent of all 29,000 complaints. Nationally, between 6 and 20 percent of citizen-initiated complaints are sustained, said Lou Reiter, a police consultant who trains internal affairs investigators. As HuffPost’s Ryan Reilly noted earlier this year, a lack of transparency and accountability within police departments is a phenomenon hardly limited to Chicago.
The Chicago data is incomplete: Race was not disclosed on about 40 percent of complaints.
It’s impossible to determine from the data whether individual complaints were dismissed for good reason, or whether investigators missed or failed to take into account evidence that would have resulted in more complaints being upheld. But many complaints dismissed by investigators later resulted in settlements after the accusers pursued lawsuits, according to a Chicago Tribune investigation. Between 2004 and 2014, the city paid out over $520 million in settlements, legal fees and other costs related to police misconduct, according to the Better Government Association.
Most of the complaints in the examined period were filed in majority-black neighborhoods, which also tend to have higher crime rates than other areas of the city.
Allegations against Chicago officers ranged from traffic violations to serious criminal misconduct like sexual assault and battery. Nearly half of the 9,000 officers accused of misconduct were white.
The recent release of video footage showing Van Dyke shooting and killing 17-year-old Laquan McDonald has focused new attention on long-simmering complaints by black Chicagoans about police brutality, and a system that does not allow them a real opportunity to seek justice.
The video appears to contradict statements by Van Dyke and other officers on the scene, who said that McDonald was threatening them with a knife. In fact, the video appears to show McDonald walking away from the officers when he was shot. The video was withheld by Chicago authorities for over a year, without adequate explanation.
You see? You feel it? How can we speak about the protection of our rights, when those who are supposed to protect us refuse to even hear us? Of course, this conversation about racism and police brutality. But first of all I want to draw your attention to the full “inability” to solve the problem with the help of the authorities. They ignore us! That is how much we need a completely alternative power, interested in protecting citizens, not those in power. Cause it’s clear that black lives DO NOT matter to THEM!
#BlackLivesMatter #PoliceBrutality #PoliceViolence #CPD #Cops #KillerCops #ThugCops #CrookedCops
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