Craig Futterman, Sharon Fairley Quoted Prominently in Sun-Times Report on Police Accountability
New Chicago police oversight boss has been wiping out recommendations to fire cops
A Chicago Sun-Times news article on police discipline in Chicago quoted clinical professors Craig B. Futterman and Sharon R. Fairley.
The article says that Chicago’s new police oversight chief “has repeatedly wiped out or dramatically scaled back recommendations to fire officers following pushback from the city’s top cop.
It goes on to say that “[T]he reversals by the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability follow acrimony and infighting that roiled the agency, culminating in the resignation of its chief administrator, Andrea Kersten, after a tenure marked by internal accusations of mismanagement and anti-police bias.”
Futterman, director of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project of the Mandel Legal Aid Clinic, says the reversals demonstrate that “our police accountability system is in peril” and that “COPA is under assault.
“It is a trend that should terrify people,” Futterman says. “And that doesn’t bode well for the future of police accountability.”
Fairley, who previously ran COPA and its predecessor agency, says it’s important for Snelling to be able to challenge COPA’s disciplinary findings and recommendations.
“It’s a communication and a sharing of perspectives in which one can convince the other about a point,” Fairley says of the discussions between the police department and COPA. “And then a finding might change based on that.
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