CHICAGO — The head of the agency that investigates allegations of significant wrongdoing by Chicago police officers, including cops involved in shootings, quit last week because the city’s police oversight commission was planning to recommend she be fired.
John Catanzara, the head of the union that represents the city’s front-line cops, made that stunning claim in a YouTube video on Friday.
“The reality is this,” Catanzara claimed. “The Community Commission [for Public Safety and Accountability], we know, took a vote to recommend her for a termination hearing at the City Council.”
“She knew her days were numbered, so she left before having to face that termination and absolutely was not going to have her contract renewed at the very least, or at least not approved,” the union boss continued.
Kersten has been under fire for months from forces within and without the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). Critics claim COPA has a baked-in anti-police bias that results in shoddy investigations and inappropriate disciplinary recommendations.
Last July, the CCPSA voted unanimously to ask the city’s Office of Inspector General to investigate the “quality and integrity” of COPA’s investigations and COPA’s disciplinary recommendations.
In September, 16 former COPA employees urged the CCPSA to take a “no confidence” vote on Kersten. That was followed by a pair of lawsuits by once high-ranking COPA employees who claimed they were fired for blowing the whistle on the agency’s problems.
Catanzara claimed a lawsuit filed by the union on behalf of eight cops against Kersten, COPA, and the city “got this ball rolling” and “triggered a series of events” that ultimately led to Kersten’s resignation.
He also stressed that while Mayor Brandon Johnson can weigh in on who will replace Kersten, CCPSA ultimately conducts the talent search and decides who to submit to the City Council for approval.
“So, that should be a little more fair and equal kind of decision,” Catanzara said.
Last April, CPD Larry Snelling publicly expressed his concerns about COPA’s investigations during a town hall meeting that came in the days after officers killed Dexter Reed, a driver who opened fire on cops, shooting one, during a traffic stop.
After the shooting, Kersten toured local and national media outlets, suggesting that the officers who pulled Reed over might have lied about the reason for the traffic stop. Yet, Snelling noted, COPA investigators had not even spoken with the officers Kersten suggested had been untruthful.
“You will not find me on the Stephen A. Smith show,” Snelling cracked.
The top cop also argued that COPA released a letter Kersten wrote to him about Reed’s case to media outlets under the Freedom of Information Act. Illinois’s FOIA law allows government bodies to withhold information that could interfere with an ongoing investigation or anticipated administrative or criminal proceedings.
In November, CWBChicago reported that COPA investigators had recommended a cop be fired for, primarily, posting a picture to Facebook of former Mayor Lori Lightfoot in “blackface.”
After nearly five years of investigation, the agency sent its recommendation for termination to Snelling in April 2024. He rejected COPA’s recommendation, calling its recommendation of termination “egregious” and noting that the image did not show Lightfoot, who is Black, in blackface. It showed her in clown makeup.
The investigation began days after Lightfoot, presiding over a City Council meeting, was heard on a hot mic referring to the police union president as a “clown.” Lightfoot acknowledged that she was sorry she “said it out loud” during the July 24, 2019, meeting.
Four days later, Chicago Police Officer Andres Barrezueta posted a photo of Lightfoot to a private Facebook group called “City Workers Past and Present.”
“She called my representative a clown, so I made her into a clown,” Barrezueta said in a follow-up post.
The image “depicts Lightfoot’s head with a red clown nose, white eyebrows, a white mouth and bright red lips super-imposed on her face, with the head is [sic] placed atop a man’s torso that is clad in a tuxedo, standing outside the entrance of the Mayor’s Office in Chicago’s City Hall,” Kersten and COPA’s Deputy Chief Administrator Matthew Haynam wrote in their termination recommendation.
Snelling slammed the COPA investigation as “not thorough,” noting that, despite taking years to investigate a seemingly simple matter, its investigators never even spoke to the person who filed the initial complaint.
A second image, which COPA never received a complaint about, was posted to the city worker page even before the Lightfoot clown picture. According to COPA, the image “depicts former Mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emmanuel, dressed up in a leotard with a rainbow-colored, phallic-shaped object protruding from the center of his forehead with a caption reading, ‘FEAR ME, I AM A UNICORN.’”
According to COPA, Barrezueta told investigators the Emmanuel image was “about unicorns and not an attempt to insult Emmanuel by employing homophobic imagery.”
COPA’s investigators, however, determined that the image of Emmanuel, who graduated from ballet school and studied at a dance center, was “homophobic and disparaging.” The agency called the Lightfoot clown image “racially offensive” and the Emmanuel graphic “gender biased.”
Snelling noted that COPA never received a complaint about the Emmanuel image but tacked it onto the Lightfoot “blackface” investigation after “scouring through the old posts made by Officer Barrezueta.”
Snelling ended his response to COPA’s investigation by suggesting that Barrezueta receive a 10-day suspension but not be terminated as the agency recommended. COPA accepted Snelling’s recommendation.
Matthew Haynam one of Kersten’s top deputies, who signed off on the Barrezueta investigation and recommendation, was fired by the agency last year. He and another high-ranking COPA investigator quickly filed nearly identical whistleblower lawsuits against the city in September, claiming they were fired for speaking out about an anti-police bias that they believe is tainting investigations at the agency.
Haynam’s suit claims Kersten knowingly made false statements that questioned the honesty of the officers involved in the Dexter Reed shooting, even though there was nothing in the record to support her claims.
He also cited a pattern within COPA investigations of “mischaracterization of evidence [and a] failure to interview key witnesses motivated, in whole or part, by improper political considerations.”
Days before Haynam filed the lawsuit, 16 current or former COPA employees urged the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, which oversees COPA and CPD, to take a “no confidence” vote on COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten.
The Sun-Times reported that they alleged Kersten “‘manipulated investigations to align with her own policy agenda’ and retaliated against employees who have complained about ‘bias and mismanagement.’”
CWBChicago reported on two COPA investigations that seemed to demonstrate the lack of thoroughness that some critics see in the agency’s investigations:
In April 2023, COPA determined that a Chicago police sergeant unreasonably used “excessive force, akin to deadly force” by putting his knee on the neck of a person he was trying to arrest. COPA’s deputy chief investigator recommended that CPD fire the sergeant or suspend him for 270 days.
But then-Interim CPD Supt. Fred Waller blasted the agency’s findings, saying its investigators “chose not to interview any of the other officers on scene or the civilian witness” to the alleged behavior.
In fact, Waller said, the accused sergeant “was the only individual interviewed by COPA, and a proper investigation cannot be completed without statements from the complainant, other Department members on scene, specifically the officers who assisted in placing [the arrestee] into custody, and a civilian witness.”
Following Waller’s response, Kersten signed off on a supplemental finding that the allegation of excessive force was “not sustained.” In her memo, she maintained that there was “sufficient evidence to sustain the allegation,” but “various factors, including the age of this case, the requirements of the collective bargaining agreement, and the attendant procedural issues in this case significantly reduce the likelihood of success at an evidentiary hearing.”
Last February, COPA’s chief investigator recommended a 30-day suspension for another CPD sergeant due to comments she allegedly made about migrants living inside the Albany Park (17th) District police station.
Specifically, the sergeant was accused of telling someone that, if they wanted to help the migrants, they should “pick out one of them, and take it home like they do at the [dog] pound.”
The sergeant vehemently denied the allegations.
Snelling rejected COPA’s findings and recommendations. Among other concerns, Snelling said COPA investigators made “no attempts to interview any additional witnesses that were working at the District desk during the alleged incident,” even though the complainant said it occurred directly next to a detective and up to three officers working the station’s front desk.
The sergeant retired before COPA responded to Snelling’s “nonconcurrence” letter.
