Independent Police Review Authority

Civil Rights Coalition Urges Federal Investigation Include Focus on Chicago Police Oversight Agency’s “Whitewashing” of Misconduct

A coalition of civil rights advocates and community groups have called on the U.S. Department of Justice to focus its investigation of the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA), which the coalition recommended be abolished and replaced with an effective and truly independent police oversight agency.

“There is a direct correlation between IPRA’s dysfunction outlined in this complaint and the brutality that is and has been endemic in the CPD,” states the complaint signed by the Chicago Aldermanic Black Caucus, the Rainbow Push Coalition, the Chicago Urban League and several other prominent activists and civil liberties attorneys.

“IPRA’s failings are not negligent or misguided but instead are in place to serve a specific purpose – to clear CPD officers of wrongdoing and ensure official impunity,” according to the complaint. “IPRA’s policies, procedures and practices foment a culture of silence, in which police officers abuse Chicagoans, and particularly Chicagoans of color, without consequence.”

The complaint seeking an investigation was prepared by the Roderick and Solange MacArthur Justice Center at Northwestern University School of Law and the University of Chicago Law School’s Civil Rights and Police Accountability Clinic.

News release HERE.

PDF of complaint HERE.

PDF of appendix HERE.

update 11/08/15