Pursuant to Paragraph 444 of the consent decree entered in Illinois v. Chicago, the Office of Inspector General’s (OIG) Public Safety section is required to “review and analyze” closed sexual misconduct investigations involving complaints “against a [Chicago Police Department (CPD)] member alleging conduct against a non-CPD member.” The consent decree requires OIG to publish an annual report “assessing the quality of sexual misconduct administrative investigations reviewed,” “recommending changes in policies and practices to better prevent, detect, or investigate sexual misconduct,” and “providing aggregate data on the administrative investigations reviewed” by OIG. Paragraph 444 of the consent decree requires “the City” to provide OIG with the complete administrative file for each complaint of sexual misconduct against a CPD member alleging conduct against a non-CPD member within ten days of a final disciplinary decision.
In 2019 and 2020, neither CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA) nor the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) complied with this provision by directly providing investigative files for sexual misconduct investigations to OIG within ten days of their closure.
In 2021, BIA and COPA made progress toward ensuring OIG is notified of all qualifying sexual misconduct investigations pursuant to the consent decree. Prompted by OIG’s recommendations in its last report, COPA created new category codes to better identify allegations of sexual misconduct and committed to working with BIA to create a process to notify OIG of a qualifying case that reaches a final disciplinary decision. However, OIG discovered several cases investigated by each agency that had not been reported as required. OIG also noted concerns surrounding the length of time it took for many of these investigations to be concluded, along with a lack of documented explanation for the length of investigations.
These reports contains statistics on and analysis of all of the cases reportable under Paragraph 444 identified by OIG. As further required by Paragraph 444, OIG makes a number of recommendations to improve the investigation and reporting of sexual misconduct allegations by both BIA and COPA.