New OPS chief considers coercion

Ten days into her job as leader of Chicago’s Office of Professional Standards, Ilana Rosenzweig is considering changes to the agency, whose job is to investigate complaints against police officers.

Rosenzweig was approved as chief administrator of the new agency Sept. 5, as covered by the Columbia Chronicle. She faced alderman Sept. 19 to address coercion and how her office would handle such charges.

Coercion was not specifically included in OPS’ responsibilities, but some officials and advocates, including Cook County Public Defender Harold Winston, think it should be.

“My suspicion is that at some point the mayor said, ‘We’ve taken enough changes and we’re not going to change it anymore,'” Winston said, speculating on why coercion wasn’t included in the original ordinance for the Office of Professional Standards.

Winston testified during the Chicago City Council Police and Fire Committee meeting in favor of the coercion amendment.

“Attorneys in my office have repeatedly stated that coercion by threats of retaliation must be included in the scope of OPS for OPS to be truly effective in halting police misconduct,” Winston said.

Gerald Frazier, president of Citizens Alert, a non-profit law enforcement watchdog group, also spoke in support of the amendment, saying it would expand the scope of what the new independent agency can investigate.

“We think it’s important that this agency, the new agency, investigate this (coercion) because what got us here in the first place is the whole issue of the police policing the police,” Frazier said.

Rosenzweig, however, was not as quick to move forward and include the proposed definition of coercion in the Office of Professional Standards’ scope. She first wants to see how many claims could be considered coercion.

“I want to find out if there are any complaints that are slipping through, meaning they’re serious enough that OPS should be investigating them, and that the current ordinance is broad enough to be catching them,” Rosenzweig said. “The amendment suggested, I’m concerned, is so broad.”

Rosenzweig used an example of an officer warning a driver to move their car or be ticketed. “Under the amended language that’s proposed, that would be a threat of retaliation,” she said.

But that’s not the intent of the ordinance, Winston said, rather it is about intimidation or immediate fear.

“I don’t think getting a ticket puts someone in immediate fear. What we’re talking about puts someone in fear.” Winston said after the meeting. “Something like, ‘we’ll pick up your young son and dump him in a rival gang neighborhood.'”

Rosenzweig suggested working on a system with city council members to track the number of complaints reported, in order to see if changes are needed in the ordinance for the agency.

Ald. Freddrenna Lyle (6th) said she wants to see Rosenzweig work on a few other things too, including additional training for investigators on what constitutes a reprisal threat as well as cultural and lingual training.

“One of the reasons you have been invited to the city of Chicago is that there is a very strong lack of confidence in the people you now have confidence in, in terms of their ability to illicit information,” Lyle said.

Rosenzweig could not answer the question asked by Ald. Ariel Reboyras (30th) on how language barriers are handled in calls that currently come into the Office of Professional Standards.

“Someone in fear that they may not say the right things may not want to call,” Reboyras said. “If (members of) the general public feel comfortable speaking freely, if the language barrier is a problem, it may alter or stop the call.”

It could take a year to evaluate complaints that come into the Office of Professional Standards in order to determine what changes should be made, said Ald. Isaac Carothers (29th), chairman of the Police and Fire Committee.

Carothers wants Rosenzweig to become more familiar in her post and work on filling the 23 vacancies in the department, which is budgeted for 85 staff persons, he said.

“I don’t want to pass something that does not accomplish what the proponents of the ordinance want,” Carothers said. “It’s important to find out what types of complaints are coming in.”

The next step, Carothers said, is to begin collecting data on calls and for Rosenzweig to work with Winston and other proponents of the coercion ordinance on a system to handle those complaints.

Ald. Robert Fioretti (2nd) said he’d like to address the (coercion) issue in committee again within the next three months.

“It will send a signal to all Chicago police officers that this type of misconduct will not be tolerated,” Winston said. “It will send a signal to the communities and citizens of Chicago that a new day has dawned in investigating police misconduct.”