Chicago hires auditor to review police shooting probes
CHICAGO — The embattled Chicago agency charged with reviewing police-involved shootings announced Wednesday that it has hired an outside law firm to conduct a broad audit of its past probes.
The historical audit of the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) comes as the agency has faced an avalanche of criticism for finding wrongdoing by officers in only two of more than 400 police-involved shootings since the agency was created in 2007. The audit will be overseen by George Terwilliger, who served as the second highest-ranking official in the Justice Department during the George H.W. Bush administration, and Christina Egan, a former deputy chief assistant U.S. attorney in Chicago. Both lawyers now work for the law firm McGuireWoods.
Sharon Fairley, chief administrator of IPRA, said the audit is necessary as she tries to restore public confidence in the agency that critics say has played a central role in creating mistrust of police in the black and Latino communities in the nation's third-largest city.
"The purpose of the audit is to assess the processes and the policies that were in place that lead to these outcomes so those can be changed going forward," Fairley said.
The use of deadly force by the Chicago Police Department has been in the spotlight since the city was forced by court order in November to release chilling police dashcam video that showed a white officer, Jason Van Dyke, pump 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, who was black, on a city street. The release of the video led to months of protests in the city in which demonstrators called for the resignations of Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez.
Alvarez announced first-degree murder charges against Van Dyke 400 days after the October 2014 shooting. Protesters have charged that Emanuel and Alvarez were complicit in a coverup of the shooting. Last week, Alvarez was trounced in a Democratic primary race in which her handling of the McDonald shooting became the top campaign issue. Soon after the video's release, the Justice Department announced it was beginning a civil rights probe of the Chicago Police Department.
Van Dyke continued shooting at McDonald, who was holding a small knife and was reportedly breaking into trucks prior to the incident, even after the teen had fallen to the ground. In the video, McDonald appeared to be moving away from officers in the area when Van Dyke opened fire.
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Fairley, who took over the agency following the release of the McDonald video, said the McGuireWoods team has been charged with evaluating the quality of IPRA's investigative process, determining the accuracy of IPRA's findings and providing insight on how the police department's use of deadly force policy has shaped the agency's findings..
The audit is expected to take six months, and "may or may not" lead to investigations of police-involved shootings being reopened, Fairley said. She added that she expects the law firm will initially review 20 to 40 old cases that the auditors will select without input from IPRA or the police department.
Meanwhile, Judge Vincent Gaughan said Wednesday that he was giving prosecutors until May 5 to respond to two separate petitions filed by a coalition of activists and politicians asking for a special prosecutor to be appointed to prosecute Van Dyke. The petitioners contend that Alvarez, who will be in office through December, has a history of being soft on cops.
Van Dyke's attorney on Wednesday also asked Gaughan to excuse the officer from future status hearings before the case goes to trial. Ahead of past hearings, Van Dyke has had to walk through a gauntlet of protesters to get into the criminal courthouse on the city's South Side.
Follow USA TODAY Chicago correspondent Aamer Madhani on Twitter: @AamerISmad