When will the CPD identify police officers with extremist ties?

The Chicago police force has a problem with racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Islamic and anti-democratic police officers. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other extremist groups are represented among the approximately 12,000 sworn members of the police force.

The city’s Office of the Inspector General has raised awareness of this policing problem before, but with little success. In a recent letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson, which was also forwarded to Police Chief Larry Snelling and other public safety officials, Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Tobara Richardson addressed the issue in great detail.

Richardson compares Chicago’s ineffective response so far to what other cities have done and calls on Johnson to form an interagency working group to find a cross-government solution to the problem.

A high-profile commission would be all well and good. But there is no reason to engage in bureaucratic hand-wringing over this issue. There should be no place for open racists and anti-government zealots on the Chicago Police Department, and Johnson and Snelling should act immediately to stamp out their presence.

In fact, no new laws or regulations may be needed. Rule No. 2 of the CPD’s Code of Conduct prohibits any action that “brings the Department into disrepute.” Another rule specifically prohibits membership or association with groups known to be racially biased.

History is also on the CPD’s side. Richardson’s letter to Johnson cites a case from the 1960s in which the Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan of Illinois was a Chicago police officer – and was fired for it along with two other Klansmen.

A city attorney summed up the thinking: “I find it contradictory that the (police) board believes it can be a Klansman in a robe one minute and a patrol officer with a star and a gun the next,” wrote attorney Jerome Zurla.

The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, and Three Percenters may not wear white robes, but their vile, racist, anti-government paranoia has no place in the ranks of the CPD.

Yet members and known associates of these extremist groups continue to wear the CPD uniform. WBEZ-FM 91.5, the Chicago Sun-Times and the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project last fall identified 27 current and former Chicago police officers whose names were on the Oath Keepers’ membership lists.

According to a more recent report, membership in many street gangs is illegal, but Chicago police officers are not explicitly prohibited from joining the vile triad of anti-democratic paramilitary agitators.

The number may seem small—27 officers with ties to the Oath Keeper out of a force of 12,000 CPD officers—but like a drop of ink in a glass of water, they can stain an entire police force.

“It doesn’t take many to have a big impact on public confidence in police work,” City Inspector Deborah Witzburg told me. “Plus, it’s hard to get a problem under control if you don’t know its extent.”

The Chicago Police Department is a sad outsider in this regard. Over the years, including in 2021, a year after the protests following the killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer, police chiefs in several major cities and counties have officially committed to keeping out and removing extremists from their ranks. Chicago has not done so. Since then, police authorities have taken swift and decisive action to dismiss police officers belonging to such groups.

Richardson’s letter presents Chicago in stark contrast, summarizing three years of cases in which CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs failed to remove extremists. She cites a 2022 report in which the bureau found, “Membership in organizations in and of itself is not a violation of rules” – apparently regardless of what precedent and the department’s code of conduct say.

Richardson’s letter also illustrates the inconsistent enforcement of CPD standards regarding who can wear the department’s uniform. She cites the case of a police recruit who was nearly fired on the spot for using gang slang in an informal conversation with other officers.

If a few words of street gang slang are enough to get a police officer fired, then membership in openly racist groups that led a failed coup at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021, should also get a police officer fired.

Johnson had promised during the campaign to rid the CPD of extremists, and Snelling vowed to act on news reports last fall about the presence of Oath Keepers in the CPD’s ranks. The CPD reopened several disciplinary cases following an earlier IG report, but then dropped those cases. During the period reviewed by Richardson, no police officer was fired or subjected to major disciplinary action for their ties to the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers or other extremist groups.