The Chicago Police Department has a problem with racist, anti-immigrant, anti-Muslim and anti-democratic police officers on the force. The Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and other extremist groups are represented among the CPD’s roughly 12,000 sworn members.
The city inspector general’s office has called attention to this policing problem before, to little effect. So in a recent letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson, copied to police Superintendent Larry Snelling and other public safety officials, Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Tobara Richardson raised the issue in excruciating detail.
Comparing Chicago’s ineffectual response so far to what other cities have done, Richardson calls on Johnson to form a multiagency task force to seek a whole-of-government approach to the problem.
A blue-ribbon commission would be all well and good. But there is no reason for bureaucratic hand-wringing on this one. There should be no room for overt racists and anti-government zealots on Chicago’s police force, and Johnson and Snelling should act to eradicate their presence now.
In fact, no new laws or rules may be needed. Rule No. 2 of the CPD’s code of conduct prohibits any action that “brings discredit upon the Department.” A separate rule explicitly prohibits membership or association with groups that have a known racial bias.
CPD also has history on its side. Richardson’s letter to Johnson cites a 1960s case in which the grand dragon of the Illinois Ku Klux Klan was a Chicago police officer — and was fired because of it, along with two other Klansmen officers.
A city lawyer summed up the thinking in simple terms. “I think it is incongruous for the (police) board to believe he can be a Klansman with robes one minute and a patrolman with his star and his gun the next,” attorney Jerome Zurla wrote.
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 remain in 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 officers whose names appeared on Oath Keepers membership lists.
A more recent report noted that membership in many street gangs is prohibited, but Chicago police officers are not explicitly banned from joining the loathsome triad of anti-democratic, paramilitary agitators.
The numbers may sound small — 27 police officers with Oath Keeper ties, in a force of 12,000 CPD officers — but like a drop of ink in a glass of water, they can discolor an entire police force.
“There don’t have to be a lot of them to have a very big impact on public confidence in policing,” city IG Deborah Witzburg told me. “Besides, it’s hard to get ahold of a problem when you don’t know the scale of it.”
Chicago’s police force is a regrettable outlier on this issue. Over the years, including in 2021, a year after the protests following George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer, police executives from several major cities and districts formally committed to keeping out and removing extremists from their police ranks. Chicago did not. Since then, police departments have taken swift, decisive action to dismiss police officers who belong to such groups.
Richardson’s letter puts Chicago in stark contrast. She summarizes three years of cases in which the CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs failed to oust extremists. She cites a 2022 report in which the bureau stated, “Membership into organizations in itself is not a rule violation” — apparently, no matter what precedent and the department’s code of conduct say.
Richardson’s letter also illustrates the uneven enforcement of CPD’s standards on who can wear the department’s uniform. She cites the case of a police recruit, fired almost on the spot for using gang slang in an informal conversation with other officers.
If a few uttered words of street gang argot are enough to get a police officer fired, membership in avowedly racist groups that led a failed coup at the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021, should send one packing, too.
Johnson campaigned on a pledge to rid the CPD of extremists, and Snelling vowed to act after last fall’s news reports about the presence of Oath Keepers in CPD’s ranks. CPD reopened several disciplinary cases after a prior IG report, but then closed those cases again. Over the time period under Richardson’s review, no police officers have yet been fired or subject to major discipline for their connections to the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers or other extremist groups.
Two steps by Johnson and Snelling could signal an intent to put their words into action. Johnson could sign the anti-extremist pledge that dozens of other cities have made. And Snelling could issue a statement correcting the Bureau of Internal Affairs’ misreading of rules and precedent and order the bureau to open or renew any cases that merit action. He may need to pull the city’s new civilian oversight agency into the effort — and needs to find a way to make that work.
Once those steps are taken, a more structural rehabilitation of CPD’s approach to extremism in its ranks can begin. The ultimate goal should be explicit rules and policies that prohibit membership or association with extremist groups, because apparently existing language is not clear enough. The department’s listing of “criminal and biased organizations” needs to include the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters and others.
Richardson holds up examples such as Springfield that thoroughly prescreen applicants for signs of ties to extremist groups. The Anti-Defamation League calls for background checks before hiring, as well as once police officers are on the job; reswearing of oaths by active-duty officers; ongoing education about the dangers of violent extremism; and more funding for background checks and anti-extremist screening.
There are models to follow, certainly, but this more structural reform must not be allowed to stand in the way of action now.
Timing matters. The Democratic National Convention will open in Chicago in August. Protesters, participants and spectators alike all need to trust Chicago’s police officers. So do the state and federal forces who will be working to keep the convention and the city safe.
They need to know racists and anti-government extremists are not wearing CPD uniforms.
A whole-of-government approach may be needed for a structural fix. But if ever there were time for decisive, firm action against Chicago police officers with known extremist ties, now is the time to start.
David Greising is president and CEO of the Better Government Association.
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