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On Tuesday the City Council’s finance and police & fire committees held a joint meeting to hear the chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority testify about “the fate of all officers involved in settlement cases of police brutality,” as the resolution calling for the meeting put it.
Turns out, nothing is happening to these officers, at least not in a systematic way. “We do not currently look at patterns outside a specific investigation,” said Ilana Rosenzweig, chief administrator of the IPRA, which examines police shootings and allegations of misconduct.
“The question we try to answer is whether the force used is within the guidelines for a Chicago police officer as defined by the superintendent,” Rosenzwig told him.
Cardenas pondered this for a moment, then let it be known that he thought Rosenzweig needed to proceed with caution. “Because I think communities want the police to be their enforcers.”
The ordinance creating the IPRA was passed last November by a 49-0 vote.
