Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s appointment of Andrea Kersten as COPA permanent chief administrator was sent to the Rules Committee.
The controversy surrounding the Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s decision to recommend a three-day suspension for slain Chicago Police Officer Ella French spilled over into City Council meeting Wednesday.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s appointment of Andrea Kersten as COPA’s permanent chief administrator — even though she signed off on the posthumous suspension recommendation — was sent to the Rules Committee.
The parliamentary maneuver will, at the very least, slow down Kersten’s confirmation and could be a first step toward derailing it.
Ald. Nick Sposato (38th) vowed this week to do “everything in my power to cash in every chip I can with friends” to block Kersten’s appointment.
The alderman had a previous run-in with Kersten after she reported him to the Board of Ethics for calling her five times, calls she ignored.
Twenty aldermen wanted Kersten disqualified for “rubbing salt in the wound” of Chicago police officers by recommending a posthumous suspension for French.
The suspension stemmed from the slain officer’s failure to activate her body camera and fill out the proper paperwork on the night of the botched police raid that forced social worker Anjanette Young to stand naked and pleading before with a nearly all-male team of police officers.
The suspension was recommended even though French was praised by Young and by COPA for being one of only a handful of officers who “took affirmative steps to protect Ms. Young’s dignity.”
Whenever two committees are called, the legislation in question is automatically sent to the Rules Committee, the traditional burial ground where things opposed by the mayor normally go to die.
Ald. Ray Lopez (15th), one of Lightfoot’s most outspoken City Council critics, orchestrated sending Kersten’s appointment to the Rules Committee.
For good measure, Lopez introduced an ordinance to prevent future posthumous police suspensions. It would require COPA’s chief administrator to “refrain from posthumously sustaining and issuing any decisions against any officer killed in the line of duty.”
Mayoral allies played tit-for-tat by sending the Lopez ordinance to the Rules Committee.
COPA spokesman Ephraim Eaddy has said the oversight agency’s summary report into the police raid on Young’s home was completed on April 27.
That’s more than three months before French, 29, was fatally shot and her partner, Carlos Yanez Jr., was critically wounded after they pulled over an SUV with expired plates at 63rd Street and Bell Avenue.
Eaddy has argued that COPA is compelled by city ordinance to “make reports open to public inspection” and can “only redact information to the extent it is exempted from disclosure” by the Freedom of Information Act.
But the argument didn’t fly with Lightfoot, who called it the “height of tone-deafness,” but nevertheless handed Kersten the permanent job four days later.
In a letter to Lightfoot just minutes before the Kersten appointment, the 20 alderpersons said they were “vehemently opposed” to Kersten because of the posthumous suspension of a slain officer widely hailed as a hero.
“Morale is low, tensions are running high and COPA releases a report tainting the legacy of fallen Officer French and recommending disciplinary action against her? To quote you, Madam Mayor, this demonstrates ‘the height of tone-deafness,’” the alderpersons wrote in a letter to Lightfoot dated Tuesday.
“In these days of civil unrest and rising crime, we need someone at the helm of COPA who possesses the emotional and practical intelligence to navigate the many volatile situations they will face in this role. … All this report does is further alienate our Chicago police officers at a time when it is imperative that we begin rebuilding their trust in this administration and in the people who are supposed to have their backs.”
The letter was noteworthy not only for its strong language but because it was signed by alderpersons who have not hesitated to criticize Chicago police officers in the past: David Moore (17th), Jeanette Taylor (20th) and Andre Vasquez (40th).
The Chicago Police Department is 1,000 officers short of authorized strength even after Lightfoot balanced her 2021 budget by eliminating 614 police vacancies.
After a tidal wave of police retirements, the letter noted that the city is having “significant trouble maintaining adequate numbers.” The shortage of officers on the street has crime rising and Chicagoans feeling unsafe “on our streets and in their own homes,” they said.
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