New COPA Head

Anyone familiar with CPD history knows that following the Summerdale Scandal in 1960, Old Man Daley was under political pressure to reform the Department. He was forced to appoint a committee to hunt for a new supernintendo.

But Old Man Daley had a plan - he brought in a police "expert" to head the search committee, a nationally known person named O.W. Wilson. The committee went through the motions, and then Daley had his inside guy on the panel pull one of those, "Aw shucks. The best person to head the CPD is the guy running this search committee!"

This has the same feel: 

• Chicago’s police oversight board on Thursday tapped the interim head of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to lead the city agency charged with investigating serious allegations of Chicago Police Department misconduct on a permanent basis.

  The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability voted unanimously to select LaKenya White, a 26-year veteran of Chicago’s police accountability system, crediting her with improving “the quality, consistency and timeliness” of investigations conducted by the agency better known as COPA while improving the morale of the staff and “internal operations.”

  “COPA’s work requires leadership that understands both the technical demands of complex investigations and the human impact those investigations have on families, officers and communities,” said Remel Terry, president of the police oversight board known as the CCPSA. “LaKenya has spent her career inside Chicago’s police accountability system, and she understands how this agency operates at every level.”

Someone from the inside doesn't feel right - the institutional bias of COPA (OPS, IPRA) is well known and well documented. But we've already had a comment or two from a retired sergeant who claims she's actually not bad - not a "friend" by any means, but someone who follows the procedures established and who would allow investigations to proceed where it goes instead of steering it politically.

If has nothing to do with us anymore - we're out of the system. But we have plenty of friends still in it and we worry about them getting to the finish line. 

Hopefully, it works out. Time will tell.