Investigative reports recommended suspensions of 30 days or less in 16 of the 19 cases, while investigative reports recommended termination in two others, according to a new audit from the city's Office of Inspector General. The findings, dated September 30, paint a picture of a disciplinary system with little consistency in how severely officers are punished for the same kind of misconduct.
The audit, authored by interim watchdog Tobara Richardson, examined how the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Bureau of Internal Affairs handled 19 closed cases involving sustained findings of racial-slur use, according to the WTTW News report on the inspector general's findings. In one case detailed by the City of Chicago Office of Inspector General, the oversight agency recommended firing an officer over racial-slur use. Matthew O’Brien was initially ordered to serve a 10-day suspension, but won his appeal and received no discipline.
CPD officials suspended one officer for 60 days, the longest punishment short of termination identified in the review, per WTTW's reporting. Roughly half of the officers in the sample were urged to undergo training meant to improve cultural competency, but the inspector general's office found that COPA and BIA failed to explain why that training was recommended in some cases and not others.
The Two Cases Where Brass Sought Firing
Only two of the 19 officers faced recommendations for termination, and both cases involved conduct that went well beyond verbal slurs. One officer used anti-Black and anti-gay slurs while threatening his girlfriend, kicked in her front door, refused to leave her home, damaged her belongings, and was drunk during the incident, according to the report cited by WTTW News.
The second officer was captured using anti-Black and anti-gay slurs before and after being dispatched to a car crash, including directing an anti-Black slur at a dispatcher. That officer, who joined CPD in 1995, had been the subject of 50 complaints over the course of his career. In a separate 2022 complaint, he was found to have used racial slurs toward Black women, per the same WTTW account.
Watchdog Demands Clearer Documentation
The Office of Inspector General concluded that CPD must ensure consistency and fairness in disciplinary recommendations whenever a racial-slur allegation is sustained. The department should document all aggravating and mitigating factors — including an officer's prior disciplinary history — before a punishment is finalized, according to the inspector general's report.
The watchdog also recommended that COPA and BIA determine whether additional training is necessary and establish a principle-based approach if training is part of the response. It also recommended ensuring that allegations served on accused CPD members are accurate and consistent, including proper spelling of quoted words. Those fixes are meant to close gaps that the inspector general's office says have allowed similar misconduct to draw wildly different punishments. COPA and BIA representatives agreed with the recommendations and vowed to improve how they handle complaints involving officers who use racial slurs, per WTTW's report.
Deborah Witzburg, who has previously led the inspector general's police oversight work, said Chicago needs a disciplinary system that both the public and the department itself can trust, according to the same WTTW account. The office also reviews individual closed COPA and BIA investigations and may recommend reopening them, as outlined in the inspector general's published recommendations.
A Directive Officers Are Already Bound By
CPD policy already prohibits this kind of conduct. Under General Order G02-04, titled Prohibitions Regarding Racial Profiling and Other Bias-Based Policing, officers are explicitly required to interact with the public respectfully and are barred from using racist or derogatory language. The 2019 Chicago Police Consent Decree also addresses impartial policing and transparency in COPA and BIA investigations.
The report arrives nearly a decade after the U.S. Department of Justice found in 2017 that Chicago police officers repeatedly used racial slurs against members of the public and on social media, and that officers were rarely held accountable for it. ProPublica reported in January 2018 that over the preceding 50 years, only one CPD officer had ever been successfully terminated from the department specifically for abuse involving racial or ethnically biased language — underscoring just how rare firing has historically been, even for repeat offenders.
Inspector General David Glockner's spokesperson acknowledged that the report, published September 30, went out on the office's website without an accompanying news release or social-media promotion, though its findings were folded into the office's monthly bulletin, according to WTTW. The office had separately warned in an April report that department officials inconsistently stripped officers accused of serious misconduct of their police powers.
Part of a Broader Pattern
The gap between watchdog recommendations and final punishment has shown up elsewhere in CPD's disciplinary record. Hoodline reported in August that COPA recommended firing a sergeant over civil rights violations during a botched raid on teenagers, only for Superintendent Larry Snelling to reduce the penalty to a two-day suspension — after which the officer was promoted to lieutenant. That same month, Hoodline reported that an off-duty sergeant was stripped of his police powers after a video showed him threatening teenagers and knocking a 13-year-old's phone down.
Closed-door grievance proceedings and arbitration are also part of the process for resolving police disciplinary cases.
