Chicago City Wire

The head of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) recently recommended the dismissal of a police officer who fired at two suspects after he and his partner were shot at in the Far West Side in 2018. The recommendation was condemned on social media; no one was hurt in the incident, and a suspect tripped during a foot chase and a gun was found nearby.

A request for review of COPA’s recommendation that the Chicago Police Board dismiss the officer, Patrick Bunyon, who fired at the suspects, was posted on theTwitter account of the 16th & 17th District Chicago Police Scanner.

“That PD is doomed,” AgentZero930 replied to the post, “the citizens are under attack from the liberal mindset in that city. No wonder Chicago has the high number of shootings. That finding will have department employees running for the exit door!!!!”

Another replier, The Diplomat, wrote: “Identify the Civilian board and this would stop immediately. They’d be pariahs in their neighborhood.”

In a 2019 complaint, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 charged that COPA has neither expertise nor the legal authority to investigate police-involved shootings.

Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of COPA who recommended Bunyon’s dismissal, was deposed in the case in April, attorney for the FOP, Joel D’Alba told Chicago City Wire for an earlier story.

In an update of the case, D’Alba said that the parties in the action remain in the “discovery process.”

The FOP lawsuit charges that the COPA investigations violate the “Police and Community Relations Improvement Act.”

FOP attorneys cite the opinion of Brent Fischer, former executive director of the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board, who in a 2018 letter to the FOP wrote: “Because COPA employees are not police officers…and are not primarily responsible for the prevention and detection of crime, they are not ‘law enforcement officers’ and are therefore ineligible to serve as lead investigators in death and homicide investigations.”

For an earlier story, Bob Bartlett, former chair of the Legal Defense Committee at the FOP, told Chicago City Wire that “early on I came to realize COPA doesn't have the legal authority or possess the necessary training and skills to investigate these shootings.

“I suspect an investigation into COPA will show a pattern of bias in which they steer investigations to a predetermined outcome."

In a separate case, COPA recommended last October that the Chicago Police Board fire Officer Eric Stillman over the March 2021 shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. Then Superintendent David Brown recommended that Stillman face a five-day suspension for failing to activate his body camera. The Cook County State's Attorney's office, moreover, declined to press criminal charges in the case. A status hearing was held on the case in May. 

In the Bunyon case, the superintendent disagreed with Kirsten’s findings and proposed no discipline, according to the letter requesting the Police Board review the 2018 incident.

In the letter, the Board said that it will conduct an evidentiary hearing to “determine whether Office Bunyon violated any of the Chicago Police Department’s Rules of Conduct…”