Tracking Decertified Cops Could Prevent Violence, Experts Say

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Kaila Philo
@KailaPhilo
A few weeks ago, the Council on Criminal Justice released policy suggestions the DOJ could enact to mitigate police violence. One of them was a national registry of decertified officers--with some critical reforms attached.

My latest for @CourthouseNews:

Tracking Decertified Cops Could Prevent Violence, Experts Say
Police reform advocates are calling on the federal government to create a national database of officers who’ve been stripped of their badges.
courthousenews.com
2:05 PM · Apr 30, 2021

https://www.courthousenews.com/tracking-decertified-cops-could-prevent-violence-experts-say/


WASHINGTON (CN) — On Oct. 20, 2014, 17-year-old Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by a Chicago police officer. Jason Van Dyke had responded to a call to investigate someone allegedly carrying a knife and trying to break into vehicles. He later claimed the Black teen was behaving erratically and that he had PCP in his system, but dashcam footage released a year later revealed that McDonald was walking away when Van Dyke shot him 16 times.

Jason Van Dyke was considered a “problem officer”— or rather, experts say, he should’ve been. During his 17-year career, he had received 25 civilian complaints, more than at least 93% of other officers in the Chicago Police Department. Most of the complainants reported him for an excessive use of force.

“He didn’t just have civilian complaints,” Max Schanzenbach, a law professor at Northwestern University School of Law, said in a phone call. “He had some supervisor complaints and two civil judgments. So, he was a known problem.”

But Van Dyke wasn’t decertified by the Illinois Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board until 2018, when he was convicted of second-degree murder.

Other officers involved in high-profile police shootings had previously received complaints on the job. Evan Solano, another Chicago Police Department officer who recently made headlines for shooting and killing 22-year-old Anthony Alvarez, was the subject of 11 use-of-force complaints since 2017. Derek Chauvin, the former Minneapolis cop who was found guilty last week of murdering George Floyd, accumulated 18 complaints over his 19-year career.

*snip*