Now, a Tribune investigation reveals the scope of the challenge. Since its creation in 2007, the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency the mayor plans to replace, largely has failed at its main tasks — investigating police abuse and holding officers accountable.
The office has conducted investigations that were slow and superficial, and investigators have sometimes questioned officers briefly and given them deferential treatment, allowing police to avoid rigorous scrutiny. Often, that questioning took place months or years after an incident occurred.
IPRA has cleared officers in spite of physical evidence of misconduct, and recommended punishment in less than 4 percent of its cases. But even that rate is inflated by accidental weapon discharges that spurred little discipline; excluding those, the agency has upheld allegations in approximately 125 cases over the last four years, or roughly 30 a year out of the close to 2,000 cases it handles each year, the Tribune found.
That amounts to about 1.7 percent.
When it did recommend discipline, it often sought light punishment. And with many avenues for police to contest proposed punishments, IPRA's recommended discipline often didn't stick.
[BOLD]Many of the Tribune's findings could have been made about IPRA's predecessor, the Office of Professional Standards, or OPS, which also was widely criticized for failing to hold officers accountable, even when it was clear that they had engaged in misconduct.[/BOLD]
