An investigation into explosive allegations that Chicago cops engaged in sexual misconduct with migrants has been closed without finding any wrongdoing, the city’s top police oversight official announced Friday.
Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, said investigators were unable to find any victims of sexual misconduct, an issue she initially raised during an uncharacteristic news conference weeks after the probe was opened in July.
Kersten previously told reporters that COPA was made aware of the claims on July 6, the same day a Chicago police spokesperson confirmed the department had opened an investigation alongside the oversight agency.
Police officials and employees of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication had circulated a text message claiming several officers had improper sexual contact with migrants, including one cop from the Ogden District in North Lawndale who was identified by name and accused of impregnating a teenager.
News of the investigation set off a firestorm, with Mayor Brandon Johnson saying his administration remained “intensely focused on the deeply troubling allegations” before activists slammed the probe just a week after it was launched.
City officials quickly rushed to relocate migrants who were living at the Ogden District, then moved others from the Town Hall District in Lake View amid another unsubstantiated claim of sexual misconduct that Kersten announced during the July news conference.
Last month, as the migrant housing crisis continued to strain resources, asylum seekers were sent back to those stations.
John Catanzara, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, has remained critical of the investigation, which he has referred to as a “witch hunt.”
On July 11, Kersten sent a letter to Catanzara claiming a “senior member” of the lodge had called COPA Deputy Chief Sharday Jackson a day earlier, inquiring about the status of the investigation and threatening to file a complaint against her with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
Kersten said Jackson “was merely seeking out potential witnesses and fact gathering,” insisting that the FOP member’s “behavior must cease immediately.”
“Such harassment and interference with a pending investigation is grossly inappropriate and is prohibited by City of Chicago rules,” she wrote.
Catanzara shot back in his own letter the following day, arguing that the FOP member didn’t threaten Jackson and merely sought to learn whether COPA was following its own rules and respecting the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
In turn, Catanzara said Kirsten’s letter could be perceived as a threat that violates the union’s right to enforce its contract.
Catanzara expressed concerns that a COPA investigator had contacted an officer’s “soon-to-be former” wife “under the guise” of investigating another pending disciplinary case. During an interview, Catanzara wrote, the investigator started asking about the case involving migrants, questions that he said “had no relations to the stated purpose of the call.”
“It appears to the Lodge that if any COPA investigator can contact people at random and begin asking that person, ‘Do you think Officer X is capable of engaging in sexual misconduct towards a migrant,’ that line of questioning may be perceived as inappropriate,” Catanzara wrote. “
On July 27, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg was sent a letter that purportedly came from “several concerned COPA employees” raising alarms about the agency’s investigatory tactics in the case.
The letter accused Jackson and the supervising investigator, Kimberly Edstrom-Schiller, of telling staffers to document investigative steps in a document outside of the agency’s case management system “to streamline communications and ensure that only select information becomes part of the official record.”
Jackson, Edstrom-Schiller and other senior COPA officials also allegedly failed to properly memorialize “off the record conversations with witnesses” and others involved in the investigation, according to the letter. And Jackson and Edstrom-Schiller allegedly told staffers to take similar statements.
“All of these reported issues, which are likely systemic, are concerning and warrant investigation,” the latter states.