Law firm to examine how Chicago police complaints are probed
Sharon Fairley, who runs the Independent Police Review Authority, acknowledged that an audit is needed, since the board has upheld very few complaints in the nine years it has existed and only twice has determined that police shootings violated the department's use of force policies.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel appointed Fairley to head IPRA late last year amid an outpouring of anger over the killing of a black teenager, Laquan McDonald, by a white police officer who shot him 16 times.
The civil rights attorneys who filed the petitions on behalf of several people, including the Rev. Jesse Jackson, Sr., contend that the case should be taken away from Alvarez's office because of her political relationship with the police officers' union and what they say is her unwillingness to aggressively prosecute police officers in misconduct and shooting cases.