Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling addresses the Chicago Police Board during a meeting at police headquarters on Feb. 22, 2024, in Chicago. A Cook County judge will issue a ruling this week in the lawsuit brought by the city’s largest police union that seeks to enforce an arbitration award that would allow the most serious police misconduct cases to be decided behind closed doors.
The dispute over police discipline stems from contract negotiations between the city and the FOP last summer. The second package, which deals only with the most serious cases of misconduct, was voted down three times by aldermen, most recently in February. “He lives in an isolated, myopic, frankly, bucolic world,” Franczek said, “… and doesn’t have an appreciation for the considerable challenges of the city of Chicago.”
Many of the cases decided by the police board stem from investigations conducted by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. A deluge of closed misconduct investigations prompted Snelling to sharply criticize COPA during the February meeting of the Chicago Police Board. Snelling accused misconduct investigators of injecting opinions and personal biases that resulted in excessive penalties for CPD officers.