Crime & Law
CPD Rejects Watchdog’s Demand to Reopen ‘Deficient’ Probe Into 8 Officers With Ties to Oath Keepers
Video: Inspector General Deborah Witzburg joins “Chicago Tonight” to discuss the Chicago Police Department’s investigation into officers with documented ties to extremist groups. (Produced by Paul Caine)
The Chicago Police Department’s most recent investigation into several police officers with documented ties to far-right extremist groups like the Proud Boys or Oath Keepers was “materially deficient,” according to a report released Tuesday by the city’s watchdog.
But CPD leaders refused Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s demand that the Bureau of Internal Affairs reopen the probe, which was the third investigation of Chicago Police Department members with ties to right-wing extremist groups since 2022 to end without any of the officers being disciplined.
CPD investigators did not interview anyone other than the eight officers accused of belonging to the Oath Keepers, according to the 30-page report first reported on by WTTW News.
Under city ordinance, Witzburg has the authority to ask the Bureau of Internal Affairs to reopen investigations she determines were lacking in rigor or were incomplete.
“We cannot ask people to trust a police department whose members are allowed to dabble in hatred and extremism; those people dishonor the badge and are a discredit to all those doing good work in the uniform of the Chicago Police Department,” Witzburg said in a statement. “Words are no longer enough. We can do better. Other cities have done better. We owe to it Chicagoans, in uniform and out, to do better.”
Read the full inspector general’s report.
Interviewing the officers was the most significant investigative step taken by investigators during the probe, which was completed in less than six months.
The eight officers were each questioned by investigators for an average of 29 minutes, according to the summary of those interviews included in the report. The longest interview lasted 48 minutes, the shortest just 17 minutes, according to the probe.
All but one of those sessions included a statement from an attorney representing the officers objecting to the probe as a violation of the officers’ First Amendment rights and disputing the characterization of the Oath Keepers as a “domestic terrorism organization” before the officer spoke directly to investigators.
During the interviews of two of the eight CPD members with documented ties to the Oath Keepers, the officers’ union-provided attorney dictated the answers to several questions posed by investigators, according to the watchdog’s report.
Read the full investigative report.
Those interviews were “deficient” because investigators failed to take additional investigative steps and “failed to document an analysis of whether association with or membership in the Oath Keepers may have brought discredit upon the Department or failed to promote the Department’s efforts to implement its policy or accomplish its goals, in violation of CPD’s Rules of Conduct,” according to a letter from Tobara Richardson, the deputy inspector general for public safety, to Chief Yolanda Talley, the head of the Bureau of Internal Affairs.
Chicago police Supt. Larry Snelling on May 3 defended the probe to reporters as thorough.
“I can tell you that we have reached out to everyone, our internal affairs division has reached out to everyone, to gather information to determine if these officers were actually proven to be members of hate groups,” Snelling said.
CPD officials have never explained the apparent contradiction between Snelling’s statement that “everyone” had been contacted as part of the investigation, when the only interviews documented in the report were conducted with the eight officers facing discipline.
In addition, the probe gathered no evidence that supported the officers’ claim that they joined the Oath Keepers because it advocated for gun rights and the U.S. Constitution before quickly losing interest, according to the report.
Timothy Moore, the deputy director of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, said the probe of the eight officers was not “deficient,” in a letter to Richardson dated June 28.
“None of the accused members stated that they had knowledge that the Oath Keepers were a violent extremist group nor did they state they had intentions of joining a violent extremist group,” Moore wrote. “Most importantly, none of the accused members were actively participating or had previously participated in the group. The mere fact that the accused members signed up to become a member of an organization long before the average citizen and the Office of the Inspector General knew the group existed, is not enough evidence to suggest the Chicago Police Department currently employs members of the Oath Keepers.”
The probe was opened on Oct. 24, 2023, one day after Snelling promised the Chicago City Council’s Budget Committee that he would rid the Chicago Police Department of officers with ties to hate groups and far-right extremist organizations after “stringent” and “thorough” investigations.
Snelling promised to open a new probe after the first in a series of stories by the Chicago Sun-Times and WBEZ, published on Oct. 22, 2023, revealed that the names of nine Chicago Police Department members appeared in leaked rosters for the Oath Keepers.
However, CPD brass had known since Aug. 8, 2022, that the names of eight Chicago police officers appeared on Oath Keeper membership lists, when First Deputy Chief Eric Carter received a letter from the Anti-Defamation League — an organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism — identifying the officers.
Carter served as the interim superintendent of the Chicago Police Department from mid-March to mid-May 2023, when he abruptly resigned. Carter replaced former Supt. David Brown, who quit after Mayor Brandon Johnson was elected.
One of the people named in that letter could not be identified as a Chicago police officer, while WBEZ and the Sun-Times named two other officers whose names appeared on the Oath Keepers’ membership list. Two of the officers had already been probed for their ties to the Oath Keepers — one has since left the department while the other was cleared over the objections of Witzburg after a separate probe.
Several of the officers told investigators during those February interviews that they learned about the Oath Keepers more than a decade ago from other officers or while they served in the military, a pattern documented by the Anti-Defamation League in a report examining the threat posed by members of far-right, anti-government groups in positions of power in police departments and the military.
The officers said they joined the Oath Keepers to get a discount on shooting competitions or after being asked to do so by friends or colleagues in the military and CPD. Others said they joined because they supported the group’s public effort to expand the right to own guns and widen the protection offered by the Second Amendment, according to the probe.
One officer said he signed up for the Oath Keepers after learning about it from other officers while training to respond to the 2012 NATO Summit in Chicago, but never actively participated in the group, according to the probe.
Several officers said they got stickers and pocket-size copies of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights for joining the Oath Keepers, but never participated in the group’s activities.
One officer said he paid $50 per month for a few months between 2009 and 2012 to belong to the Oath Keepers, before allowing his membership to lapse because the organization did not appear active.
All of the officers told investigators they did not disobey a direct order from their supervisor because it was in conflict with the Oath Keepers oath.
None said they currently belonged to the Oath Keepers, whose members participated in the Jan. 6, 2021, U.S. Capitol insurrection. Leaders of the group have been convicted of seditious conspiracy.
On May 3, Snelling called it “misleading” to connect the probe into Chicago police officers’ ties with the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers to Jan. 6, saying the probe started “before Jan. 6.” However, the probe CPD officials said had been closed in May without disciplinary action began in October 2023, nearly three years after the insurrection.
It is unclear whether Snelling’s remarks were based on the fact that the officers apparently belonged to the Oath Keepers years before the insurrection shone a spotlight on the group’s anti-government beliefs.
The Oath Keepers is considered by the FBI to be a “large but loosely organized collection of individuals, some who are associated with militias” who have vowed to “not obey unconstitutional (and thus illegal) and immoral orders.”
All of the officers probed said they joined the Oath Keepers without much thought or consideration, did not remember how much they paid in dues to the organization or how long they belonged to the organization, according to the probe.
The eight officers have been the subject of 74 complaints. Five of those complaints were sustained, resulting in discipline, according to a database of complaints against officers compiled by the Invisible Institute.
Witzburg, the city’s watchdog, has three times found investigations conducted by CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs to be lacking, and demanded they be reopened.
In October 2022, police brass rejected a recommendation from Witzburg to terminate an officer who lied about his ties to the far-right Proud Boys extremist group. Instead, that officer served a 120-day suspension.
Witzburg said CPD brass could have fired that officer, who has returned to active duty and earns more than $100,000 annually, because he lied to investigators, regardless of whether he belonged to the Proud Boys. Department leaders declined to follow her recommendation.
In January, police brass rejected a separate recommendation from Witzburg to terminate one of the officers on the membership rolls who admitted belonging to the Oath Keepers. That officer remains on active duty with the CPD and earns nearly $109,000 annually, according to a city database.
Witzburg has told police and city leaders that membership in extremist organizations like Oath Keepers and Proud Boys constitutes a violation of CPD policy that could warrant termination. Department leaders declined to follow that recommendation.
Had Snelling accepted Witzburg’s interpretation of CPD policy, he could have recommended that all of the officers who admitted joining the Oath Keepers while a member of the Chicago Police Department be disciplined or fired.
That represents an “apparent reticence to apply existing rules to extremism allegations, despite historical precedent for doing so and the plain language of the rules,” Witzburg said.
In “a departure from 50-year-old precedent, CPD has taken the affirmative position that memberships into organizations in itself is not a rule violation,” Witzburg wrote, noting that CPD has used the rule prohibiting officers from bringing discredit to the department to terminate officers who associated with the Ku Klux Klan as well as street gangs.
In an April letter to Mayor Brandon Johnson, Richardson urged him to form a task force “to plan for and implement a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach to preventing, identifying and eliminating extremist and anti-government activities and associations within CPD.”
Richardson said city officials have “fallen short” of fulfilling their promises to root out extremism in police ranks, according to the letter.
However, Deputy Mayor Garien Gatewood declined to commit to forming such a task force, according to his response released by the inspector general’s office.
Johnson has referred to the Oath Keepers and Proud Boys as “unconscionable hate groups” but said there are “very few courses of action that can be taken” if investigators do not gather evidence of wrongdoing by the officers.
During the 2023 campaign for mayor, Johnson vowed to fire officers tied to far-right extremist groups. Johnson said in May that he stands by that promise but said officers can only be disciplined after an investigation that follows CPD rules.
It is unclear whether Johnson agrees with Witzburg that membership in extremist organizations like Oath Keepers and Proud Boys constitutes a violation of CPD policy that could lead to termination.
Contact Heather Cherone: @HeatherCherone | (773) 569-1863 | [email protected]
