Some Chicago police officers have had more than 100 complaints

• Share on Facebook
• Share on Twitter
• Share via Email
• Copy Link

  Link Copied

In looking at the records of Chicago police officers, the Chicago Tribune found that there were a small number of officers that had more than 100 complaints apiece, with only a very few of those complaints resulting in dismissal for the officers involved.

In addition to the few officers with over 100 complaints apiece, the Tribune found that 62 officers each had at least 70 complaints.

The city handed over thousands of pages of complaints and related data to the Tribune after a two-year fight to get the information. A police union fought against their release, claiming that many complaints were baseless and sometimes filed by criminals in retaliation against the officers.

However, since nearly half of the police officers identified in the information gathered have five or fewer complaints, the officers with 70 or 100 complaints stand out even as police departments around the country are receiving sharp criticism for how they discipline their officers.

“Most Chicago police officers don’t get more than five (complaints) in an entire career,” attorney Jon Loevy told the Tribune on Thursday. “If the Police Department is truly interested in identifying the problem officers, then the clusters of complaints seem to be the obvious place to look.”