Andrea Kersten
Months after raising concerns about Chicago police officers’ conduct in the shooting death of Dexter Reed, Andrea Kersten, the head of the agency that investigates police misconduct, resigned under pressure just days after Mayor Brandon Johnson promised to clean up City Hall by firing “disloyal” department heads.
Kersten has been the chief administrator for the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) since 2022. Her resignation raises concerns about ensuring and maintaining police accountability in a department where eight officers have been allowed to remain on the police force despite their ties to the right-wing extremist group the Oath Keepers.
Among the COPA investi-gations was the shooting of Dexter Reed, killed by Chicago Police Department officers on March 24, 2024, during a traffic stop. Officers fired 96 shots in 41 seconds during the stop. Statements provided by officers at the scene were questioned and challenged by Kersten’s investigative agency, COPA. Her outspokenness appeared to not sit well with city officials.
WTTW, citing a source, reported that Mayor Johnson did not request Kersten’s resignation. However, Kersten has clashed with Police Superintendent Larry Snelling in the past, and Johnson has drawn criticism from the families of police officers who say he doesn’t support the police.
As head of COPA, Kersten gave the Black community a rare voice in cases involving police officers. As she prepares to leave COPA, she said that she is “incredibly proud of the transformative work that has been accomplished during my tenure.”
Kersten also said, “COPA has established itself as a truly independent and transparent voice in Chicago’s broader community safety system, which is imperative in building trust in police accountability.”
She was one of three Chicago department heads to resign on February 13, two days after Johnson, during a community meeting at New Covenant Missionary Baptist Church, promised to fire “disloyal” agency heads he inherited from previous administrations.
The meeting was part of Johnson’s “Faith in Government” initiative, which he launched less than two years into his term as mayor. Johnson seeks to improve his approval ratings.
Two other agency heads, Jamie Rhee, commissioner of the Department of Aviation, and Jose Tirado, executive director of the Office of Emergency Management and Communications, have also resigned.
Despite the clashes, Kersten said COPA made progress as an agency that investigates police misconduct.
“COPA has made significant operational advancements resulting in near total compliance with the Federal Consent Decree and a historically low investigative caseload. COPA has also established itself as a national leader in civilian oversight with respect to our transparency and community engagement efforts. These achievements leave COPA and its next leader well-positioned to continue this critical work going forward.”
The Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, CCPSA, which selected Snelling as police superintendent in 2023, has the power to select and fire the COPA chief.
In 2023, the CCPSA asked Inspector General Deborah Witzburg to probe “the quality and integrity” of the investigations into police misconduct by COPA, as well as “the quality and integrity of COPA’s disciplinary recommendations, and retaliation against COPA employees who raise concerns about COPA’s investigations and recommendations.”
CCPSA will conduct a nationwide search and, with the mayor’s input, nominate a candidate. The candidate must be confirmed by the Chicago City Council and the Public Safety Committee.
Snelling last year at a Chicago Police Board meeting said that COPA investigations compromised public safety. Snelling also accused Kersten of mistreating Chicago police officers and putting them at risk of suicide.
Snelling, without evidence, also accused Kersten of allowing her “personal opinions and speculation” to influence the finding that an officer had committed misconduct and should be disciplined.
Relations between Kersten and Snelling intensified when she publicly spoke out and raised questions about four police officers who shot and killed Dexter Reed during a traffic stop in March 2024. After shooting and wounding an officer, Reed was fatally shot 13 times.
Officers in signed reports told COPA investigators they stopped Reed because they believed he was not wearing his seat belt.
But Kersten raised serious questions about those reports.
“Specifically, COPA is uncertain how the officers could have seen this seat belt violation given their location relative to (Reed’s) vehicle and the dark tints on (his) vehicle windows,” Kersten wrote. “This evidence raises serious concerns about the validity of the traffic stop that led to the officers’ encounter with (Reed).”
A year before Reed’s death, COPA reportedly identified a troubling pattern of undocumented and aggressive stops on the city’s West Side but took no action.
Before Reed’s fatal shooting, the same five officers reportedly conducted 50 traffic stops on Chicago’s West Side. None of those 50 stops generated a single citation.
The shooting occurred in the Harrison District, which had the most significant number of traffic stops of all the city’s 22 police districts — more than 10 percent of all the stops in Chicago in 2023, according to a report by Impact for Equity, a reform organization.
Last year, the Chicago Crusader and other media outlets called on Mayor Johnson to fire eight police officers whose names were found to be on the roster of the Oath Keepers, a right-wing extremist group that was formed in 2016 to support President Donald Trump. Johnson during his campaign for mayor promised to fire any officer with ties to Oath Keepers and the Proud Boys, but he has not done so.
Snelling and Johnson have resisted calls to reopen an investigation into the police officers, which Witzburg believes was closed without sufficient examination. The officers remain on the force, and one officer, Robert Bakker, was placed back on the streets after being suspended for three months in 2022 for lying to investigators about his ties to the Proud Boys, another extremist group that attacked Black churches in Washington, D.C.
With this background and Kersten’s resignation as COPA chief, there is concern that police accountability under Johnson is taking a step backward, as Kersten was an outspoken leader against police misconduct.
COPA was formed after the 2014 Laquan McDonald scandal, where Officer Jason Van Dyke fatally shot the Black teenager 16 times.
COPA’s predecessor, the Independent Review Police Agency (IPRA), received over 30,000 complaints in five years. Still, fewer than 2 percent were sustained, according to a blistering 2017 U.S. Justice Department investigation that forced the Chicago Police Department to enter into a Consent Decree to implement reforms.
That investigation found that during IPRA investigations, officers are asked questions aimed at producing information favorable to the officer, and investigators do not confront officers with inconsistent physical evidence.
The U.S. Justice Department also said the city does not take sufficient steps to secure accurate and complete witness statements, including data that prevents officers from concealing misconduct.