CRACK INTHE CODE
Whistleblower Shannon Spalding twice met with feds investigating Police Department 5
For nearly 10 years, Chicago Police officer Shannon Spalding has tried to get someone in power to listen to her explanation of how the CPD’s code of silence really works. Earlier this year, she got her chance.
Spalding bucked the “code” in 2007, when she went to the FBI to push for an investigation of rogue narcotics officer Ronald Watts. Even after the FBI’s “Operation Brass Tax” probe of Watts landed the sergeant in federal prison for shaking down drug dealers, Spalding claims her supervisors in CPD branded her a rat and blacklisted her. Spalding and her partner, Daniel Echeverria, filed a whistleblower lawsuit against the CPD and settled the case in May for $ 2 million, with the city admitting no wrongdoing.
But while she was waiting for her case to go to trial, Spalding met with federal agents again, this time to tell her story to Justice Department investigators in the midst of a sweeping investigation of civil rights abuses by the CPD. They may have been her most attentive audience yet: Spalding met with them twice, first for about three hours, and a second time for about seven hours.
“What they are looking to do now is take all of the incidents that have happened and use them as example to say, ‘ Look at what happened with me as a whistleblower, looked what happened with ‘ Brass Tax,’ ” Spalding said in a recent interview. “And then they come back and say, ‘ These are the rules that we need to put in place to prevent that from happening again.’ ”
That formula is consistent with reports the Justice Department has issued after investigations of more than 20 police departments, documents that usually assemble copious amounts of statistical data and flesh out the data with anecdotes and quotes from interview subjects. In many cases, those quotes come from anonymous police officers or community members, but if the DOJ uses Spalding’s remarks, they will be easy to spot.
In addition to her whistleblower case, Spalding also has told her story in extensive detail to activist journalist Jamie Kalven, who in October published a four- part series in “The Intercept” based on interviews with Spalding. Kalven was interviewed by the Justice Department, and then set up interviews with Spalding.
“Shannon’s case is a great one to look at because it touches on so many elements,” Kalven said. “You have the Watts case, and all that happened to her when she came forward.”
Spalding went to the FBI in 2007 after learning that Watts and his crew were stealing cash and drugs from dealers in the Ida B. Wells housing projects. Spalding and Echeverria eventually wound up working the case full time for the FBI, until superior officers found out what they were doing and outed them for working against a fellow cop. Other superior officers told them that they were no longer safe on the job because they were “rats.”
Police accountability — how a department investigates and punishes misconduct by officers — is a key feature of police civil rights investigations conducted by the DOJ since the late 1990s, and it appears to be an area of particular focus for the team now examining the CPD.
The Chicago investigation was launched just days after the city released video of Laquan McDonald’s shooting, a killing that stirred outrage not just because Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke pumped 16 shots into the teenager, but because the department had declared the shooting justified.
DOJ has requested piles of records from the CPD and the Independent Police Review Authority, the city agency that investigates police misconduct. Kalven said he and University of Chicago Law School Professor Craig Futterman both have been questioned by DOJ about their extensive research on how IPRA and its predecessor agencies handle cases.
IPRA spokesman Mia Sissac said staff at the agency have provided records to DOJ investigators and numerous interviews.
ACLU of Illinois attorneys, who were eager to talk about the findings of their investigation into CPD’s use of “stop- and- frisk” tactics, said the DOJ agents they met with earlier this year were not particularly interested.
“When we met with DOJ, they were specific in saying that they were not going to address stop and frisk issues, and focus solely on use of force,” ACLU of Illinois spokesman Ed Yohnka said. “They also indicated a focus
on the former IPRA structure and their operations.”
Spalding’s case also provides DOJ investigators with a rare paper trail: A halfdozen senior CPD officers, including division chiefs, gave sworn depositions in Spalding and Echeverria’s lawsuit, and the misdeeds of Watts and narcotics agents under his command were thoroughly investigated by the FBI.
While she went into exhaustive detail about the Watts case during her interview, Spalding said she was disappointed to hear that the DOJ wasn’t interested in bringing any new charges as part of their civil rights investigation.
“They said they are not looking into opening any investigations, they are not looking to go after any individuals or any punishment,” she said. “They are just looking . . . to look at these examples of what CPD needs to do to keep them from happening.”
Spalding’s version of events has been denied by the officers she named in her lawsuit, including that the deputy chief of narcotics called her a “rat” and that she and Echeverria were given dead- end job assignments and isolated from her peers in retribution for her betrayal.
In a December speech to the City Council, Mayor Rahm Emanuel made the first official affirmation of the existence of a code of silence — that there was a pattern of police officers remaining silent or actively covering for their fellow cops who commit misconduct. At a press conference announcing the settlement of Spalding’s whistleblower case, city attorneys said the $ 2 million payout did not mean there had been any cover- up in Spalding’s case.
But as Spalding tells it — repeating the account she gave to the DOJ — supervisors covered for Watts and his crew despite ample evidence that he was extorting money from drug dealers, offering them protection from arrest in exchange for cash and drugs. Spalding said the code of silence is not a collective reflex among cops who want to turn a blind eye to crooked peers, it’s enforced from the top ranks.
“A lot of people have this misconception that it’s officers. It doesn’t really work that way. It’s the supervisors,” Spalding said.
Police brass turn a blind eye to misconduct by their officers because it can hurt their own advancement, so to avoid career- wrecking scandals, top cops have an elaborate system of favors exchanged among highranking officers. Spalding, Echeverria and other lowlevel cops went to their superiors to report that Watts was crooked, but were told to drop it, she notes.
When something breaks bad for a cop, patrol officers on the scene just follow orders, including when a superior tells them to lie about or spin what they’ve seen, she said.
“If the evidence didn’t match the report, then the [ officer] would get in trouble, if their boss wasn’t in on it,” Spalding said. “The officers don’t know how to strategize at that level.” Email: agrimm@ suntimes. com Twitter: @ agrimm34
“THEY SAID THEY ARE NOT LOOKING INTO OPENING ANY INVESTIGATIONS, THEY ARE NOT LOOKING TO GO AFTER ANY INDIVIDUALS OR ANY PUNISHMENT. THEY ARE JUST LOOKING . . . TO LOOK AT THESE EXAMPLES OFWHAT CPD NEEDS TO DO TO KEEP THEM FROM HAPPENING.” SHANNON SPALDING, on DOJ interview