Police Board calls charges against cop ‘unprovable,’ blasts CPD lawyer, Internal Affairs

In a decision sharply critical of a Chicago Police Department lawyer and the department’s Bureau of Internal Affairs, the Chicago Police Board dismissed “ultimately unprovable” disciplinary charges against an officer who was accused of making bogus calls to 911.

The board agreed to drop the charges against Officer Durand Lee last week, records show. In April, Supt. Eddie Johnson filed charges against Lee that accused him of making a false report and bringing discredit on the department.

Johnson said between February 2015 and April 2016 Lee made several bogus calls to 911 in which he said a security guard at his South Loop condo building was conducting “hand-to-hand” drug sales. Johnson recommended Lee be fired.

Dan Herbert, Lee’s attorney, said in a statement the department’s investigation began three years ago and ultimately proved to be “incomplete and incompetent.”

According to the board, the CPD believed the same person made all of the 911 calls from a phone in Chicago.

Last month, Herbert gave the police department’s attorney documents to support Lee’s claim he was out of the country on two of the dates that he allegedly called 911. Those records were not given to the CPD’s Bureau of Internal Affairs when they were investigating Lee.

A CPD lawyer acknowledged that Lee “did, in fact, inform BIA investigators that he was traveling abroad during the time that at least one of the 911 calls was made.”

“According to counsel for the Superintendent, the Respondent [Lee] promised to provide documentation to the BIA investigators to confirm his alibi but never did,” the board wrote. “It appears that rather than follow-up with the Respondent and/or undertaking other investigative steps to ascertain whether the Respondent was out of the country, BIA simply concluded that the Respondent was being untruthful and brought these charges against him.”

Also troubling, the board said, was the CPD lawyer’s desire to withdraw the charges against Lee without prejudice — meaning they could be re-filed in the future.

“When asked if the Superintendent may later seek to re-file these charges, counsel responded that they wanted to leave the possibility open in case they discovered new evidence to support the charges,” the board wrote.

“The Board finds that after a three-yearlong investigation and after suspending the Respondent without pay for more than five months while this case was pending before the Board, withdrawing the charges with the possibility of re-filing them at a later date would be fundamentally unfair to the Respondent.”

The board dismissed Lee’s charges with prejudice, preventing them from being refiled.

“Although the charges have been dismissed, my client has not been paid for the last several months,” Herbert said in a statement. “In addition, he was forced to purchase health insurance and had to pay my office for his legal fees. All of this should have been avoided had the Internal Affairs office did its job.”

Representatives for the CPD did not respond to a request for comment.