An investigation into explosive claims that Chicago cops engaged in sexual misconduct with migrants has been closed without finding any wrongdoing, the city’s police oversight agency announced Friday.
The Civilian Office of Police Accountability said investigators were unable to find any victims of sexual misconduct, an issue COPA Chief Administrator Andrea Kersten initially raised during an uncharacteristic news conference weeks after the probe was opened in July.
“There is not sufficient objective, verifiable information of sexual misconduct,” COPA said in a statement.
The probe stemmed from a text message circulated by police officials and other city workers claiming several officers had improper sexual contact with migrants, including one cop from the Ogden District in North Lawndale who was identified by name and accused of impregnating a teenager.
COPA began investigating on July 6, the same day that a police spokesperson confirmed the department was investigating the claims alongside the oversight agency.
The probe was launched when an employee of the city’s Office of Emergency Management and Communication relayed the allegations to a COPA director, according to COPA’s closing report. The OEMC employee ultimately shared a screenshot of the text message.
News of the investigation set off a firestorm, with Mayor Brandon Johnson saying his administration remained “intensely focused on the deeply troubling allegations.” Kersten said her agency followed the facts and conducted a thorough investigation, all while being “under a media glare.”
“This would’ve been one of many preliminary investigations that was concluded without anyone’s awareness but for the fact that the media found out about it the same evening that we did,” she said in an interview. “So it became a public issue.”
On July 10, COPA interviewed someone connected to the officer who was named in the text message, the closing report shows. Investigators questioned whether she was “the source” of the allegations, but she denied being aware of the complaint before COPA reached out to her.
That same day, a member of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability reported that a volunteer working with asylum-seekers “indicated that she was aware of an inappropriate relationship” between a female migrant and an officer assigned to the Town Hall District in Lake View, the report shows.
The volunteer noted that “pregnancy tests were needed for migrant women.”
Ultimately, though, the migrant told COPA “she had no knowledge of any teenagers or adult females being involved with any police officer or being inappropriately touched by police officers,” according to the report.
She had heard about relationships between migrants and volunteers, though.
City officials quickly rushed to relocate migrants who were living at the Ogden District, then moved others from the Town Hall District amid similar uncorroborated allegations. Last month, as the migrant housing crisis continued to strain resources, asylum-seekers were sent back to those stations.
COPA said its investigators conducted social media searches, canvassed shelters and reached out to a range of people, including new arrivals, police officers and social service providers — none of whom “had information identifying a victim or witnesses.”
John Catanzara, president of Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, remained critical of the investigation, which he has referred to as a “witch hunt.”
He didn’t respond to a request for comment Friday, but the FOP blamed COPA for leaking the allegations to the media without providing evidence.
“Unsubstantiated rumors spread via social media became ‘fact’ for [COPA] and our members were dragged through the mud with zero witnesses, zero complainants and absolutely zero evidence,” the union said on X, formerly Twitter.
The conflict between COPA and the FOP has been brewing for months.
On July 11, Kersten sent a letter to Catanzara claiming a “senior member” of the union had called COPA Deputy Chief Sharday Jackson a day earlier, inquiring about the status of the investigation and threatening to file a complaint against her with the Illinois Attorney Registration and Disciplinary Commission.
Kersten said Jackson “was merely seeking out potential witnesses and fact gathering,” insisting that the FOP member’s “behavior must cease immediately.”
“Such harassment and interference with a pending investigation is grossly inappropriate and is prohibited by City of Chicago rules,” she wrote.
Catanzara shot back in his own letter the following day, arguing that the FOP member didn’t threaten Jackson and merely sought to learn whether COPA was following its own rules and respecting the union’s collective bargaining agreement.
In turn, Catanzara said Kersten’s letter could be perceived as a threat that violates the union’s right to enforce its contract.
Catanzara expressed concerns that a COPA investigator had contacted an officer’s “soon-to-be former” wife “under the guise” of investigating another pending disciplinary case. During an interview, Catanzara wrote, the investigator started asking about the case involving migrants, questions that he said “had no relations to the stated purpose of the call.”
“It appears to the Lodge that if any COPA investigator can contact people at random and begin asking that person, ‘Do you think Officer X is capable of engaging in sexual misconduct towards a migrant,’ that line of questioning may be perceived as inappropriate,” Catanzara wrote.
Kersten slammed what she described as an “inappropriate attempt to interfere” in the investigation on behalf of the FOP.
“I hope they read the [closure] memo … and understand the extent to which we really meaningfully sought to try to find facts in this case and have no problem coming forward to the public and saying there aren’t any,” she said.
Weeks after the testy exchange between Kersten and Catanzara, Inspector General Deborah Witzburg was sent a letter that purportedly came from “several concerned COPA employees” raising alarms about the agency’s investigatory tactics in the case.
The July 27 letter accused Jackson and the supervising investigator, Kimberly Edstrom-Schiller, of telling staffers to document investigative steps in a document outside of the agency’s case management system “to streamline communications and ensure that only select information becomes part of the official record.”
Jackson, Edstrom-Schiller and other senior COPA officials also allegedly failed to properly memorialize “off the record conversations with witnesses” and others involved in the investigation, according to the letter. And Jackson and Edstrom-Schiller allegedly told staffers to take similar statements.
“All of these reported issues, which are likely systemic, are concerning and warrant investigation,” the letter states.
Kersten rebuffed those claims by saying she welcomes a review of the investigation.
“I think that the work speaks for itself,” she said.
