Fear and Silence-How Culture, Policy, and the Win at All Costs Mentality Allows Police Testilying to Thrive, Jan. 2023

• Locations: United States of America -> Illinois • Topics: False Statements/Perjury

Download original document:
Brief thumbnail

Document text

This text is machine-read, and may contain errors. Check the original document to verify accuracy.

R
A
E
F
AND
E
C
N
E
L
I
S
HOW CULTURE, POLICY,
AND THE "WIN AT ALL COSTS"
MENTALITY ALLOWS POLICE
TESTILYING TO THRIVE

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers
January 2023

CHICAGO

APPLESEED
CENTER FOR FAIR COURTS

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts is a volunteer-led, collaborative 501(c)(3)
non-profit organization advocating for fair, accessible, and anti-racist courts in
Chicago, Cook County, and across the state of Illinois.

The Chicago Council of Lawyers is Chicago’s first public interest bar association,
working toward the fair and effective administration of justice for all people since 1969.

T
C
A
R
T
S
AB
Police who lie, perjure themselves in court,
and/or file false reports are pervasive
throughout the United States. Perjury
and false reporting prevents courts from
operating as designed and poses enormous
barriers to justice.
While the issue of police perjury – or “testilying” –
has been discussed as a broad phenomenon and in
relation to specific cases, there have been few
attempts to examine the issue within a single court
system. For this report, Chicago Appleseed Center
for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers
interviewed attorneys, researchers, journalists,
community organizers, and directly impacted
people to identify how false reports and police
perjury impact the Circuit Court of Cook County
and the people it serves. We have reviewed
secondary data in order to understand the

ACRONYMS
ASA

•

BIA

•

BWC

•

Assistant State's Attorney
Bureau of Internal Affairs
Body-Warn Cameras

scope and impact of police perjury and false
reporting on Cook County community members,
while paying particular attention to issues relating
directly to the Chicago Police Department.
Through this research, we have identified several
themes that indicate that systemic factors allow
police to lie, submit false reports, and perjure
themselves. We have also identified the roles of
court actors – including law enforcement,
prosecutors, and judges – in allowing or encouraging
false reporting to exist and go unaddressed in the
Circuit Court of Cook County. Based on our findings,
we provide nine recommendations to limit
opportunities and enforce consequences for lying,
better monitor officers in the field, improve
transparency, and create long-term cultural change
in attempt to limit the police perjury and false
reporting that harms communities.

CPCA
• Coalition for Police Contracts Accountability
CPD

•

CPDP
• Citizen's Police Data Project
IPRA

• Independent Police Review Authority

CCSAO
• Cook County State's Attorney's Office

FBI

CIU

FOIA

•

Conviction Integrity Unit

COPA
• Civilian Office of Police Accountability

Chicago Police Department

•
•

OIG

•

Federal Bureau of Investigation
Freedom of Information Act
Office of the Inspector General

S
T
N
E
T
N
O
C
F
O
E
L
B
TA
N
O
I
T
C
U
D
O
R
INT
D
N
U
O
R
G
K
C
BA

• DEFINING
@rn[?□~□ ~® POLICE
[f)@[L□~rn PERJURY
[f)rn~M~v &
~ FALSE
[?&JL&rn REPORTS
~[f)@~u&
1JD&u@~V
• HISTORY
- POLICE PERJURY & FALSE REPORTS IN CHICAGO

CURRENT POLICIES: CHICAGO, COOK COUNTY, ILLINOIS

Y
G
O
L
O
D
O
H
T
ME
• DATA
@~1~~@~Jl:n©J@~
~~
V&,,&
COLLECTION &
ANALYSIS
• ETHICAL
[Ju[r{J~ ~@lkJ&l@~~~~@~&
CONSIDERATIONS

N
O
I
S
S
U
C
S
I
D
FINDINGS &

i11
2
~
2
3
4

7
7
8

FINDING 1. "COLLECTIVE CULTURE" IN THE COURTS

- THE TEAMMATE EFFECT
- INCENTIVE STRUCTURES
- WHY BOTHER?

10
12
15

FIGURE 1: ACCOUNTABILITY (COPA) CIVILIAN OFFICE OF POLICE FINDINGS IN 2021

FINDING 2. THE "CODE OF SILENCE"

-B
BROTHERHOOD
ROTHERHOOD OVER TRUTH
- CONSEQUENCES FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS
- INSTITUTIONAL PRESSURES TO UPHOLD PRETRIAL LYING

18
19
21

FINDING 3. BODY-WARN CAMERAS AS A TOOL
- A TOOL TO EXPOSE LYING
- MANIPULATION & LOW-QUALITY FOOTAGE

24
25

FINDING 4. UNDERUTILIZATION OF "DO NOT CALL LISTS"
- EXTREME UNDERUTILIZATION
- FLAWS & NONUNIFORMITY

26
26
27

FINDING 5. POLICE VS. COMMUNITY CONSEQUENCES
- IMPACT ON INDIVIDUALS
- IMPACT ON COMMUNITIES

28
28
29

FIGURE 2: ALL EXONERATIONS BY STATE OR TERRITORY SINCE 1989

FIGURE 3: CHICAGO POLICE SETTLEMENTS BY CATEGORY

S
N
O
I
T
A
D
N
E
M
RECOM
• LIMIT
r r]§'C,,J @[¥)~@~
u~~l,.Jn •
••i@~ LYING.
n ~~®Q
OPPORTUNITIES
FOR
~
1

•

~ ROTATIONS
~@L1&L1D@~~ @[?
-□ ~~~(lJJlfD~\WIJLI[}{]
SCRUTINY WITH '&Y!~LI~
WARRANTS &
OF JJlliJ[Q)@Jrn~
JUDGES
~f" ..,.,,.,~ J0\@[K!]
,, "'@'°<' f\J'® IN
IN''.,,,
ID)
BETTER
MONITORING
THE FIELD.
II

·'"'

-□ ~~®rn
CHANGE BWC
~\W~ &
~ EVIDENCE
~@rn~~rn REVIEW
~~ POLICIES
[¥)©)[L□~orn~

31
32

• ENFORCE
If'~" i@r6<~~, ~@lfu~
·;@QJT ,~~:·;~ FOR
·;@1~ LYING.
wri~@o
CONSEQUENCES

• IMPROVE
rrf\JL8>~@' "'·' TRANSPARENCY.
·'Nl©'70
~~@L1~@[L
-□ LI~~~~~~
TRANSPARENCY \WIJLI[}{]
WITH ~~&@o~
CCSAO'S PROTOCOL

______..........,__
• PROMOTE
~~@/ 011@'" ., • LONG-TERM
@Nl@,
•~lR/ ~QJJ:
mJ®l
Ho
CULTURAL CHANGE.

~lli]~[LD~ "DO
OO[Q)@ NOT
~@LI ~[L
[LD~LI~ &
~ @D®
-□ PUBLIC
CALL"00 LISTS
OIG @~~~□®[}{]LI
OVERSIGHT
c..J~~~~

c. "

c. .JQJJ~ /\

11 11

-□ LI~~□~®
TRAINING &
~ INVESTIGATING
D~~LID®&LID~® PERJURY
~rn[R1DlliJ~W

____ 35
--------------~®
36

---------~-~~~~~--============= 37
H
C
R
A
E
S
E
R
E
R
FUTU
CONCLUSION

N
O
I
T
C
U
INTROD
Police officers are present at crime scenes and
investigations when attorneys, judges, and juries
are not. As a result, the public must rely on
officers’ stories when arbitrating questions of
guilt and innocence in court. The ability to
accurately recount events that occur outside
courtrooms is essential to ensuring fair
outcomes for individuals, families, and
communities affected by injustice, and police
officers are widely seen as credible informants on
these events. But what happens when police lie?
Police perjury and false testimony create cycles
of injustice that make court outcomes unfair for
individuals (accused people, victims of harm, and
their families), make the legal system inaccessible
for communities, and reverberate consequences
to society at large. The frequency of police perjury
is almost impossible to measure because officers
are rarely caught or disciplined. According to the
Pulitzer Center, from 2000 to 2020, most cops in
Illinois “kept their badges even if they engaged
in domestic abuse, sexual harassment, racism,
perjury, most misdemeanors, and other offenses
unbecoming of a police officer,” with
decertifications of only 347 officers in that time
(an average of fewer than 17 per year). 1
When police officers are caught perjuring
themselves or lying in investigations, the

whistleblower is regularly punished both socially
and formally. This past July, for example, former
Chicago Police Department (CPD) detective and
plaintiff in the 2017 lawsuit Svec v. City of Chicago,
Beth Svec, was awarded $4.3 million in damages
because the City of Chicago violated the Illinois
Whistleblower Act at her expense.2 Svec was a CPD
detective who was responsible for investigating
gun cases on the South Side. In 2016, Svec was
assigned to investigate a case wherein two
officers, Brandon Ternand and Robert Caulfield,
arrested two men, one for unlawful gun possession
and the other for assaulting an officer. In
investigating the incident, Svec found evidence
that the police officers were lying in their reports.
Based on the evidence – which included matching
stories from the two arrested men, eyewitness
accounts, and video from both an eyewitness and
an arrested person’s phone – Svec determined that
the two officers had lied. In fact, the gun at the
scene was not illegal and was registered to a third
person who lived at the residence; neither officer
was assaulted at the scene, contrary to their
testimony, and officer Ternand actually “slapped
an iPad out of one of the arrestee’s hands, causing
it to smash on the porch floor.” 3
Upon confrontation, the two officers accused of
lying elevated the issue to their supervisors,
including Sergeant Dawn Love and Lieutenant
Adnardo Gutierrez. Within days of Svec reporting

Cox, K. & Freivogel, W. (2021). “Records Show Illinois Fails to Hold Police Accountable for Misconduct” for The Pulitzer Center, available at
https://pulitzercenter.org/stories/records-show-illinois-fails-hold-police-accountable-misconduct

Norkol, M. (2022). “Jury Awards CPD Whistleblower More Than $4 Million In Suit Against City” for Chicago Sun Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com/cityhall/2022/7/23/23275529/chicago-police-whisteblower-lawsuit-svec-4-million-award

See Circuit Court of Cook County Case Number 2020L010535, Beth Svec v. City of Chicago (2022). See also Crowley, K. (2022). “Jury Decides in Favor of
Whistleblower in Lawsuit Against Chicago Police Department” for Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-whistleblowercase-verdict-20220722-2pqvlg6tfjhjpdw2pgkglj7ggu-story.html

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

her findings, she was transferred and informed
that she could no longer investigate cases of
unlawful gun possession. According to the lawsuit,
Svec “lost wages and other benefits, has suffered
severe emotional distress, embarrassment and
humiliation, and her career and reputation have
been damaged." 4

Svec, but they chose not to. This systemic failure
to hold CPD officers accountable cost Svec her
career and, ultimately, cost the City of Chicago
millions of dollars. Svec’s case demonstrates
that police lying can be stopped; however,
the consequences that whistleblowers face for
bringing the truth to light may hardly feel worth it.

Svec contacted the Cook County State’s Attorney’s
Office’s (CCSAO) felony review unit to inform them
of the results of her investigation and, thanks to
her efforts, the State’s Attorney declined to
prosecute the two accused men. The Cook County
State’s Attorney’s Office then contacted the CPD
Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA), which started its
own investigation. After hearing of her
cooperation in the investigation, her commanding
officer, Lieutenant Wodnicki, “became angry and
ordered Svec to stop.” She was later transferred
to the midnight shift (much more difficult hours
usually reserved for new detectives). 5 Multiple
actors—from police lieutenants to the CCSAO—
were involved in this case and could have
intervened to prevent this retaliation against

This report examines personal narratives
and hard data to understand how and when
opportunities for police to misstate the
truth or outright lie arise; what
perpetuates these opportunities; and
what can be done by institutions and the
community to reduce the court’s reliance
on inaccurate testimony.
The discussion of topics in this report
covers issues in Cook County and
throughout the state of Illinois, but
primarily focuses on policing in Chicago.

D
N
U
O
R
G
BACK
DEFINING
POLICE PERJURY
& FALSE REPORTS

In this report, “police perjury” and “false reports”
are conceptualized together as a systemic issue
that occurs during every step of policing.

Both perjury and false reporting occur
when police officers deliberately choose to
misrepresent facts that are known to them,
perpetuate lies 6 that are told by their
colleagues, or fail to tell the whole truth when
under oath. The surreptitious nature of police
perjury and false reports makes it difficult to
estimate the frequency with which it occurs. 7
By most accounts, however, it is a common

Id.
Supra note 3.
6 Orfield, M. (1992). Deterrence, Perjury, and the Heater Factor: An Exclusionary Rule in the Chicago Criminal Courts. University of Colorado Law Review 63(75).
7 Sevilla, C. (1974). The Exclusionary Rule and Police Perjury. San Diego Law Review 839.
5

occurrence throughout the United States.8 One
survey of prosecutors, defense attorneys, and
judges from 1992 found that, on average, “perjury
occurs 20% of the time, with defense attorneys
estimating it occurs 53% of the time in
connection with Fourth Amendment issues.” 9
Another survey (from 1986) found that 57% of 277
attorneys “believe police perjury takes place very
10
often or often.” Police perjury and false reports
are so sufficiently widespread and embedded in
our justice system that one legal scholar, Julia
11
Simon-Kerr, has described the issue as “systemic
lying,” as it (1) involves the cooperation of multiple
actors within the system; (2) is done repeatedly
and for a reason that is linked to the participants’
conception of justice; and (3) is accepted within
the system to the degree that it has become an
open secret.
Perjury is a subset of false reports, narrowly
defined as deliberately giving false testimony in
a court proceeding. According to the Office of
Justice Programs, the official federal definition
of perjury includes that “the declarant took an
oath to testify truthfully” and “willfully made a
false statement contrary to that oath,” that “the
declarant believed the statement to be untrue,”

and “that the statement related to a material
12
fact.” False reports, however, do not only occur
during trial; an officer can make a false report at
any stage in policing and criminal legal processes
by recording untruths or failing to report events
that affect legal processes. For example, officers
may write reports that misstate material facts, fail
to disclose important occurrences, corroborate
other officers’ stories which they did not witness,
and invent facts on the stand.

HISTORY

Historic studies on police perjury 13 demonstrate
that today’s police perjury problem is part of a
historic pattern.14 Myron Orfield’s 1987 study of
Chicago police and the Mollen Commission’s 1994
15
report regarding New York City are two of the
most famous studies on police perjury. Orfield’s
study found that 76% of participating officers felt
that “police do ‘shade the facts a little (or a lot) to
establish probable cause when there may not have
been probable cause in fact.’” 16 The Mollen
Commission report found that police perjury
was common and especially associated with
drug-related cases. Officers perjured themselves
often during suppression hearings to fabricate

Slobogin, C. (1996). Testilying: Police Perjury and What To Do About It. University of Colorado Law Review 67, 1037. Accessible at
https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/279/

Supra note 6.

Kittel, N. (1986). Police Perjury: Criminal Defense Attorneys' Perspective. American Journal of Criminal Justice 11. Accessible at
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/BF02889818

Simon-Kerr, J. (2014). Systemic Lying. William & Mary Law Review 56, 2175.

Kehoe, T. (1980). Perjury. American Criminal Law Review 18(2), 263-273. Accessible at https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtuallibrary/abstracts/perjury#:~:text=The%20elements%20of%20perjury%20are,related%20to%20a%20material%20fact

The Knapp Commission Report on Police Corruption (1973) by the New York City Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption, accessible
at https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/knapp-commission-report-police-corruption

Report of the Independent Commission on the Los Angeles Police Department (1991) accessible at https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtuallibrary/abstracts/report-independent-commission-los-angeles-police-department-0

Mollen Commission Report (1994) by The City of New York Commission to Investigate Allegations of Police Corruption and the Anti-Corruption
Procedures of the Police Department, accessible at https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/report-independent-commission-los-angelespolice-department-0

Supra note 6.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

probable cause,17 both by falsifying documents and
perjuring themselves during suppression hearings,
creating a “tangled web” that concealed wrongdoing.
Several Supreme Court rulings have established
practices related to police perjury and evidence.
Most notably, Supreme Court case Brady v.
Maryland (1963) requires that the prosecution turn
over exculpatory evidence (i.e., evidence that is
favorable to the defendant). A common key piece
of exculpatory evidence can be the fact that a
police officer who is a witness in a case has a
history of lying in other cases. Other Supreme
Court cases helped codify this responsibility,
including United States v. Giglio (1972), United
States v. Bagley (1985), Kyles v. Whitney (1995), and
Strickler v. Greene (1999). These cases established
that “the government has a constitutionally
mandated, affirmative duty to disclose
exculpatory evidence to the defendant to help
ensure the defendant’s right to a fair trial under
the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments.” 18 Out
of these rulings came the terms “Brady material”
and “Giglio material,” meaning exculpatory
evidence or evidence related to the defendant.
Likewise, the term “Brady lists” refers to a list held
by prosecutors with the names of police officers
who have engaged in misconduct - often
specifically lying - in their jurisdiction. Despite the
importance of Brady lists in ensuring that police
officers that have lied in the past are not relied

upon for testimony, these lists are underutilized.
In 2019, USA Today 19 conducted a survey of
prosecutors’ offices around the country regarding
their Brady list policies. Of 443 prosecutors’ offices
surveyed nationwide, 316 (71.3%) said they do not
keep a Brady list, 27 denied comment, 48 reported
no disclosable officers, and 52 provided their list.
The advent of police body-worn cameras and
dashboard cameras, as well as widespread use
of smartphones, has made exposure of police
perjury and general misconduct more common than
ever.20 While this technology has led to justice for
some people abused by police, it falls short of
rooting out the systemic nature of police perjury.

POLICE PERJURY &
FALSE REPORTS IN CHICAGO
While false reports from police in Chicago are
considered commonplace, many people believe
that the vast majority of police misconduct in
Chicago is never reported due to the distrust of the
system. A 1992 survey of judges, public defenders,
and State’s Attorneys in Chicago found that 55% of
respondents felt that police officers “fabricate
additional or different facts to create sufficient
probable cause” at suppression hearings at least
“some of the time.” 21 In addition, the Invisible
Institute’s “Citizen’s Police Data Project” (CPDP)
found that in Chicago between 1988 and 2018,

Supra note 15.

Hooper, L., Marsh, J., & Yeh, B. (2004). “Treatment of Brady v. Maryland Material in United States District and State Courts’ Rules, Orders, and Policies” in
the Report to the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules of the Judicial Conference of the United States for the Federal Judicial Center, accessible at
https://www.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/bradymat_1.pdf

Reilly, S. & Nichols, M. (2019). “Hundreds of Police Officers Have Been Labeled Liars. Some Still Help Send People to Prison” for USA Today:
https://www.usatoday.com/in-depth/news/investigations/2019/10/14/brady-lists-police-officers-dishonest-corrupt-still-testify-investigationdatabase/2233386001/

Nunes, I. (2015). Hands Up, Don't Shoot: Police Misconduct and the Need for Body Cameras. Florida Law Review 67, 1811.

Supra note 6 at Appendix Q46.

there have been 247,161 citizen allegations of
police misconduct and only 7% of the officers
22
have been disciplined. Furthermore, there were
7,119 complaints related to writing of police
reports; 961 were sustained (13.5%) and 732 were
disciplined (10.3%).23
The most notorious example of police perjury in
recent years is the police murder of teenager
Laquan McDonald. Former CPD officer Jason Van
Dyke shot the Black 17-year-old boy sixteen times
after initially claiming McDonald “had lunged at
officers with a knife when they opened fire.” 24
Fellow Chicago police officers Joseph Walsh,
Thomas Gaffney, and detective David March filed
false reports in support of Van Dyke’s version of
events. 25 However, over a year later, the dashboard
camera video was released by the City of Chicago
under a court order and proved that McDonald was
walking away from the police when he was shot
and killed—not lunging at them as the officers
stated. 26 Officer Jason Van Dyke was subsequently
charged with first degree murder, 27 found guilty
of second-degree murder and 16 counts of
aggravated battery, and was sentenced to

roughly seven years in prison (of which he served
about half of his term).28 However, the three police
officers accused of covering-up Van Dyke's
shooting of McDonald with false reports were
acquitted.29 Not only were they found not guilty,
but the judge “offered a staunch hourlong defense
of the Police Department’s actions that night.” 30
The murder of Laquan McDonald reignited
Chicagoans' outrage about issues of police
misconduct and lying.

CURRENT POLICIES
IN CHICAGO,
COOK COUNTY,
AND ILLINOIS

Generally, most police departments have explicit
rules that govern the conduct of their officers.
The Chicago Police Department explicitly prohibits
officers from “[m]aking a false report, written or
oral” in Rule 14 of their Rules of Conduct.31 More
broadly, the Rules of Conduct prohibit CPD officers
from “violat[ing] of any law or ordinance” (such as
perjuring themselves in court) and prohibit “any

Citizen’s Police Data Project, Invisible Institute: https://cpdp.co/

Id.

Levine, S. (2015). “Chicago Police Really Didn’t Want to Release Video of a Cop Shooting Laquan McDonald 16 Times” for HuffPost:
https://www.huffpost.com/entry/chicago-laquan-mcdonald-video_n_565603e0e4b079b2818a06f6

Lockhart, P. (2019). “Did Chicago Police Cover Up the Laquan McDonald Shooting? A Judge is About to Decide.” for Vox:
https://www.vox.com/2019/1/17/18184158/chicago-police-conspiracy-trial-verdict-mcdonald-van-dyke

Supra note 24.

Sawney, A. (2015). “Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke Charged with 1st Degree Murder in Laquan McDonald Shooting” for ABC 7 San Francisco:
https://abc7news.com/jason-van-dyke-vandyke-chicago-cop-charged-laquan-mcdonald/1098446/

According to an analysis of court data by Injustice Watch, the sentence given to Jason Van Dyke was “unusually light for the judge and more lenient
than the average sentences that other Cook County judges have given for second-degree murder.” The average sentence given by this judge for this
conviction was 14 years and three months, around twice what was given to Van Dyke. See Dukmasova, M. (2022). “Data Highlights Leniency of Ex-Officer
Jason Van Dyke’s Murder Sentence” for Injustice Watch: https://www.injusticewatch.org/news/2022/jason-van-dyke-murder-sentence-laquanmcdonald-case/

Crepeau, M., Gutowski, C., Meisner, J. & St. Clair, S. (2019). “Rulings In Laquan McDonald Cases Leave Police Reformers Questioning If Progress Has Been
Made” for Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-laquan-mcdonald-jason-van-dyke-legacy-20190118-story.html

Id.

Rules and Regulations of the Chicago Police Department. (2015). "Rules of Conduct" (Article V), Rule 14. Accessible at
http://directives.chicagopolice.org/#directive/public/6412

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

action or conduct which…brings discredit upon
the Department” (such as lying or making a false
report, for example).
The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office
has a long history of failing to hold officers
accountable for perjury and false reporting.
The previous Cook County State’s Attorney, Anita
Alvarez (in office from 2008 to 2016), for instance,
came under nationwide scrutiny in 2015 for failing
to prosecute a CPD officer who admitted lying
under oath:
On July 24, 2012, Chicago Police Officer
Allyson Bogdalek broke down and cried as
she admitted to prosecutors the obvious:
She had lied under oath in the case of a man
accused of robbing a Back of the Yards liquor
store and shooting the owner in the leg...
Prosecutors opened an investigation, and
recommend[ed] indicting Bogdalek for
perjury and other felonies…In February 2014,
however, the process came to a screeching
halt: State's Attorney Anita Alvarez overruled
her subordinates and instructed them that
no charges would be filed.32
Despite the new administration of Cook County
State’s Attorney Kim Foxx (who took office in 2017),
the CCSAO has remained noncompliant with the
nationwide standard for a public-facing Brady list
or the Brady doctrine.33 Instead of maintaining a

public list, emails dated from 2009 to 2017 34 show
that Cook County prosecutors are advised by email
from their superiors of police officers that should
not be permitted to testify. It is unknown if the
practice has changed with the new administration
because, despite numerous requests for
information, we were unable to obtain the Cook
County State’s Attorney’s policies related to Brady
material or police false reports.
The Cook County State’s Attorney does have a
Conviction Integrity Unit (CIU) that was set up
under Anita Alvarez in 2012.35 While the CIU works
to overturn convictions that may have relied on
police false statements as evidence, the CIU does
not work to prevent police perjury or false
statements from happening in the first place.
Recently, there have been some statewide
interventions to improve oversight of the police
and improve jurisdictions’ ability to hold officers
accountable for misconduct. The Safety,
Accountability, Fairness, and Equity - Today
(SAFE-T) Act, 36 which became law in 2021, includes
several provisions that affect policing in the
state—including a decertification process for
cops. In Illinois, officers must be certified by the
Law Enforcement Training and Standards Board;
the SAFE-T Act includes language that expands
eligibility for decertification to include excessive
force, perjury, video tampering, and “unprofessional,
unethical, deceptive, or deleterious”

Denvir, D. (2015). “Disturbing New Twist in Chicago’s Police Crisis: Embattled State’s Attorney Refused to Prosecute Cop Who Admitted to Perjury” for
Salon: https://www.salon.com/2015/12/15/disturbing_new_twist_in_chicagos_police_crisis_embattled_states_attorney_refused_to_prosecute_cops_
who_admitted_to_perjury_obstruction_of_justice/

“Brady List” from the Cook County State Attorney’s Brady List & Giglio List, accessible at https://giglio-bradylist.com/index.php/illinois/cook-countystate-attorney

Kelley, J. (n.d.). “Cook County Prosecutor Brady Memos” for USA Today: https://www.usatoday.com/documents/6470127-Cook-County-prosecutor-BradyMemos/

Hussain, R. (2012). “Prosecutor Alvarez Creates Team to Probe Wrong Conviction Claims” for Chicago Sun-Times:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2012/2/6/18532567/prosecutor-alvarez-creates-team-to-probe-wrongful-conviction-claims?_amp=true

See Illinois Public Act 101-0652 at https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/publicacts/101/PDF/101-0652.pdf

conduct.37 Before the SAFE-T Act, the Law
Enforcement Training and Standards Board could
only decertify a police officer convicted of a felony
or of certain misdemeanors (e.g., sexual
misconduct, theft, gambling, sex work, or drugs).
Now, the Board can file its own charges for
decertification if it concludes the officer engaged
in behavior "that would

constitute a felony or misdemeanor which could
serve as basis for automatic decertification."
These cases are overseen by an administrative
law judge who makes a recommendation to a
Certification Review Panel (created by the SAFE-T
Act solely to decide decertification cases).38

Y
G
O
L
O
D
METHO
DATA COLLECTION

This research utilizes primary and secondary
data to inform a holistic picture of the scope of
police perjury and false reporting from the
perspective of court actors and impacted
community members. Our primary data includes
14 semi-structured interviews with attorneys,
researchers, journalists, community organizers,
and personally-impacted people who work in and
outside of the criminal legal system to varying
degrees. Interview questions were developed after
careful consideration of the existing academic
literature on police perjury and false reporting,
public information on instances of police
misconduct, and subsequent disciplinary records.
The individuals interviewed herein are primarily
affiliated with the few organizations in Chicago
that have had some involvement with cases
involving police perjury in Cook County. To compile
37
38
39
40
41

the initial list, we first relied on institutional
knowledge of Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair
Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers of
community organizations in the area. To ensure we
captured all of the relevant community partners,
we utilized snowball sampling – a process through
which we asked each respondent who else they
would consider knowledgeable or able to speak to
police perjury and/or misconduct in Cook County.
We then contacted every organization referred to
us.39 We interviewed these connections until we
reached data saturation 40 and were no longer
being referred to new organizations.41 In total,
we contacted 17 organizations; two individuals
declined to be interviewed because they felt that
they were not able to speak about police perjury
at the time, and nine organizations did not
respond after repeated contact attempts. In total,
we interviewed 14 individuals from 13 law firms,
Cook County offices, community organizations,
and research institutions who had interacted
with police perjury or false reporting in some way,

Strecklow, S. (2021). “Illinois’ Criminal Justice Overhaul Makes it Easier to Decertify Bad Cops. But it Could Be Harder for the Public to Learn About
Them.” for Injustice Watch: https://www.injusticewatch.org/news/2021/illinois-criminal-justice-overhaul-decertify-bad-cops-transparency/
Id.
Small, M. (2009). ‘How Many Cases Do I Need?' On Science and the Logic of Case Selection in Field-Based Research. Ethnography, 10(1), 5-38. Accessible
at https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1466138108099586
O’Reilly, M. & Parker, N. (2013). ‘Unsatisfactory Saturation’: A Critical Exploration of the Notion of Saturated Sample Sizes in Qualitative Research.
Qualitative Research, 13(2), 190-197.
Green, J. & Thorogood, N. (2006). Qualitative Methods for Health Research. Forum: Qualitative Social Research 7(2).

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

and had enough interaction to speak about it in
detail. The interviews were intentionally semistructured in nature to allow for comparison between
interviews, yet flexible enough to allow for new ideas
and themes to emerge based on the individuals’
unique experiences.
Some secondary data was collected from the
Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA),
Invisible Institute’s Citizens Police Data Project,
the Chicago Reporter’s Settlement Database,
and the National Registry of Exonerations.
These data show relevant records of police
misconduct, perjury, and testimony between 1989
and the present. We were specifically interested
in identifying cases that occurred in Chicago and
Cook County to contextualize qualitative
interviews with documentation of police perjury,
subsequent disciplinary action, and its impact on
cases heard in Cook County.

DATA ANALYSIS

Interviews were transcribed and coded according
to theme and question. Qualitative data analysis
involved comparing coded interviews thematically,
drawing conclusions from responses, and
contextualizing qualitative data with quantitative
evidence. We conducted two rounds of coding
using the flexible coding method, a method of
analysis well-suited to this study, in which we
entered with questions informed by the existing
literature and our prior knowledge about false
reporting, perjury, and policing at large. Our
first round of coding established a series of index
codes, drawing on the interview protocol to divide
the interviews into easily manageable sections
and allow for a first reading of the transcripts.
42

The purpose of index coding is to use broad
codes that establish an “anchor” to the interview
protocol, and to provide an opportunity to explore
initial themes and findings. During this phase,
researchers did not code transcripts of interviews
which they had conducted themselves or had been
otherwise involved in, allowing for a fresh
perspective on each set of responses. We then
collectively generated a series of analytic codes,
identifying emergent findings and themes wellsuited for further analysis. The purpose of this
phase was to identify specific themes or concepts
that offered responses to the stated research
questions. Within each index code, we reviewed
interviewee responses through the specific lens of
the research question, then re-categorized these
notes into a series of analytic codes (for instance,
“collective culture” to describe the culture that
often prevents cops from facing consequences
for lying). Throughout the interview process, we
maintained observational and impressionistic
notes to contribute to an audit trail and returned
to these documents during the analytic phase to
assess the validity of our codes. Through this
second round of coding and discussion of these
themes, we identified the findings that follow.

ETHICAL
CONSIDERATIONS

This research was carried out according to social
science research principles, as guided by the
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts' research
standards.42 Across all research projects, our
methodological approach is rooted in the protection
of human subjects, mitigation of risk, and reduction
of any harm the study may cause participants
during or following the research process. Consent

“Guiding Principles for Ethical, Rigorous Research” (October 2021), Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts: www.chicagoappleseed.org/wpcontent/uploads/2021/10/2021-Research-Standards-Framework-2.pdf

was given by all community organizations and
individuals to utilize interview data in the
development for this report and the option for
anonymity was given to each participant. Due to
the relatively small number of organizations
working on police accountability work in Chicago,
Cook County, and Illinois, we have anonymized all
organizational names, individual participants’
names, and identity markers such as gender. Due
to COVID-19 restrictions, all interviews were
conducted virtually via video conference call or
over the phone. This may have caused limitations
in our ability to communicate clearly with
participants or gather non-verbal cues; however,
we mitigated this concern by asking follow-up
questions where miscommunications could have
occurred and by including multiple team members
to check the clarity and quality of each transcript.
Multiple staff members from Chicago Appleseed and
the Council attended these interviews in an effort
to ensure we captured respondents' experiences
as clearly and objectively as possible.

The main limitations of this report include missing
perspectives and limited data availability. While
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the
Chicago Council of Lawyers attempted to contact
current Cook County State’s Attorneys, we were
unable to interview said individuals. These missing
perspectives are a significant limitation of this
report. Similarly, we requested data from COPA
and the Cook County State’s Attorney's Office that
they chose not to provide. We contacted COPA
directly in hopes they would provide data related
to Rule 14 violations and examples of police
reports, but they did not respond to our request.
Chicago Appleseed and the Council also submitted
a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request to the
Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office asking for all
policies related to police perjury and Brady lists,
which went unanswered as of the publication of
this report. These missing data sources are
significant limitations of this report.

N
O
I
S
S
U
C
S
I
D
&
S
FINDING
The findings we discuss in this section are derived,
primarily, from the interviews we conducted with
court actors, community organizations, and people
impacted by police misconduct and lying. Our
research, including interview data, uncovered
five main themes specific to the issue of police
perjury and false reporting in Cook County and
specifically with respect to the Chicago Police
Department, which include:
(1) A “collective culture” in the court system, which
fosters “a teammate effect” between the police
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

police and court actors – such as prosecutors
and judges – who, in theory, have the power to
hold police accountable.

(2) The law enforcement “code of silence,” which
is an endemic feature of the culture of policing
that encourages cops to lie to prevent scrutiny
and protect themselves and fellow officers and
is upheld by institutional practices.
(3) Increased use of body-worn cameras provide
a tool to better hold police accountable for their
actions but are not always properly utilized.

(4) The underutilization of both Brady lists and
“Do Not Call” lists by prosecutors and the lack
of public accountability and transparency with
respect to their use.

between the police and court actors –
such as prosecutors and judges – who,
in theory, have the power to hold police
accountable but few incentives to do so.

(5) The lack of consequences for police who lie,
file false reports, and perjure themselves in
court in comparison to the individuals and
communities who are impacted by these lies.

THE TEAMMATE EFFECT

Since police perjury is so under-reported and
difficult to measure, diverse sets of quantitative
data were likewise reviewed to triangulate the
extent of the problem in Cook County. We consider
interviewee experiences alongside scholarship to
discuss these themes.

FINDING 1.

POLICE EXERT CONTROL
OVER A "COLLECTIVE
CULTURE" IN THE COURTS
THAT PREVENT THEM FROM
FACING CONSEQUENCES
FOR LYING.
Every person we interviewed for this project
indicated “collective culture” as the strongest
enabling reason for police perjury and false
reporting in Chicago and throughout the Cook
County Circuit Court. Our interviews and reviews
of literature revealed how the culture cultivated
through interactions between police, prosecutors,
and judges allows for – and sometimes even
encourages – police to lie.

This “collective culture” in the court
system fosters “a teammate effect”

Interviewees suggest that this “culture of
tolerance” is rooted in State’s Attorneys’ and
judges’ perceived dependence on police for
success in their careers, which fosters a feeling
that they are all on the same “team.” Prosecutors,
especially, may feel they have the same motives
as police and see themselves as both part of
the greater law enforcement “team.” 43 One
interviewee aptly stated that “cops run the
courtrooms,” which perpetuates a collective
understanding that there will not be consequences
for officers who lie. State’s Attorneys are perhaps
the most important actor – with the most decisionmaking discretion – within the court system
behind the police themselves. As stated by Dr.
Samuel Walker, a criminologist from the University
of Nebraska Omaha: “Prosecutors work with police
day in, day out, and typically they’re reluctant to
criticize them or investigate them.” 44
Assistant State’s Attorneys (ASAs) have a
complicated and intertwined relationship with
police in which they rely on police resources
and goodwill to win cases. Some interviewees
described prosecutors as being “stuck” with the
police officers they have as witnesses:
I had a case once [where] the officer, like…
hated defense attorneys, hated me, [and]

Zeidman, S. (2019). From Dropsy to Testilying: Prosecutorial Apathy, Ennui, or Complicity. Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law 16(423), accessible at
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/223239994.pdf

“Ties That Bind: Conflicts of Interest in Police Killings” (2015) for The Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/dec/31/ties-that-bindconflicts-of-interest-police-killings

just made himself look [like] a fool.
And afterwards, I talked with the State’s
Attorney, I said, “why didn't you prep your
officer differently?” And he’s like, “I did.
It's just that I can't get these guys to do
this thing sometimes.” And they're stuck
with the witnesses they have.
Other interviewees stated that ASAs enable and
cover for perjurious police officers in order to win
their cases. A judge we interviewed recalled (what
they perceived as) an intimidation tactic by Cook
County State’s Attorneys who would bring cops
into the courtroom before the judge ruled on
motions dealing with non-credible testimony by
an officer, “as if to say, ‘go ahead, call them liars
to their faces.’” One scholar noted recorded
instances of prosecutors leaving case files
open on a table to give officers time to align
their narrative with the information in the file.45
This type of support for their “teammate” allows
police perjury to thrive. As one defense attorney
explained:
Judges…[coddle] them, turn a blind eye,
play dumb—act like things that are physically
impossible actually happen just because the
cop says so.
As another set of experts explained it, “police
misconduct needs prosecutors to enable it,” 46
as without their cooperation, perjured testimony
would not be presented in court and perjurers
would face prosecution. One interviewee went as
far as to say the State’s Attorneys and the police

officers “are true partners; they work hand in
hand.” One interviewee explained how cops and
prosecutors do not even need to know each other
personally to develop a sense of camaraderie:
[Officers] hang out in the jury room…and
they're back there with the [prosecutor] the
whole time, and they all know each other—
and if they don't know each other, they're
introduced by another police officer, and they
all vouch for each other. And it's a whole you
know, old boys’ club, even though there are
lots of women who are part of it now.
This collective culture often prevents
police from facing consequences for lying.
Interviewees stated that police cultivate a
“culture of fear,” which often manifests in
threats of violence. The “teammate effect” also
appears in who judges choose to believe and what
evidence they choose to include as relevant. Many
judges are wary of questioning the police 47 and
rarely intervene when an officer lies in court or
makes a false report—even when these lies are
blatant and on display. An experienced defense
attorney we interviewed claimed most judges and
State’s Attorneys find the stories of police officers
believable. They said if an officer says something
that contradicts something stated by a defendant,
the judge will often believe the police officer
unless the lie is blatant. According to one study,
“even when they have every reason to disbelieve
officers, judges routinely admit evidence that,
from a legal perspective, clearly should be
excluded.” 48

Trivedi, S. & Gonzalez Van Cleve, N. (2020). To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct. Boston
University Law Review 100, 895. Accessible at https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2020/05/05-TRIVEDI-VAN-CLEVE.pdf

Id.

Dripps, D. (1996). Police, Plus Perjury, Equals Polygraphy. Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology 693. Accessible at
https://scholarlycommons.law.northwestern.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=6875&context=jclc

Supra note 11.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

Like many prosecutors and police officers, judges
often side with police officers in court conflicts 49
and “are sometimes willing to bend the rules” to
avoid excluding probative evidence.50
Another interviewee discussed a “culture of
tolerance” of police perjury and false reporting
in Cook County. Often, no action is taken against
perjury because, as one interviewee explained,
lying is so ingrained in the culture of policing
that there are no avenues to address it—or that it
might do more harm than good to address police
perjury. Unfortunately, some court actors continue
to deny that police perjury occurs at all. In her
2016 book, Crook County: Racism and Injustice in
America's Largest Criminal Court, Nicole Gonzalez
51
Van Cleve interviewed Cook County public
defenders, judges, and prosecutors and found
that generally, most believed that police perjury
occurs. All twenty-four public defenders Gonzalez
Van Cleve interviewed and 74% (twenty of twentyseven) judges responded that perjury occurred;
only one judge said it does not occur in Cook
County and six did not directly respond to the
question. Of the Cook County State’s Attorneys,
though, only 44% (twelve of twenty-seven) said
police perjury “sometimes occurred,” eight said
that it did not, and seven did not directly respond.
One person we interviewed specifically highlighted
the practice of prosecutors working out of police

stationhouses, including examples where
tortured people complained to such prosecutors,
but were sent in for more torture by CPD officers
until they confessed.52 They highlighted the fact
that these prosecutors were very inexperienced
and likely would not feel like they were in a
position to speak out, explaining:
Those prosecutors...were generally
inexperienced and that was one of the first
places they’d get assigned to, where even if
they have some pang of conscience about
what they were doing, [they] certainly would
not feel like they were in a position to break
the code of silence. So they became the
cooperating witnesses for the detectives.
Deep-rooted connections between the Cook
County State’s Attorney’s Office, Cook County
Circuit Court judges, and law enforcement make it
extremely difficult to hold officers accountable for
their misconduct.

INCENTIVE STRUCTURES
Multiple interviewees mentioned that the current
incentive structures – especially in the Cook
County State’s Attorney’s Office - in some ways
favor perjury. Police perjury can lead to a
conviction, and in many prosecutor’s offices,

Chin, G. & Wells, S. (1998). The “Blue Wall of Silence” as Evidence of Bias and Motive to Lie: A New Approach to Police Perjury. University of Pittsburgh
Law Review 59. Accessible at https://philpapers.org/rec/CHITBW

Walkingshaw, P. (2013). Judicial Findings of Police Perjury: When Hearsay Presented as Character Evidence Might Not Be Such a Bad Thing. Columbia
Journal of Law & Social Problems, 47(1). Accessible at https://heinonline.org/HOL/LandingPage?handle=hein.journals/collsp47&div=4&id=&page=

Gonzalez Van Cleve, N. (2016). Crook County: Racism and Injustice in America's Largest Criminal Court. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press. ISBN 9780-80479-043-7.

Under Police Commander Jon Burge, the Chicago Police Department tortured at least 100 Black men to get them to confess for over two decades,
starting in 1972. Many of Burge’s victims spent decades in prison, where some of these people still remain. See e.g., https://chicagoreader.com/newspolitics/police-torture-in-chicago/ & https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/02/05/chicago-police-torture-archive-documents-decades-of-abuse-fromjon-burge-and-his-midnight-crew/

convictions lead to promotions53 and satisfactory
performance reviews.54 Several interviewees
mentioned that they believe Assistant State’s
Attorneys in Cook County are rewarded for
securing convictions, so it is personally
advantageous that the police narrative is
believed. Historically, the CCSAO has operated
with a “win at all costs'' mentality,55 where
prosecutors have been rewarded solely for
winning cases. Therefore, maintaining a
strong, non-combative relationship with police
officers is critical to prosecutors’ careers.56

In court, at the proffer reading of the adult who
was arrested at the scene of Toledo’s death, a
Cook County Assistant State’s Attorney incorrectly
stated that Adam Toledo was holding a gun at the
time that he was shot. Because the ASA read the
incorrect statement, which was provided by the
police, in court without first reviewing the video
evidence, the CCSAO added a charge of child
endangerment in the few hours before the hearing.
On May 5, 2021, the ASA's supervisor was asked to
resign because she had failed to review the evidence
58
in the case before it was presented to the court.

,,_

They all hnow each other...and
it's a whole, you hnow, old boys'
club, even tliough there are lots
of women who are part of it now.

A recent example of law enforcement’s power
to influence the narratives that prosecutors
perpetuate in court was evident in the recent
police killing of Adam Toledo. Adam Toledo, a
13-year-old Latino boy, was shot and killed by
a CPD officer on March 29, 2021, after a brief foot
chase.57 The young boy was running from police
officers who believed he had a gun; when the
boy turned around with both hands up, he was
not armed but was fatally shot by the officer.

Two people we interviewed suggested that the lack
of resources at the CSSAO and the Public
Defender's Office prevent perjury from being
sufficiently monitored. One mentioned that State’s
Attorneys do not always feel like they have the
resources and support to go against police perjury.
Additionally, many prosecutors rely on the police
departments’ investigatory capacities to prosecute
cases. Many prosecutor’s offices have very small—
even nonexistent—investigative staff and depend
on the police department’s investigative capacity
as a result.59 While the CCSAO has its own
investigative capacity, the majority of investigation
in cases is done by the police department. Leveling
accusations at police officers could jeopardize
the prosecutors' relationships with the entire
department, preventing them from successfully

Supra note 45.

Supra note 43.

See e.g., “Creating A Culture of Fairness and Accountability: Defense Attorneys Report on Kim Foxx’s Progress Towards Transforming the Priorities
of Her Office” (2019) from Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, Chicago Council of Lawyers, The People’s Lobby, & Reclaim Chicago:
http://www.chicagoappleseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/2019-10-Report-Kim-Foxx_ForPrint_FINAL.pdf

Supra note 45.

Triesman, R., Romo, V., & Campbell, B. (2021). “Chicago Releases Video Showing Fatal Police Shooting Of 13-Year-Old Adam Toledo” for WBEZ Chicago:
https://www.npr.org/2021/04/15/987718420/chicago-releases-video-showing-fatal-police-shooting-of-13-year-old-adam-toledo

Hendrickson, M. (2021). “First Assistant State’s Attorney Forced Out Following Investigation on Proffer Involving Adam Toledo Shooting” for Chicago
Sun-Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/5/5/22419822/adam-toledo-shooting-statements-hearing-assistant-states-attorney-resignspolice-gun-murphy-coleman

Supra note 49.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

prosecuting cases.60 Police officers may even
respond to perceived questioning of their
practices by retaliation, both through ruining
61
62
cases and prosecutor reputations.

from [exposing police perjury because it] could
harm law enforcement officers,” so they “protect
officers…because they’re elected officials
63
and find it in their interest to do that.”

One interviewee reported that if a State’s Attorney
sees issues with evidence or with police lying,
they may simply dismiss the case entirely because
“it is not worth it to them” to address the lying;
if a judge makes a finding that a police officer is
untrustworthy, then the CCSAO has to keep track
of potential Brady material. The interviewee went
on to say that in cases when it is unclear if police
false reports are taking place, they may offer
a plea – this could be extremely enticing to
defendants (both guilty and not guilty) who do
not want to be ensnared in long legal battles
with unclear outcomes.

Interviewees also highlighted the power of
different subcultures within the Cook County
judiciary, contrasting between former State’s
Attorneys who may always find police officers
credible and other judges who have worked to
hold lying officers accountable in some way.
Research shows judges’ professional backgrounds
may influence their decisions on the bench and
some interviewees highlighted the prosecutorial
backgrounds of many judges in Cook County,
indicating that some judges are more concerned
with punishing people than pursuing justice. A
2021 study 64 of federal judges by Emory University
School of Law professor, Joanna Shepherd, found
that professional experience “‘will inevitably exert
some influence’ on how a judge determines which
arguments that they find convincing, or which
witnesses they find credible.” 65 At least 13 of the
61 sitting judges who ran for retention in Cook
County in 2022 66 are former prosecutors; in
2021, almost 64% (fourteen of twenty-two) of
newly-appointed Associate Judges were former
prosecutors and just two were public defenders.67
One person we interviewed mentioned the need for
more diverse voices on the bench; they suggested

Judges, on the other hand, may have different
incentives to avoid bringing police perjury to
light. For instance, they may not call out perjury
because of fear that the Fraternal Order of Police
(the rank-and-file police union) could retaliate
against them in the next election. “Everybody's
worried about holding on to their job, everybody's
worried about making a name for themselves,” said
one of the interviewees. Similarly, as explained by
one defense attorney practicing in North Carolina,
elected State’s Attorneys “are disincentivized
60

Supra note 43.

Supra note 45.

Supra note 43.

NC Watchdog Reporting Network. (2021). “Some Police Officers Are Too Untrustworthy To Testify; Local Prosecutors Won't Reveal Who They Are.” for
North Carolina Public Radio: https://www.wunc.org/news/2021-06-03/police-officers-untrustworthy-testify-local-prosecutors-reveal-who-northcarolina

Shepherd, J. (2021). Jobs, Judges, and Justice: The Relationship between Professional Diversity and Judicial Decisions. Demand Justice:
https://demandjustice.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/Jobs-Judges-and-Justice-Shepherd-3-08-21.pdf

Waldman, A., Ballesteros, C., & McGhee, J. (2021). “New Class of Cook County Associate Judges more Racially Diverse than Past Years” for Injustice
Watch: https://www.injusticewatch.org/news/judicial-elections/2021/new-associate-judgesselected/#:~:text=Prosecutor%2Dto%2Djudge%20pipeline,two%20are%20former%20public%20defenders

See e.g., https://www.injusticewatch.org/interactives/judicial-election-guide/2022-general/en/

Supra note 65.

that more diverse racial and professional
backgrounds could lead to different attitudes
around punishing police perjury and lying.

WHY BOTHER?
Many interviewees complained that judges and
prosecutors are aware of the officers who commit,
at least, the most blatant perjury but that they
tend to do nothing to address it whenever
possible. According to academic literature, many
prosecutors believe it is the role of the jury, not
the prosecutor, to assess the credibility of
witnesses and determine whether the witness is
telling the truth.68 Still, others believe that most
defendants are guilty, and thus subscribe to the
same view as many police officers—that they are
serving the interests of justice.69 Even Chicago’s
Mayor Lori Lightfoot, a former federal prosecutor,
echoed this perspective in June 2022, stating:
“Given the exacting standards that the State’s
Attorney has for charging a case, which is
proof beyond a reasonable doubt, when
those charges are brought, these people
are guilty.” 70
Data shows how untrue this is: Over a quarter
(27%) of the felony cases filed in Cook County
are dismissed entirely.71 Our interviewees did not
express these sentiments, but did highlight a

perception that prosecutors believe police perjury
will inevitably continue regardless of their actions.
Convictions of cops for lying on the stand or
submitting false reports are extremely rare,
given the ingrained “collective culture” of
acceptance of police perjury, a deeply-rooted
tradition of racism, and cultural attitudes to
“win at all costs." Many activists cited in our
interviews a feeling of hopelessness for the
potential of changing the system. As one person
we interviewed communicated:
The police perjury problem isn't necessarily
just sort of this, like, oh, one bad apple going
out there and lying [about] things. It really
is sort of a systemic thing...a cultural thing.
And...saying, like, “every single cop lies all
the time” oversimplifies it and doesn't do
it justice. The reality is that lying, not being
forthright, not being honest...are all different
shades of the same gray, but they're still
the same thing...At the end of the day, their
misdeeds are leading to injustice somewhere
along the way, like they are thwarting justice.
Available data suggests that although many official
complaints about police dishonesty do result in
recommended discipline, substantial percentages
of these complaints do not. The Civilian Office of
Police Accountability (COPA),72 which acts as the
civilian oversight agency of the CPD, releases data

Supra note 43.

Pratt, G. (2022). “Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot Says People Charged with Violent Crimes ‘Are Guilty’ and Shouldn’t Be Released on Bail Pending Trial” for
Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/politics/ct-lightfoot-chicago-bail-violent-offenders-reform-20220606-ljwmmndjrzhc7lyjewxis46sf4story.html

Staudt, S. (2021). “Waiting For Justice: An Examination of the Cook County Criminal Court Backlog in the Age of Covid-19” for Chicago Appleseed Center
for Fair Courts: https://www.chicagoappleseed.org/2021/01/28/long-waits-for-justice-cook-county-criminal-court-backlog/

COPA investigations reach three possible findings: “sustained” meaning that the allegation was supported by a preponderance of the evidence;
“not sustained” meaning that the allegation can neither be proven nor disproven by a preponderance of the evidence; “unfounded”, meaning that the
allegation “was not supported based on facts revealed through investigation, or the reported incident did not occur, as shown by ‘Clear and Convincing
Evidence;’” and “exonerated” meaning the officer’s action was shown to be proper by clear and convincing evidence.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

on the number of allegations against police
officers that are “sustained.” In 2021, 98 of 580
(16.9%) of closed cases related to allegations of
improper searches or seizures; 18 of 19 (94.7%)
were allegations of court violations; and 36 of 46 73
(78.3%) allegations of false reports were sustained.

FIGURE 1:

CIVILIAN OFFICE OF POLICE
ACCOUNTABILITY (COPA)
FINDINGS IN 2021
■

100%

The Invisible Institute’s Citizens Police Data
Project (CPDP) collects data on police complaints
and discipline released in litigation or in response
to FOIA requests in Chicago. The database includes
247,161 allegations spanning from 1988 to 2018; of
these, only 7% of allegations resulted in any
discipline.74 Just nine reports mention “perjury” in
the context of one or more officers being accused
of perjury, of which six were sustained or resulted
75
in recommended consequences for the officer.
A search of the CPDP database for “false testimony”
yields 590 reports; thirty-seven out of the first fifty
reports to appear in the results list were sustained
or resulted in recommended consequences for the
officer.76

SUSTAINED

NOT SUSTAINED

83%

43%

5%
95%

75%

57%
50%

25%

Interviewees reported judges turning a blind eye
and generally tolerating police perjury. Worse,
some reported that some judges will seemingly
always side with police. One person we interviewed
mentioned that it is extremely rare for a judge to
find an officer not credible because they have no
incentive to do so and may actually face negative
social and professional consequences.

17%

I
AT
I
IO
L

19
)

ON
S(

(58

FALSE
REPORTS
(46)
E

COURT
VIOLATIONS
(19)

IMPROPER
SEARCH OR
SEIZURE
(580)
0)

Data for Figure 1 comes from the Chicago Civilian Office of Police
Accountability (COPA) Annual Report from 2021 (see Footnote 73).

Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) Annual Report 2021: https://www.chicagocopa.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/2021-Annual-ReportFinal.pdf

Supra note 22. Numbers and examples used across databases, sources, and searches may include some overlap; this is impossible to evaluate
because some databases only give statistics, while others only give anonymized data and reports.

Note that many of the findings in CPDP database other than “sustained” are recorded as or are the result of “no affidavit,” a reference to the
requirement under Illinois law that citizens making a complaint include a sworn affidavit under penalty of perjury. Complaints filed without an
affidavit are supposed to receive a limited investigation, and, if evidence is found to support the complaint, the agency is supposed to seek to
“override” the lack of an affidavit. In practice, however, COPA and the CPD’s Internal Affairs Division (IAD) exceedingly rarely seek such overrides (see
https://chicagojustice.org/2021/01/18/affidavit-overrule-in-cpd-disciplinary-investigations/). Additionally, some cases in which COPA, IPRA, or the
Police Board recommended discipline were later overturned in later stages of the disciplinary process. No attempt was made here to determine
whether such findings were upheld (see e.g., complaints 1034754, 300268, 281326, 1044797, 1066371, 1043853, 1004297, 1015760, 1002203).

See e.g., complaints: 1042532, 1034754, 306910, 1004181, 1066371, 313468, 1075931, 1014039, 1074613, 1016210, 106973, 1017317, 1023965, 1069065, 1037918,
1065787, 1004297, 1082169, 300268, 303265, 1036768, 1021114, 1017101, 1039650, 1025073, 1007365, 1044797, 1063648, 1032042, 1081229, 1049286, 1005307,
1067424, 304744, 1048001, 1016302, 1040688, 1033096, 1043853, 313961, 315627, 1008346, 1010320, 1044128, 1001354, 1042833, 022600, 314617, 1032584.

IM
P

One person mentioned that State’s Attorneys do
not always feel like they have the social or the
professional capital to go against police perjury.
Another interviewee mentioned that Cook County
Sheriff’s Deputies had to escort from the courthouse
a judge who received death threats after calling out
a police officer for lying on the stand. Some people
we interviewed said that judges will find police
officers non-credible without explicitly finding that
they made false statements. As stated by
interviewee:
A judge in Cook County will do just about
anything to not find an officer lying in open
court. Unless it is just black and white right in
front of them.
These judges may, instead, just find the
defendants not guilty because of the cops’
adverse credibility. Several interviewees stated
that they wished more action was taken to punish
police officers that lie as opposed to allowing
them to continue their misconduct. In the emails
obtained by USA Today, between 2009 and 2017,
CCSAO leadership identified just 13 cases where
judges had found officers not credible, as well as
one where an officer was actually convicted of
perjury. Two-thirds of the adverse credibility
findings were from two judges, one who found
officers not credible in four cases and one who
found officers not credible in five cases. From just
2011 to 2017, more than 275,000 felony cases were
filed in Cook County and there were over 15,000
trials – including over 7,000 where a judge found
a defendant not guilty.77 Given the staunch
evidence of the pervasiveness of police perjury,

it strains credulity that judges thought police were
lying in only fourteen cases. It is also telling that just
two judges were responsible for such a large share
of the adverse credibility findings. This suggests
that some judges are more comfortable than others
finding officers incredible. Still, one person we
interviewed claimed that judges use various excuses
to deny people release from incarceration following
perjured testimony:
Unfortunately, you know, if a…[defendant]
says one thing [and] the cops say a different
thing, the judge is always going to side
[with] the police officer.
Some interviewees highlighted the prosecution
backgrounds of many judges in Cook County,
indicating that judges were more concerned
with punishing people than pursuing justice.

FINDING 2.

THE "CODE OF SILENCE"
IS AN ENDEMIC FEATURE
OF THE CULTURE OF THE
CHICAGO POLICE
DEPARTMENT, WHICH
ENCOURAGES COPS TO
LIE TO PREVENT SCRUTINY
AND PROTECT THEMSELVES
AND FELLOW OFFICERS.
The “code of silence” is an endemic feature of
the culture of policing that disincentivizes police
officers from reporting peers that may have
abused their power or committed a crime such
as perjury.78 The City of Chicago, specifically, has

Data from the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office on adult felony cases is available here: https://datacatalog.cookcountyil.gov/browse?category=Courts

Trivedi, S. & Gonzalez Van Cleve, N. (2020). To Serve and Protect Each Other: How Police-Prosecutor Codependence Enables Police Misconduct. Boston
University Law Review 100 (895-933), accessible at https://www.bu.edu/bulawreview/files/2020/05/05-TRIVEDI-VAN-CLEVE.pdf; Chin, G. & Wells, S.
(1998). The “Blue Wall of Silence” as Evidence of Bias and Motive to Lie: A New Approach to Police Perjury. University of Pittsburgh Law Review 233,
accessible at https://philpapers.org/rec/CHITBW

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

a deeply-entrenched “code of silence” that,
according to the New York Times, “has been around
for decades, bubbling up in recent years.” 79 Eight
of 14 interviewees mentioned that the CPD’s “code
of silence” perpetuates police lying.

The law enforcement “code of silence”
encourages cops to lie to prevent scrutiny
and protect themselves and fellow officers
and is upheld by institutional practices.

BROTHERHOOD OVER TRUTH
Loyalty to the police “brotherhood” is apparent,
as interviewees reported that many officers
appear to adhere to the “code of silence” their
entire careers. One person we interviewed
expressed just how rare it was for officers to
speak out against their colleagues—even when
they witnessed horrific scenes:
They kept silent until they retired [when]...
we actually got [statements] from them…
which was very strong cooperation. And
there was one Black detective who walked
in on a torture scene early on, during when
Burge was only a detective, back in the 70s,
and he saw a man being tortured.
The adherence to the code is not just out of
concern for one’s career, but also due to loyalty
to their peers. Peer pressure is a significant
reason police perjury and false reporting

flourishes in police departments across the
United States. Among peers, there are “draconian
consequences” for officers who report misconduct
—they are often “ostracized and harassed, become
targets for complaints and even physical threats,
and are made to fear that they will be left alone
on the streets in a time of crisis.” 80

,,_

Police perjury...[isl a systemic
thing_...a cultural thing, and...the
realitv. is that lying, not being
forthrig~!t_ not being honest.••
are all cli,rerent shades of the
same gray••.[andJ at the end of
the day, their misdeeds are
leading to inj!'st{ce••._they
are thwarting Justice.

_,,

The “code of silence” was a topic of former
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's 2015 speech 81
following the murder of Laquan McDonald by a
Chicago Police officer, in which he apologized for
police failings and promised systemic reform. In
his speech, Emmanuel blamed the incident, in part,
on the police “code of silence,” describing it as
“this tendency to ignore…to deny…[and] in some
cases to cover-up the bad actions of a colleague
or colleagues,” which is ultimately “at the very
heart of the policing profession.” Following the
murder of Laquan McDonald, the United States
Department of Justice issued a report in 2017
that found that the “code of silence” lead to the
82
concealing of misconduct in CPD.

Davey, M. (2018). “Police ‘Code of Silence’ is On Trial After Murder by Chicago Officer” for New York Times:
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/03/us/chicago-police-code-of-silence.html

Supra note 49.

Mayor Rahm Emmanuel’s Chicago City Council Address (December 9, 2015), accessible at
https://www.americanrhetoric.com/speeches/rahmemanuelcitycouncil9december2015.htm

“Investigation of the Chicago Police Department” (75-77) by the United States Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and Northern District of Illinois
United States Attorney’s Office (2017), accessible at https://www.justice.gov/crt/case-document/file/925771/download

The New York Times83 gives some other recent
examples, such as:

•

A lawsuit, brought by Lorenzo Davis, a
former supervisor for Independent Police
Review Authority (IPRA), who was awarded
$2.8 million in 2018 after “he was fired for
refusing to change his findings in police
shootings he considered unjustified.” 84
The 2017 settlement in a “civil trial into
whether a police ‘code of silence’ allowed a
Chicago cop to drive drunk without fear of
consequences when he killed two young
men in a fiery crash on the Dan Ryan
Expressway.”85
The case of a CPD officer who, in 2007,
“was off-duty when he kicked and punched
[a female bartender] in a drunken rage,” and
“felt his status as a cop gave him impunity
to act however he wanted [then]...used his
connections on the force to try to avoid
arrest.” 86

One person we interviewed claimed that police
"perjury has been getting worse since 2014 [or]
2015" and that the “code of silence” has been
heightened since the summer of 2020, when the
protests against police violence were ongoing after
the police murders of Breonna Taylor in Kentucky
and George Floyd in Minnesota:
Police perjury has gotten more brazen
recently. The code of silence – police

never calling out each other – has been
enhanced since the summer of 2020.

CONSEQUENCES FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS
The “code of silence” is an unwritten system of
“loyalty and brotherhood” 87 that encourages cops
to protect each other from being held accountable
for misconduct by fostering formal and informal
punishments for officers who are perceived as
failing to uphold the “code.”
Beyond the social punishments for reporting
misconduct, the consequences for officers who
break the “code of silence” are upheld on an
institutional level. Police officers' lies often
climb up the chain of the command because the
narrative of one officer is adopted, not only by
their field partner, but also by the assigned
sergeant and additional officers who arrive on
the scene. One interviewee noted:
It won't just be the arresting officer who
lies—he will have his narrative adopted by
his partner, he will have that narrative
adopted by the sergeant assigned to his
case, he will have it adopted by any other
assisting officers who arrive on scene. And
oftentimes you'll see the assisting officers
[who] really know or saw very little, but they
will get in lockstep with whatever the lie is.
And they will copy and paste that narrative
onto their reports, swear to those reports

Supra note 79.

Gorner, J. (2018). “Jury Awards $2.8M to Former IPRA Supervisor Who Sued City” for Chicago Tribune:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-met-ex-ipra-supervisor-jury-award-20180621-story.html

Meisner, J. (2017). “City Abruptly Settles ‘Code of Silence’ Lawsuit During Closing Arguments after Lawyers Admit Disclosure Failure” for Chicago
Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2012-10-30-ct-met-abbate-bar-beating-trial-1030-20121030-story.html

“No Pension for CPD Officer Fired for Beating of Bartender Caught on Video, Court Rules” (2022) for NBC Chicago:
https://www.nbcchicago.com/news/local/no-pension-for-cpd-officer-fired-for-beating-of-bartender-caught-on-video-court-rules/2753673/

Skolnick, J. (2002). Corruption and the Blue Code of Silence. Police Practice and Research 3(1), 7-19. Accessible at
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/15614260290011309?journalCode=gppr20

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

and testify to those reports, even if they
did not see or were not present for what
actually took place.
This creates a network of cops complicit in these
lies that can reach high levels of law enforcement.
One of the more harrowing instances of the
“code of silence” at work in Chicago is the
infamous case of Sergeant Ronald Watts and
his gang of CPD officers who, “in exchange for
a ‘tax’...protected drug dealers from interference
by law enforcement, targeted their competition,
and...routinely framed those who did not
cooperate” for over a decade.88 Although some
CPD officers tried to investigate and speak out
against Watts’ corruption, according to Jamie
Kalven in The Intercept:
Over the course of Watts’s career, he and
his team were investigated by multiple
agencies — CPD’s Internal Affairs, the FBI,
the Drug Enforcement Agency, and the
States Attorney’s Office. For several years,
two Chicago police officers, Shannon
Spalding and Danny Echeverria, participated
in a joint FBI-Internal Affairs investigation,
which they claim was ultimately derailed by
senior CPD officials. Among other things,
they allege that deputy superintendent
Ernest Brown, long rumored to be an ally
and protector of Watts, made it known
within the department that they were
engaged in an internal investigation,
prompting other CPD brass to order

officers under their commands to retaliate
against them as “Internal Affairs rats.” 89
Since Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx took
office in 2016, at least 220 cases related to Watts
have been vacated (26 cases in 2017, 38 in 2018, 17
in 2019, 19 in 2020, 14 in 2021, and 106 as of
October 3, 2022).90
When uncovering cases of police misconduct,
whistleblowers have been afraid of exposure
and will often not give their names. One person we
interviewed expressed how CPD officers are afraid
of retaliation:
The first time we got any information from
inside was from an anonymous police source,
who…was definitely afraid of being exposed,
would not give up his or her name, and said
that she or he did not want to be treated
like Frank Laverty.
Frank Laverty was an CPD officer who was
demoted from detective after “standing up for
an African-American teenager the state wanted
to put to death” and “[shaking] loose a secret of
police record keeping,” where “in violation of the
law, detectives maintained ‘street files’—
documents that weren’t turned over to defense
lawyers because they contained inconvenient
truths that could hamper the prosecution of
the men or women the police had decided
were perpetrators.” 91 Similarly to Beth Svec
(discussed in the introduction of this report),
officers are afraid they will be reprimanded

Kalven, J. (2016). “‘Code of Silence’ Revisited: An Update on the Watts Investigation” for The Intercept: https://theintercept.com/2016/12/30/code-ofsilence-revisited-an-update-on-the-watts-investigation/

Id.

“Judge Tosses Eight More Convictions Linked to Disgraced Former CPD Sgt. Ronald Watts” (2022) for CBS Chicago:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-police-sergeant-ronald-watts-convictions-overturned-corruption-framed/

Conroy, J. (2007). “The Good Cop” for Chicago Reader: https://chicagoreader.com/news-politics/the-good-cop/

for reporting an instance of police lying by being
transferred to another station or to the midnight
shift.92

INSTITUTIONAL PRESSURES TO
UPHOLD PRETRIAL LYING
While there is police perjury in the courtroom, one
interviewee explains how pervasive lying is in the
larger context of Chicago policing:
The Chicago Police Department encourages
[officers] to falsify reports and encourages
them to lie, it encourages this whole notion
of a “blue wall of silence” to back…and
protect them.
Pretrial lying occurs often while officers are in
communities. One person interviewed claimed
that while she was interacting with an arresting
officer, he was calling over to his partner saying
things like “she’s still talking about fighting me,”
which was completely untrue; this lie was
captured on his body camera.
Institutional pressures can manifest in
pressures for police to produce results such
as closing cases or arresting a certain number
of people. This pressure can lead police to

cut corners or shade the truth to ensure
convictions.93 In many police departments,
supervisors stress quotas, creating an immense
pressure to fill them.94 Although police quotas
are illegal in Illinois,95 in a 2021 lawsuit against
CPD officers and the City of Chicago, lieutenant
Franklin Paz claimed that on a “community
safety team” created in 2020, Deputy Chief Michael
Barz essentially enforced quotas requiring more
traffic stops, arrests, and citations. After Paz
complained, he was reassigned to a midnight
shift in a likely form of retaliation.96
Plea bargaining also enables pretrial police perjury
because evidence is not reviewed. Defendants
accept plea bargains in over 90% of cases that
result in conviction.97 Therefore, judges have very
weak incentives to find police officers have lied
in a pretrial setting, since the majority of their
rulings will not be reviewed by a superior court.98
The plea-bargaining process “virtually forecloses
the defendant’s ability to challenge misconduct”
through such mechanisms as appeal waivers.99
Police perjury and false reporting is often believed
to result from “narrative construction,” rather
than from the construction of a set of discrete
lies. Ten of fourteen people interviewed for this
project mentioned “narrative construction” as an

Slobogin, C. (1996). Testilying: Police Perjury and What To Do About It. University of Colorado Law Review 67, accessible at
https://scholarship.law.vanderbilt.edu/faculty-publications/279/; Foley, M. (2000). Police Perjury: A Factorial Survey (City University of New York),
accessible at https://www.ojp.gov/ncjrs/virtual-library/abstracts/police-perjury-factorial-survey

Supra note 8.

See 65 ILCS 5/11-1-12: https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/fulltext.asp?DocName=006500050K11-1-12

See Circuit Court of Cook County Case Number 2021L000514, Stephan Julian v. Sgt. Franklin D. Paz, Maurice Anderson, and the City Of Chicago (2021),
accessible at https://www.scribd.com/document/491271193/Paz-Complaint

Supra note 45.

Wilson, M. (2010). Improbable Cause: A Case for Judging Police by A More Majestic Standard. Berkeley Journal of Criminal Law 15, accessible at
https://www.bjcl.org/assets/files/15_2-Wilson-259-330.pdf

Supra notes 43 and 45.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

element of police perjury. Interviewees recounted
that police officers are often in a position to
construct narratives to best serve their interests,
appearing to stretch or alter the truth in the
interest of creating a coherent, uniform narrative.
Some scholars believe that police lie because they
believe that they are helping the larger
community 100 by ensuring those perceived as
guilty are punished.101 According to Simon-Kerr:
[Police perjury] is understood to be done
for a rationale that is intertwined with
the goals of the justice system—to ensure
that the truth of the underlying criminal
conduct is revealed by evidence that might
otherwise be suppressed. 102
Perjury, therefore, can be seen by officers as an
action taken for the “greater good.” Police officers
may even go as far as to construct narratives to
protect their own conscience or sense of ethics.
One interviewee believes that officers see
themselves differently as officers than as people,
stating, “it’s not Joe who is lying, it is Officer
Jones.” Another interviewee cited search warrants
as a major source of pretrial lying and perjury:
The greatest frequency I’ve seen of this
occurrence is usually in search warrants,
where police officers will put in false
information in order to support a search
warrant on one of these cases.

Many false police reports in Chicago are tied to
illegal searches. For example, Officer William
Pruente perjured himself when testifying about
the traffic stop of Joseph Sperling.103 Squad
car footage blatantly contradicted Pruente’s
testimony, showing that Sperling was illegally
arrested before his car was searched.104 The
charges against Sperling were dismissed and
charges of perjury were brought against Pruente
and the two other officers involved. Pruente was
found guilty and sentenced to two-and-a-half
years of probation and 250 hours of community
service; the other officers involved were
acquitted.105 Similarly, in 2006, Jonathan Hadnott,
a local art teacher, was walking down a street
when an unmarked police car pulled up and
officers asked him for identification. The officers
never identified themselves, but put Hadnott in the
back of the police car, drove him to his parents’
house, and illegally searched the house. Having
no probable cause and finding nothing illegal,
they left no record of the search and stated that
they had no memory of the encounter at all.106
Fabricating precedent for a search is a way that
police officers routinely construct narratives that
conceal their misconduct.
Officers commonly consult one another to get
their stories straight after an incident. One
arresting officer’s narrative may be adopted by
their partner, the officers who subsequently arrive

100

Supra note 8.

101

Supra note 87.

102

Supra note 11.

103

Hussain, R. (2016). “Two Cleared, One Convicted in Police Perjury Case” for Chicago Sun-Times: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2016/12/7/18344370/twocleared-one-convicted-in-police-perjury-case

104

Id.

105

Supra note 103.

106

Denvir, D. (2015). “Chicago’s Epidemic of Police Lying: One Man’s Case Shows Why Windy City’s Cops are Rarely Held Accountable” for Salon: https://www.
salon.com/2015/12/23/inside_chicagos_epidemic_of_police_lying_one_mans_case_shows_why_windy_citys_cops_are_rarely_held_accountable/

on the scene, and the supervisors at the station.
Before 2017, cops involved in or witnesses to
shootings were allowed a 24-hour grace period
before being required to submit statements to the
Independent Police Review Authority, which allowed
officers time to construct their narratives
accordingly. Historically, many of the collective
bargaining agreements for Chicago Police
Department employees have included specific
“limitations on transparency and protections that
inhibit accountable government” 107 by enabling
officers to lie about misconduct. In 2019, the
Coalition for Police Contracts Accountability (CPCA),
of which Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts
and the Chicago Council of Lawyers are members,
provided recommendations to the City Council and
Mayor of Chicago to eliminate the police contract
provisions “that discourage people from filing
complaints, make it easy for officers to conceal the
truth, and obstruct investigations into claims of
misconduct.” The CPCA stated that until the harmful
provisions in police contracts are changed, CPD
officers will continue to operate under a separate –
and ultimately unequal – system of justice:
For decades, the Chicago Police Department
has had a “code of silence” that allows
officers to hide misconduct. The Fraternal
Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 7 and the Illinois
Policemen’s Benevolent and Protective
Association (PBPA) union contracts with the
City of Chicago effectively make this “code of
silence” official policy, making it too hard to
identify police misconduct and too easy for
police officers to lie about it and hide it. 108

Sometimes this results in officers attesting to
stories about events to which they were not privy.
This strategy can be effective, as one experienced
defense attorney expressed to during our
interviews, since it is very hard to counter the
police narrative unless multiple officers are telling
different stories. They may use the statement “I do
not recall” to get around inconsistencies or things
that do not add up in cases.

,,_

The Chicago Police D9artment
encourages lofficersJ to falsify
reports and encourages them
to 1ie, it encourages this whole
notion ofa "blue wall ofsilence."

In reviewing Chicago Police Board decisions over
the last eight years related to Rule 14 violations cases where officers make written or oral false
reports - we found several cases where officers
appeared to consult each other before
constructing false statements. For example, in a
July 25, 2013, incident, Officers Robert Lobianco
and Kevin Fry responded to a call related to a
woman screaming for help. A “Mr. Vasquez” was
charged with domestic battery and resisting
arrest; Fry and Lobianco both made reports that
Vasquez was lying on top of a woman at the scene
and that they had to pull him off of the woman,
when in fact, video evidence showed that he was
standing and preparing to open the door before
officers kicked it down.109 Both Lobianco and Fry
committed perjury in a criminal trial and were
fired for Rule 14 violations.110 Without this video

107

See https://www.cpcachicago.org/the-recommendations

108

Agnew, S. (2019). “Ending Code of Silence Policies in the Chicago Police Department’s Collective Bargaining Agreements” for Chicago Appleseed Center
for Fair Courts: https://www.chicagoappleseed.org/2019/12/06/ending-code-of-silence-policies-in-the-chicago-police-departments-collectivebargaining-agreements/#:~:text=For%20decades%2C%20the%20Chicago%20Police,allows%20officers%20to%20hide%20misconduct

109

Chicago Police Board Case No. 17 PB 2933 (2018), accessible at https://www.chicago.gov/content/dam/city/depts/cpb/PoliceDiscipline/17PB2933.pdf

110

Id.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

evidence, it is unlikely that corresponding police
reports by the partners would have been
uncovered as lies.

face when they fail to utilize the technology
properly, and how, if at all, that footage is exposed
to and accessed by the public.112

Another observable narrative phenomenon is
the repetition of certain stories. For example, in
driving under the influence cases, officers testify
in front of the same Cook County judge frequently.
A defense attorney who has watched many of
these trials noticed that facts are repeated almost
as if they were rote, even when cases occur in
different locations and at different times. Our
interviewees also noted that stories sometimes
seem pre-planned or fabricated in order to
establish probable cause. By establishing probable
cause, police officers are rarely punished for
activities like unlawful searches.

The increased use of body-worn cameras
has provided a tool to better hold police
accountable for their actions but are not
always properly utilized or made public.

A TOOL TO EXPOSE LYING

THE INCREASED USE OF
BODY-WORN CAMERAS
HAS PROVIDED A TOOL
TO BETTER HOLD POLICE
ACCOUNTABLE FOR THEIR
ACTIONS, BUT OFTENTIMES,
THESE CAMERAS ARE NOT
ACTIVATED.

Most of our interviewees agreed that body-worn
cameras are helpful – at least in some ways – to
identify police perjury. Assessing the accuracy of
a police narrative, as compared to a witness or
defendant narrative, is very difficult given the
nuances of the situation—and may occasionally
be an objective versus subjective problem. When
considering if an officer is telling the truth, one
must consider, according to one interviewee:
“what, from an objective perspective, was the
officer privy to in the context of what he is talking
about? What was subjective to the officer?” The
frequency of discrepancies between filmed
encounters and the official police story call into
question the complex phenomenon of what is
subjective to officers and what is objective.

Much of academic literature seems to primarily
view police body-worn cameras (BWCs) as having
a positive impact on policing and exposing police
misconduct.111 Yet, there are many issues that arise
in terms of how well police officers utilize these
body-worn cameras, the consequences cops may

One interviewee mentioned difficulties in
assessing what information an officer is actually
privy to and what they miss in their experience of a
confrontation. One person stated that video
footage made it harder for judges to avoid calling

FINDING 3.

111

See e.g., supra note 20; Maskaly, J., Donner, C., Jennings, W. G., Ariel, B., & Sutherland, A. (2017). The Effects of Body-Worn Cameras (BWCs) On
Police and Citizen Outcomes: A State-of-the-Art Review. Policing: An International Journal of Police Strategies & Management 40(4), accessible at
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/321127770_The_effects_of_body-worn_cameras_BWCs_on_police_and_citizen_outcomes_A_state-of-theart_review; White, M., Gaub, J., & Padilla, K. (2021). “Impact of BWCs on Citizen Complaints: Directory of Outcomes,” accessible at
https://bwctta.com/impact-bwcs-citizen-complaints-directory-outcomes

112

See e.g., Letourneau, D. (2015). Police Body Cameras: Implementation with Caution, Forethought, and Policy. University of Richmond Law Student
Publications 50, accessible at https://scholarship.richmond.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1118&context=law-student-publications; Thomas, E. (2016).
The Privacy Case for Body Cameras: The Need for a Privacy-Centric Approach To Body Camera Policymaking. Columbia Journal of Law and Social
Problems 50(2), accessible at http://jlsp.law.columbia.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/8/2017/03/50-Thomas.pdf

out lies, but that some judges continue to do so.
Others highlighted the importance of proof of
perjury beyond just evaluating credibility, with
one person saying that video makes it much
harder to ignore misconduct:
It’s easy with the videos because it’s
literally…the jury, the judge, and I…all
looking at the [same] screen [and] what the
officer says is not depicted on the screen
[but] he’s on the stand swearing that we
should see things differently.
Much has been written about the case of Jason
Van Dyke (the former CPD officer who murdered
teenager Laquan McDonald while on the job)
where video evidence completely contradicted
previous police accounts, resulting in charges
against Van Dyke for first degree murder the day
the video was released. 113 Importantly, the City
of Chicago tried to cover up this evidence by
approving a $5 million settlement with Laquan
McDonald's family, which included an agreement
that the video not be released.114 Some of our
interviewees specifically mentioned this case,
stating that the ruling that the footage be
released ensured a just outcome for Laquan
McDonald’s family.

MANIPULATION & LOW QUALITY FOOTAGE
Several people we interviewed instead believed
that body-worn cameras have little effect on

alleviating police perjury—particularly citing
grainy or dark footage and the possibility for
manipulation. One person explained that, while
body-worn cameras are “more helpful than not,”
the footage is “really not as clear as the public
seems to think.” An interviewee stated that body
camera footage can be manipulated in various
ways including because of the way that sound is
captured (when an officer activates their camera,
it saves the prior thirty seconds of video, as well as
everything going forward, but only saves audio
going forward)115 or the manipulating of body
positions. Several interviewees focused on the
quality and clarity of the footage, which ranges
from acceptable to poor.
Body-worn cameras are, at times, not activated
at all, even though, in many circumstances, it is a
violation of the Chicago Police Department's rules
for an officer to fail to do so. For example, on
November 28, 2019, Officer Mark Johnson failed
to activate his body camera in an incident with
Bernard Kersh and proceeded to make false
reports after the event. During the incident,
Johnson grossly abused Kersh and dragged him
into the police vehicle when he was unconscious.
It was only thanks to bystander video that the
truth of the event came out and the officers
involved were discharged.116
Another concern mentioned by interviewees is
that the CPD does not follow best practices with
respect to body camera footage, nor does it use
the information effectively. People specifically

113

Supra notes 24 and 27.

114

See “Jason Van Dyke Trial, Laquan McDonald Shooting Timeline” for ABC-7 Chicago: https://abc7.com/van-dyke-trial-laquan-mcdonald-jasoncase/4147086/

115

See e.g., Malagon, E. (2018). “Why There Was No Audio and Other Questions Answered about Chicago Police Video Taken Before Harith Augustus
Killed” for Chicago Tribune: https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-why-no-audio-police-shooting-20180719-story.html; Chiarito, B. (2021)
“Why Were Police Told to Turn Off Body Cameras Minutes After Adam Toledo Shooting? It’s Standard Policy, Department Says” for Block Club Chicago:
https://blockclubchicago.org/2021/04/12/why-were-police-told-to-turn-off-body-cameras-minutes-after-shooting-adam-toledo-its-standard-policypolice-sergeant-says

116

See https://www.actioninjurylawgroup.com/cases/bernard-kersh

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

cited failures to turn on body cameras,
inadequate record-keeping of footage, and
failures to release the footage to the public.

County, specifically, there is a clear lack
of accountability and public transparency
with respect to their use.

FINDING 4.

EXTREME UNDERUTILIZATION

BRADY LISTS AND "DO
NOT CALL" LISTS ARE
IMPORTANT TOOLS FOR
PROSECUTORS TO ENSURE
THEY AVOID RELYING
ON TESTIMONY OF COPS
WHO ARE KNOWN TO
LIE, BUT THESE LISTS ARE
UNDERUTILIZED—
ESPECIALLY COOK
COUNTY.
Literature and data from our interviews indicate
that Brady lists and “Do Not Call” lists are an
imperfect but important tool in combating police
perjury. Brady lists (that are usually compiled by
a prosecutor’s office) contain names of cops that
have been dishonest in the past and should no
longer be trusted. These lists are not technically
reforms, as they collect and impart information
that the Constitution requires to be disclosed
anyways, but they are rare.117 “Do Not Call” lists,
however, go slightly further in that: As opposed
to just disclosing previous instances of police
perjury, these lists include names of officers that
prosecutors will no longer call to testify because
of past misconduct, which alleviates the defenses’
burden of discrediting the officer on the stand.118

Brady lists and “Do Not Call” lists are
underutilized by prosecutors, and in Cook

Unfortunately, our research found that Brady lists
and “Do Not Call” are deeply underutilized in the
Cook County Circuit Court. One defense attorney
we interviewed mentioned that in decades of
practice, they had only been given perjury-related
Brady material twice:
Only two times ever did the State's Attorney
give me something in writing, saying, “hey,
this cop got busted for falsifying reports.”
The case of former Chicago Police Sergeant Ronald
Watts is one of the few instances where a Brady or
“Do Not Call” list is known to have been created.
As explained prior, Watts led a police unit that
framed people for crimes and stole money from
drug dealers at the Ida B. Wells public housing
community on the South Side of Chicago. Watts
and his crew made hundreds of false arrests and
he was eventually arrested for stealing money
from an FBI informant in 2012. Exposure of Watts’
scheme led to the largest mass exoneration in
Cook County.119 In response, State’s Attorney Kim
Foxx’s office created a list of 10 Watts’ associates
who would no longer be called for testimony, and
the Chicago Police Department put many of these
officers on desk duty (although most returned
to regular duty at some point and at least nine
remain employed by the CPD today).120

117

Supra note 45.
Supra note 45.
119 Mitchell, C. (2022). “In Cook County’s Largest Mass exoneration, A Judge Tosses 44 Convictions Tied to a Corrupt Cop” for WBEZ Chicago:
https://www.wbez.org/stories/judge-tosses-44-more-convictions-tied-to-corrupt-chicago-cop/d9ede2d7-2f63-49b5-aa65-d250ec072cc5
120 Id.
118

“Do Not Call” lists may exist in some informal
capacity in the CCSAO. Although the Cook County
State's Attorney's Office is the most transparent it
has ever been, in terms of public data access,
under Kim Foxx, it lacks transparency to the public
in its practices related to Brady material. For this
report, we sent a FOIA request for these policies
and did not receive a response.
It is unclear if an official policy exists or if
individual Assistant State’s Attorneys decide
how to deal with Brady issues independently.
Emails obtained by USA Today 121 in 2019 through
a FOIA request present a picture of a nonsystematic practice for alerting Assistant State’s
Attorneys of police officers who may have
credibility issues. Although there is no written
description of the policy, a review of the emails
suggests that the practice is as follows:
(1) An email is sent to the CCSAO if it is discovered
that an officer has engaged in misconduct or
has been found incredible by a judge, and a
search is done of any open cases where the
officer is a witness.
(2) Prosecutors are instructed to try and proceed
on the case without the testimony of the officer
who has engaged in misconduct or has been
found to have lied; if they must use them as a
witness, ASAs present the defense with a short
statement communicating the fact that the
officer has been found to have testified falsely
or lied in a previous case.
(3) A ‘flag’ is created in the CCSAO’s internal
database to signal that a notice of disclosure
to the defense is required in the future.
121

Supra note 34.

122

Supra note 45.

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

It is not clear what the policy is for determining
that an officer has lied or been found not credible.
USA Today found there were a total of 51 such
emails. The majority involved disclosing that
officers had been charged with a crime unrelated
to perjury. In 13 cases, the notices were generated
after a judge specifically found an officer not to be
credible on the witness stand.

FLAWS & NON-UNIFORMITY
A common criticism of “Do Not Call” lists is that
they can be bypassed and are not generally public.
“Clean” officers can put their names on the
paperwork, or a partner can provide testimony
instead of an officer who has been flagged. A
further, the lists are not uniform with respect to
what information is to be included, how long the
list will be effective, and the circumstances
under which the information is disclosed to the
defense.122 Our interviews echoed these criticisms.
Two interviewees mentioned that there are
individual prosecutors that keep their own “Do
Not Call” lists. Some stated that ASAs know which
police officers use the same narratives and stories
over and over again. One interviewee commented
that for several years, there have been rumors
that there is a fairly extensive “Do Not Call” list
at the CCASO with the names of police officers
that will not be called to testify in court.
While interviewees believed “Do Not Call” lists
could be helpful, they lamented that they
should be made public and that they should
contain more information. Interviewees, ranging
from activists to judges, expressed a desire for

greater access to “Do Not Call” lists. Almost all of
the interviewees who addressed Brady lists were
of the belief that if they are going to be used, they
need to be public, and scholars agree that the best
practices for keeping these lists include public
accessibility.123 One interviewee focused on the
importance of greater accountability for police
officers that land on these lists, and said that if
there are prosecutors who use “Do Not Call” lists,
they should be required to submit those lists to
COPA and explain the basis for which each officer
is included on that list. While not perfect, the
literature and our interviews indicate that these
lists are a “signal to both law enforcement and
the community that prosecutors will not be bullied
124
into burying police misconduct.”

FINDING 5.

POLICE WHO LIE, FILE
FALSE REPORTS, AND
PERJURE THEMSELVES IN
COURT RARELY FACE SOCIAL
OR CAREER CONSEQUENCES,
BUT THE PEOPLE WHO ARE
IMPACTED BY THESE LIES
ARE PUNISHED IMMENSELY.
While there are rarely consequences for officers
who lie, there are huge consequences for others
when perjury occurs: People are wrongfully involved
in the legal system or convicted, whistleblowers are
ostracized or fired, and judges may even be pushed
out of power.

Police who lie and file false reports rarely
face consequences at all comparable to

the consequences experienced by the
individuals and communities directly
impacted by these lies.

IMPACT ON INDIVIDUALS
Police lying and perjury can lead to the
wrongful incarceration of innocent people;
people face the loss of their freedom and
livelihood if convicted of certain charges, as
well as a host of other collateral consequences,
including impacts to their careers and their
social relationships. The ripple effect of police
perjury affects more than just those convicted—
in many cases families lose their breadwinner,
children lose their parent (and those children are
ultimately more likely to live in poverty, become
involved in the system, and suffer from
depression), and the community suffers from
having to fill the holes left by wrongfully-convicted
people and from the idea that perhaps the wrong
person was punished. 125
Even if perjury does not lead to a conviction or
the charges are ultimately dismissed, the fact
that allegations were levied in the first place
can follow a person for the rest of their life. 126
One person interviewed spoke about their client
who had spent seven years in prison based on
police perjury. Yet another interviewee shared
an experience they had where, had information
on the police perjury been available, no one
would have gone to jail. A mother we interviewed
discussed how her son was harmed when the

123

Supra note 45.
Supra note 45.
125 Johnson, V. (2017). Bias in Blue: Instructing Jurors to Consider the Testimony of Police Officer Witnesses with Caution. Pepperdine Law Review 44(2).
Accessible at https://digitalcommons.pepperdine.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2431&context=plr
126 Supra note 43.
124

IMPACT ON COMMUNITIES

An experienced attorney noted a “credibility gap”
wherein those most directly impacted by the
criminal legal system stop believing officers are
serving their interests. Literature shows that the
public is less trustful of the criminal legal system
when it refuses to hold its employees accountable
for their actions.127 Police perjury risks “eroding the
public’s confidence in law enforcement officials.” 128
Public trust is perhaps the most important social
good we have, and police perjury diminishes it.129

Beyond the impact on individuals, police perjury
affects whole communities' perceptions of “justice.”
Interviewees highlighted the societal implications
of police perjury: It undermines faith in the court
system. For example, a government lawyer, like a
State’s Attorney, “isn’t just another lawyer, they are
serving the public interest,” as one interviewee said.

The extremely high rate of exonerations in Cook
County is another clear indicator of how rampant
police dishonesty is in our community. Cook County
leads the country in total number of exonerations,
with over 230 since 1989; 130 according to 2017
census data, per capita, Cook County ranks second
nationally in number of exonerations (behind

cops lied about him:
All of this happened because of these police
officers who go on a witness stand and lie
and lie and lie and lie about how they picked
them up, what time, what they did to them.
My son was beat up—they were all beat up
and threatened.

FIGURE 2:

ALL EXONERATIONS BY STATE SINCE 1989

District of Columbia - -~

Military □
Puerto Rico

Guam

Data in Figure 2 is from The National Registry on Exonerations and includes all federal and non-federal exonerations as of October 3, 2022. See
Footnote 131 for citation details; for the specific exoneration, population, and per capita data from each state and territory, see the Appendix.
127

Supra note 45.
Supra note 50.
129 Supra note 8.
130 See The National Registry on Exonerations “Top Ten Counties” (2017): https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Top-Ten-Counties.aspx
128

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

Orleans Parish in Louisiana). Of 533 exonerations
in Illinois since 1989, 78% (418) are labeled with
“perjury/false accusation” as a contributing
factor.131 In perjury-related cases where the
accused was eventually exonerated, 45% of
cases are for drugs and 43% are murders.
In Chicago and Cook County, Black communities
are disproportionately harmed by policing and
incarceration. According to the Cook County Public
Defender’s Postconviction Initiative, at least 93%
of exonerations in Cook County are due to police
misconduct, and Black people account for 82% of
those exonerations.132 According to an analysis of
Cook County Jail data by Injustice Watch, Black
people are incarcerated today at 17 times the rate
of White people.133 Chicago Appleseed Center for
Fair Courts' own analysis134 of 536,000 CPD arrest
records from 2014 to 2020 found that the police
districts that held arrested people at the station
for the longest average amounts of time were
located in South and West Sides (District 2 and
District 7, about 14.5 Hours; District 4, District 5,
and District 12, about 13 Hours; and District 19
and District 25, about 10 Hours). The Chicago
communities with the longest arrest holding times
overlap with majority Black neighborhoods. This
suggests that race, location, and policing patterns
may be more influential over whether someone is

held for an excessively long period in a police
station than what they are charged with.
Police perjury and lying in Chicago likewise
affects the community because of the enormous
sums that taxpayers spend on settling police
misconduct lawsuits. The City of Chicago spent
$173,852,871 related to false arrests or false
reports between 1981 and 2016; from 2003 to 2016,
cases related to illegal search and seizure cost
$10,443,078.135 From 2017 and 2020 alone, the
City of Chicago paid over $227 million in police
misconduct lawsuits136 with 21% of cases having

FIGURE 3:

CHICAGO POLICE
SETTLEMENTS BY CATEGORY
FALSE ARRESTS OR REPORTS
$173,852,871

55.6%
ILLEGAL SEARCH
OR SEIZURE
$10,443,078

3.3%
OTHER

$128,666,718

41.1%
Data for Figure 3 comes from the Chicago Reporter', accessible here:
https://projects.chicagoreporter.com/settlements/search/cases

131

See The National Registry on Exonerations “Exonerations in the United States” [Map] (2022):
https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Exonerations-in-the-United-States-Map.aspx

132

See https://bja.ojp.gov/funding/awards/15pbja-21-gg-03606-wrng

133

McGhee, J. & Rutecki, J. (2021). “Fewer People in Cook County are Being Charged with Crimes. Why are Black People Making Up a Larger Share of
Defendants?” for Injustice Watch: https://www.injusticewatch.org/news/courts/2021/the-circuit-racial-disparities-explainer/

134

Chae, J. & Staudt, S. (2020). “We Analyzed 536,000 CPD Arrest Records Spanning A Period from 2014 to 2020. Here’s What We Found.” For Chicago
Appleseed Center For Fair Courts: https://www.chicagoappleseed.org/2020/12/10/cpd-arrest-holding-times/

135

Note that in many of the cases discussed here, from the accounts online, it is not entirely clear when police committed perjury themselves, as opposed
to coercing and/or suborning perjury or submitting false reports. See “Settling for Misconduct” [Database] by Chicago Reporter (2017):
https://projects.chicagoreporter.com/settlements/search/cases

136

Witzburg, D. & Carlson, M. (2022). “Use of Litigation Data in Risk Management Strategies for the Chicago Police Department” for the City of Chicago
Office of Inspector General: https://igchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Use-of-Litigation-Data-in-Risk-Management-Strategies-for-theChicago-Police-Department.pdf

false arrest as its primary cause category
(although only 4% of lawsuit payouts go towards
false arrests). This money could have been spent
on bettering our public schools, our infrastructure,
mental healthcare, or other positive communitybased interventions, but instead, it was

required to alleviate the consequences directly
caused by police officers' misconduct. Taken
together, these sources paint a clear picture of
systemic police lying at a significant cost to
community members.

S
N
O
I
T
A
D
N
E
M
M
O
REC

Our research shows that police perjury and false
reporting are deeply-rooted features of policing
in Cook County—especially in Chicago.

Police officers have enormous incentives
to lie and will continue to do so until the
punishments for their actions outweigh
the social, financial, and career rewards.
We find that there are five main ways that the
system can intervene to prevent these lies and
recommend that the legal system work to:
• Prevent and deter officers from using false
statements to justify police actions, such as
search warrants.
• Monitor officers when they are in the field,
• Enforce consequences when officers lie.
• Improve transparency, and
• Promote long-term cultural change.

LIMIT OPPORTUNITIES
FOR LYING
The culture and nature of policing provides ample
opportunity for officers to lie to advance their

137

personal or departmental agendas. Steps must be
taken by various legal system actors to limit
officers' opportunities to lie and to deter them
from being in communities under false pretenses.

1. OFFICERS SHOULD
FACE HIGHER SCRUTINY
BEFORE BEING GRANTED
SEARCH WARRANTS TO
DISCOURAGE FRIVOLOUS
WARRANTS.
Although both CPD and the CCSAO have recently
updated their search warrant procedures in
response to criticism,137 Chicago Appleseed and
the Council hold that these requirements do not
go far enough. Police officers should face
further review—particularly with the affidavit
application itself, officers should be required
to meet a certain minimum word count on their
explanation of the circumstance. There should
be more questions asked and information
required to minimize boilerplate language and
vague drafting that can enable lying later. For
example, in conflicts that may occur in the
presence of children, a search warrant
application could require extra information,

See Masterson, M. & Cherone, H. (2021). “CPD Unveils Revised Search Warrant Policies Following Botched Raids” for WTTW:
https://news.wttw.com/2021/05/14/cpd-unveils-revised-search-warrant-policies-following-botched-raids & Buckley, M. (2022). “After High-Profile
Botched Police Raids, Cook County Prosecutors Implementing New Requirements on Search Warrants” for Chicago Tribune:
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-cook-county-states-attorney-new-warrant-policy-20221209-ls4p42wqvbe7xnazyadey3qyk4story.html?utm_source=newsletter&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Breaking%20News&utm_content=861670638990

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

minimizing the likelihood of firearm display
and usage in front of them.138 Increasing the
burden on police to justify their searches and
provide specific information at the time of
warrant-seeking will reduce frivolous and
reckless raids as well as reduce the
opportunity for false reports.

2. A ROTATION OF JUDGES
SHOULD BE ADOPTED IN
ORDER TO CURB "JUDGE
SHOPPING" FOR SEARCH
WARRANT APPROVAL.
Another aid to generic search warrant
affidavits is “judge shopping,” where officers
pick from any of the seventy Cook County
judges available to approve warrants and rely
those who they believe are most likely to grant
warrants without hesitation.139 Unlike the
Federal system, which uses randomly rotating
magistrate judges to approve warrants, the
Cook County Circuit Court is prone to gaming.140
Cook County should employ a rotation system
for judges reviewing search warrants to
prevent police officers from selecting a judge
they believe will be amenable to approving
their warrant. Additional steps in this process
that could help thwart officers from “judge
shopping” include requiring a material change
of circumstance to reapply for a warrant on
the same person if the first is denied and
limiting the time window following an incident
or information acquisition to obtain a warrant.

MONITOR OFFICERS
IN THE FIELD
Another way to limit opportunities for officers to
lie is by providing better oversight and monitoring
when they are in the field.

3. BODY-WORN CAMERA
POLICIES IN ILLINOIS
MUST CHANGE SO
FOOTAGE IS PUBLICLY
ACCESSIBLE & POLICE
DEPARTMENTS MUST
ENSURE THAT OFFICERS
USE BWCS PROPERLY.
Body-worn cameras are a crucial piece of
technology that can (a) deter officers from
making false statements because they know
their actions are being recorded and (b) catch
police officers in lies when they happen. In
order to ensure proper community accessibility
and that officers are held accountable for their
actions, the Illinois General Assembly should
consider legislation requiring that (1) BWC
footage requests are released within 48 hours
and (2) footage for every arrest is kept on file
for at least three years, with any incidents
involving police violence kept on record for ten
years.141 Current Illinois policy states that all
recordings must be kept on file for 90 days,
and recordings of “flagged encounters” must
be kept for two years (encounters are flagged
when a complaint is filed, an officer discharged

138

“Attorney General Raoul Calls for Further Reforms to the Chicago Police Department’s Search Warrant Policy” [Press Release from the Illinois Office
of the Attorney General]. (2021). Accessible at https://illinoisattorneygeneral.gov/pressroom/2021_03/20210324.html

139

“Chicago Police Raids Rarely Turn Up Drugs. So Why Do Judges Keep Signing Off On Bad Search Warrants?” (2021) for CBS News:
https://www.cbsnews.com/chicago/news/chicago-police-raids-rarely-turn-up-drugs-so-why-do-judges-keep-signing-off-on-bad-search-warrants/

140

McCabe, P., Hon. Newman, M., & Hon. Gelpí, Jr., G. (2016). A Guide to the Federal Magistrate Judges System: A White Paper Prepared at the Request of
the Federal Bar Association. Accessible at https://www.fedbar.org/minnesota-chapter/wp-content/uploads/sites/54/2021/12/A-Guide-to-the-FederalMagistrate-Judges-System.pdf

141

See e.g., https://igchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/OIG-Review-of-Compliance-with-the-City-of-Chicagos-Video-Release-Policy-for-Use-ofForce-Incidents.pdf;https://www.google.com/url?q=http://www.chicagoappleseed.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/06/3-Gen-Order-G03-02-Use-ofForce-2-29-2020.pdf&sa=D&source=docs&ust=1669669704075460&usg=AOvVaw3YAB_VJQV96zEopIxKsWGO

a firearm during the encounter, death or
great bodily harm occurred to a person in
the recording, the encounter resulted in a
detention or arrest (not including minor traffic
or business offenses), the officer is subject to
an internal investigation, the recording is
deemed to have evidentiary value in a criminal
prosecution, or at the officer's request).142
The Chicago Police Department and all other
police departments in Cook County should
create and enforce protocols that penalize
officers who fail to turn on their cameras for
any interaction or arrest. This protocol should
be available to the public in order to promote
transparency and community trust. Given that
the CPD is one of the most resourced police
departments in the country,143 the proposed
changes will not require additional funding
as they do not require more personnel, only
a change in procedure.

4. PROSECUTORS SHOULD
BE REQUIRED TO REVIEW
BWC AND DASHBOARD
CAMERA FOOTAGE
BEFORE CHARGING.
State’s Attorneys should be required to review
body-warn camera footage whenever it is
available in order to ensure that the footage
matches the reports made by officers, to
avoid frivolous charges and arrests as much
as possible. Reviewing body-warn camera
footage would act as an alternate source
of information to police reports, reducing
reliance on police officers’ recounting of

versions of events. This practice places the
burden on the State’s Attorneys to perform
initial, basic due diligence in order to prevent
people from being wrongfully incarcerated or
charged due to police misconduct.

ENFORCE
CONSEQUENCES
FOR LYING

Law enforcement officials who lie, make false
statements, or file false reports must face legal,
social, and/or professional consequences.

5. THE COOK COUNTY
STATE'S ATTORNEY'S
OFFICE MUST CREATE
AND ENFORCE A PUBLIC
"DO NOT CALL" LIST &
AN ANONYMOUS
REPORTING SYSTEM.
This list should contain the names of any law
enforcement official in Cook County who has
lied during any part of their duty—including
those who have perjured themselves in the
past or have been found to have made false
reports elsewhere. Cops who lie should no
longer be able to testify and should have their
names published publicly for transparency.
Chicago Police officers are paid time-and-ahalf while testifying and likely would be pulled
from working in communities because of their
inability to testify. Furthermore, a procedure
must be created that makes it easy for
prosecutors to report people to be considered
for this list. A system should be created

142

See Illinois Law Enforcement Officer-Worn Body Camera Act (50 ILCS 706): https://www.ilga.gov/legislation/ilcs/ilcs4.asp?
ActID=3662&ChapterID=11&SeqStart=100000&SeqEnd=1000000

143

Turner, N. (2020). “What Policing Costs: A Look At Spending In America's Biggest Cities” for Vera Institute of Justice:
https://www.vera.org/publications/what-policing-costs-in-americas-biggest-cities

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

wherein the onus is not on State’s Attorneys
and defense attorneys to decide if a police
officer should be added to a “Do Not Call”
list. A prosecutor or lawyer should be able to
report their concerns confidentially through
an institutional mechanism – potentially
through COPA – which would help determine if
the cop should be added to a “Do Not Call” list.

,,_

This hawened because of these
poUce olJjcers who go on a witness
stand and lie ancl Ue and Ue.

_,,

6. INCREASE POLICE
OVERSIGHT BY GIVING
THE OFFICE OF THE
INSPECTOR GENERAL
AUTHORITY TO
OVERRULE THE BUREAU
OF INTERNAL AFFAIRS'
FINDINGS.
The need for police accountability is supported
144
by many scholars and has overwhelming
support from community members we
interviewed. We recommend that action be
taken to give an independent agency, such
as the Office of the Inspector General (OIG),
oversight over misconduct complaints. The
OIG currently has oversight over the CPD's
Bureau of Internal Affairs (BIA), but it is unable
to overrule BIA investigations. The current
arrangement allows a lack of accountability by
the BIA. To remedy this, the Inspector General
should be given the power to overrule the BIA’s
findings. This could allow for the prosecution
and punishment of more police officers who
have been found to have made false reports.
144

IMPROVE
TRANSPARENCY

There are many ways to improve transparency
of police actions and departmental protocol, but
to combat police perjury, it is also necessary for
prosecutors' procedures to be more transparent.

7. THE STATE'S
ATTORNEY'S OFFICE
SHOULD BE MORE
TRANSPARENT WITH
ITS PERFORMANCE
MEASURES AND
PROMOTION CRITERIA
& PUBLISH ITS
PROTOCOL FOR DEALING
WITH POLICE PERJURY
AND FALSE REPORTS.
The “win at all costs” approach to prosecuting
cases has led to prosecutors' willingness to
accept police officer reports with limited
questioning. In order to disrupt a “win at all
costs” mindset, the CCSAO should immediately
release their promotion criteria and work to
create criteria that do not emphasize winning
cases, but rather prosecutorial integrity and
fairness. This new incentive structure should
encourage ASAs to ensure that justice is
brought to the people in each case. In addition,
the Cook County State’s Attorney's Office
should release any protocols related to police
perjury or false reports and publicize their
“Do Not Call” lists. Access to this information
would help community members hold both
police and State’s Attorneys responsible for
doing their due diligence in instances where
perjury or false reports are suspected.

See e.g., supra note 45; Bloom, R. & Labovich, N. (2021). The Challenge of Deterring Bad Police Behavior. Case Western Reserve Law Review 71(3).
Accessible at https://scholarlycommons.law.case.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=4918&context=caselrev

PROMOTE
LONG-TERM
CULTURAL CHANGE
Culture - including the acceptance of the ”code
of silence” and the perpetuation of ”win at all
costs” prosecution - must change in order to
effectively limit police false reporting and
perjury in the future.

8. TRAIN PROSECUTORS
AND JUDGES TO HELP
THEM AVOID CASES
THAT RELY ON POLICE
FALSE REPORTS AS
EVIDENCE.
Training is necessary to ensure that
prosecutors and judges know how to address
issues of false reports. Prosecutor training
should focus on teaching prosecutors how to
check police and other witness statements
for accuracy and procedures for handling
cases in which police misconduct occurs.
Similarly, judges' training should focus on
being attentive to potential false statements
in their courtrooms and how to address
suspected false statements when they do
occur. Both prosecutors’ and judges’ trainings
should focus on explicit conversations about
pro-police bias in the legal system and the
effect it has on case outcomes and
communities with the goal of diminishing the
bias. Chicago Appleseed and the Council have
decided not to make a recommendation for
police training, because there is a strong body
of research demonstrating that police training
is not effective to alleviate misconduct.145
145

S
N
O
I
T
A
D
N
E
M
RECOM RY
SUMMA
LIMIT OPPORTUNITIES

• Police officers should face higher scrutiny before
•

being granted search warrants in order to
discourage frivolous warrants.
A rotation of judges should be adopted in order to
curb “judge shopping” for search warrant approval.

MONITOR OFFICERS

• Illinois body camera policy must be changed to
•

make footage more publicly accessible and police
departments must ensure that police officers use
their cameras properly.
State’s Attorneys should be required to review
any body-warn and dashboard camera footage
before charging.

ENFORCE CONSEQUENCES
• The Cook County State’s Attorney's Office must

•

create and enforce a publicly accessible “Do Not
Call” list and create an anonymous reporting
system.
Increase police oversight by giving the Office of
the Inspector General more authority to overrule
the Chicago Police Department’s Bureau of Internal
Affairs’ findings.

IMPROVE TRANSPARENCY

• The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office should

provide transparency on prosecutor performance
measures and promotion criteria and publish their
police perjury and false report protocol.

CULTURE CHANGE
• Prosecutors and judges should be given training

•

to help them avoid trying cases that rely on police
false reports as evidence.
The Chief Judge of the Circuit Court of Cook County
should call for the creation of a commission
focused on police perjury and false reports to
investigate the extent of the issue and provide
recommendations for systemic change.

See e.g., Preston, C. (2021). “Police Training is Broken. Can It Be Fixed?” for The Hechinger Report: https://hechingerreport.org/police-education-isbroken-can-it-be-fixed/; Mahbubani, R. (2020). “Officers Already Get Training to Deal with Biases They May Not Know They Have, but There's No
Evidence It Actually Works” for Insider: https://www.insider.com/police-defensive-deescalation-techniques-implicit-bias-training-2020-6

Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

9. THE CHIEF JUDGE OF
COOK COUNTY SHOULD
CREATE A COMMISSION
TO INVESTIGATE THE
EXTENT OF POLICE
PERJURY AND PROVIDE
RECOMMENDATIONS
FOR SYSTEMIC CHANGE.
A commission should be created that is similar
to the late 1980s Special Commission on the
Administration of Justice in Cook County, 146
nicknamed the Solovy Commission, which
focused on corruption within the Cook County
legal system. The mission of this commission
should be to encourage accurate testimony
in Cook County Courts, provide accountability,
and increase trust in the system. It should
work to find and implement

solutions to perjury, including the issues raised
in this report. The Office of the Chief Judge
(OCJ) could collaborate with Chicago's newly
formed Community Commission for Public
Safety and Accountability to convene this
commission. To be successful, this commission
would require cooperation from all judicial
system players and must be diverse, including
primarily people who have been impacted by
police perjury, private defense attorneys and
Public Defenders, and include judges, Assistant
State’s Attorneys, members of COPA, the OIG,
and law enforcement. The commission should
strive to dismantle systems that encourage
perjury and false reports and create an
environment within the Cook County Courts
where truth-telling thrives.

H
C
R
A
E
S
E
R
E
R
U
T
U
F
Future research would benefit from greater
analysis of the role Franks Hearings may have in
curbing police perjury. A Franks Hearing is an
evidentiary hearing dealing with defendants’ rights
to challenge evidence collected on the basis of a
search warrant that may have been granted on
the basis of false statement. 147 The case of U.S.
Supreme Court case of Franks v. Delaware (1978)
affirmed a person’s right to “challenge a warrant
seizing their person, papers, or effects and
otherwise outlining the case against them”
and defined certain circumstances wherein a
defendant can “assert that a police officer's

affidavit used to obtain a search warrant that
yields incriminating evidence was based on false
statements by the police officer.” 148 The hearing
is granted if a false statement was intentionally
included in the affidavit and necessary to the
finding of probable cause. It does not
automatically result in suppression of evidence,
and law enforcement can shield the majority of
the information used in an affidavit, but
nonetheless, these hearings may be a useful
tool to challenge and limit police false reports as
officers may be less likely to risk lying if it means
evidence will be suppressed. The potential of
Franks Hearings is a gap in our research.

146

Final Report of the Special Commission on the Administration of Justice in Cook County (1988), accessible at
https://jenner.com/system/assets/assets/SpecialCommissionAdminJusticeSolovyReport1988.pdf
147 Second District of the Illinois Appellate Court Order No. 2-19-0654, filed September 3, 2021, in People v. Johnson (2021 IL App (2d) 190654-U), accessible
at https://ilcourtsaudio.blob.core.windows.net/antilles-resources/resources/b84354ee-3ee4-4f26-9cf77f5eba3716b7/People%20v.%20Johnson,%202021%20IL%20App%20(2d)%20190654-U.pdf
148 See e.g., https://definitions.uslegal.com/f/franks-hearing/

N
O
I
S
U
L
CONC
Police perjury and false reporting is
an endemic aspect of the Cook County
legal system.
The Chicago Police Department, especially, has
a long and disturbing history of ignoring police
misconduct and rewarding cops who act unethically.
When system stakeholders or community members
call out perjury and false reporting, the CPD has
been known to cause harm to whistleblowers.

This kind of dishonorable behavior not
only undermines community trust in the
court system, but most importantly hurts
individuals, families, and communities—
and has even condemned people to years
of wrongful incarceration. In addition,
the issue poses a financial burden on Cook
County taxpayers who foot the bill for
lawsuit settlements against police.
Unfortunately, despite several attempts at reform
and clear codes and laws that perjury is illegal,
the collective culture tolerating police misconduct
and the fear of retaliation amongst legal system
actors prevents cops who lie from being exposed
and punished. The “code of silence” in the police
department prevents officers from reporting
instances of lying and often leads to police to
construct narratives in court and before trial that
fit their interests.

State’s Attorneys are in a unique position to
address the issue of false reports and perjury
but regularly lack the incentives and institutional
support to do so. Similarly, judges have an
important role to play in rooting out perjury by
doing more to affirmatively consider credibility
and identify false statements when they are evident
but have not, historically, risen to the occasion.
The issue of police false reporting is so pervasive
that it is seen as an open secret within the legal
system and the community, creating a feeling of
hopelessness among court actors and advocates
alike. While the issue is insidious, it can be rooted
out through a dedicated multi-pronged approach
with an emphasis on systemic change. Legal
system actors must work together to prevent and
deter police officers from using false statements
to obtain search warrants, monitor them when in
the field, enforce consequences when they lie,
increase transparency and accountability to the
community, and promote long-term cultural
change.
While this report has many policy recommendations,
prime among them is for the court to create a
commission of court actors, advocates, oversight
agencies, and community members to encourage
accurate testimony in the Cook County Circuit Court.
In order to remedy this issue, stakeholders must
convene with the goal of ensuring that all people
involved in the Cook County justice system are met
with just and prudent practices.

This report was researched and written by Izzy V. Laskero, Hannah E. Miller, Naomi Johnson, and Hanna SharifKazemi, with additional research support from Kyle Davis, Max Lupin, Maya Simkin, and Sarah Staudt, and editing
by Stephanie Agnew on behalf of Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts and the Chicago Council of Lawyers.
Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts & Chicago Council of Lawyers

APPENDIX:
EXONERATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES SINCE 1989
The number of exonerations for each state or territory is current as October 3, 2022, and includes all known
Federal and non-Federal cases in which a person was wrongly convicted and later exonerated. The table is
ranked in order of number exonerations per capita for every 100,000 people in each state/territory.

STATE/TERRITORY

Illinois (IL)

District of Columbia (DC)

TOTAL POPULATION

EXONERATIONS
PER CAPITA
per 100,000 people

TOTAL
EXONERATliONS

12,812,508

566

4.42

689,545

3.63

Louisiana (LA)

4,657,757

1.76

New York (NY)

20,201,249

340

1.68

Michigan (Ml)

10,077,331

159

1.58

Texas(TX)

29,145,505

442

1.52

Montana (MT)

1,084,225

1-48

Guam (GU)

153,836

1.30

Massachusetts (MA)

7,029,917

1.24

Wisconsin (WI)

5,893,718

1.20

Alaska (AK)

733,391

1.09

Oklahoma (OK)

3,959,353

1.09

Missouri (MO)

6,154,913

0.91

Connecticut {CT)

3,605,944

0.89

Mississippi (MS)

2,961,279

o.88

Pennsylvania {PA)

13,002,700

113

0.87

Ohio (OH)
Maryland {MD)

11,799,448

100

0.85

6,177,224

0.83

989,948

0.81

Delaware (DE)
Virginia {VA)

8,631,393

0.80

West Virginia (WV)

1,793,716

0.78

Nevada (NV)

3,104,614

0.74

New Jersey (NJ)

9,288,994

0.72

Table continued on next page.
This table was updated on January 11, 2023. The raw number of exonerations for each state and territory in this table from The National Registry of
Exonerations (accessible at https://www.law.umich.edu/special/exoneration/Pages/Exonerations-in-the-United-States-Map.aspx). The population
information in the table is based on 2020 U.S. Census data (accessible at https://state.1keydata.com/state-population.php).

~[prn~@m
APPENDIX

Table continued from previous page.
STATE/TERRITORY

TOTAL POPULATION

EXONERATIONS
PER CAPITA

TOTAL
EXONERATIONS

per 100,000 people

39,538,223

280

0.71

576,851

0.69

10,439,388

0.69

Washington (WA}

7,705,281

0.69

South Dakota (SD)

886,667

53
6

Indiana (IN)

6,785,528

0.63

Ut ah (UT)

3,271,616

0.58

Kansas (KS)

2,937,880

0.58

Alabama {AL)

5,024,279

0.56

Rhode Island {RI)

1,097,379

0.55

Oregon (OR)

4,237,256

0.54

35
36

Tennessee (TN)

6,910,840

0.54

Iowa (IA)

3,190,369

0.53

New Mexico (NM)

2,117,522

0.52

North Dakota (ND)

779,094

0.51

Kentucky (KY)

4,505,836

0.51

Nebraska (NE)

1,961,504

0.51

Vermont (VT)

643,077

0.47

Georgia (GA)

10,711,908

0.44

Arkansas {AR)

3,011,524

0.43

Florida (FL)

21,538,187

0.42

Minnesota (MN)

5,706,494

0.39

Arizona (AZ)

7,151,502

0.35

Hawaii (HI)

1,455,271

0.34

Idaho (ID)

1,839,106

0.33

Maine (ME)

1,362,359

0.29

Colorado (CO)

5,773,714

0.19

Puerto Rico

3,285,874

0.18

South Carolina {SC)

5,118,425

0.18

New Hampshire (NH}

1,377,529

9
2

California (CA)

Wyoming {WY)

North Carolina (NC)

Military

o.68

0.15

CHICAGO
APPLESEED
CENTER FOR FA I R COURTS

Chicago Council
OF LA .W YERS
Chicago-s public interest bar association