COPA Chicago Police Oversight Boss Andrea Kersten Faced Mutiny, Removal Vote Before Resigning

Andrea Kersten’s tenure as the boss of the city of Chicago’s police accountability oversight agency was turbulent from the start.

Her decision to recommend that slain Officer Ella French be suspended for her role in the wrongful raid of social worker Anjanette Young’s home sparked a furor among Chicago City Council members considering whether to accept Kersten’s appointment as executive director of the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

After apologizing, Kersten was confirmed in February 2022. But controversy continued to follow her — even after she announced her resignation earlier this month while facing what the Chicago Sun-Times has learned was a potentially embarrassing vote.

Before she quit, Kersten got a letter Jan. 27 from the city’s Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability saying the oversight panel planned a vote of no-confidence in her, knowledgeable sources told the Sun-Times.

The extraordinary move — spurred by staffers alleging mismanagement and anti-police bias — set in motion a process that could have brought Kersten back before the City Council, which has the power to vote to remove COPA’s leader from office.

Kersten remains at the center of lawsuits filed by two fired COPA officials and the city’s largest police union based on similar complaints.

She has been criticized over her handling of high-profile police misconduct cases, including an investigation into an unfounded rumor about a cop impregnating a migrant teenager and another targeting the officers who got into a deadly gunfight with Dexter Reed.

A source close to COPA’s leadership says Kersten stands by her work, framing the effort to oust her as an attempted coup led by a faction of the city agency’s staff. The source paints the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability’s inquiry into their complaints as an overreach by an understaffed and relatively new body.

That city agency started the process to remove Kersten before Inspector General Deborah Witzburg’s office closed an investigation that the oversight body had pushed for, according to the source, who questions the panel’s decision to hold closed-door meetings with COPA staffers. That was even though it has no investigatory powers with confidentiality protections.

But Anthony Driver, president of the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability, says he stands behind the panel’s efforts “to strengthen accountability.”

“City government employees who decide to come forward with any accusations deserve to be heard and respected, not attacked,” Driver says. “The CCPSA is doing its job, which includes listening to anyone who raises credible concerns and carefully scrutinizing any claims it receives.”

Anthony Driver Jr., president of the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability.

When Kersten announced her resignation, she credited COPA’s independence and transparency and said she was leaving “with deep appreciation and respect for the committed staff and leadership.”

A COPA supervisor, speaking on the condition of not being named, paints a different picture, describing an agency in disarray. A day after Kersten’s Feb. 13 announcement she’d be resigning, Ephraim Eaddy, her second-in-command, informed staff members he was leaving, too.

CCPSA now must find her replacement, who will need to be confirmed by the full City Council.

A revolt inside COPA

The outside investigations of Kersten’s conduct began in earnest last August, after she fired two staff members who had complained about her leadership. The former employees — Matthew Haynam, who was COPA’s deputy chief administrator, and Garrett Schaaf, a supervising investigator — said that was retaliation and have sued over their dismissals.

Days after they were fired, Haynam and Schaaf, along with 14 other current and former COPA employees, sent a letter to the Community Commission on Public Safety and Accountability, pushing for the panel to start the process of firing her.

“We strongly urge the CCPSA to treat this matter with the seriousness it warrants, as it directly affects the integrity and effectiveness of COPA in fulfilling its mission to the public and in holding the police department accountable,” they wrote in the letter obtained by the Sun-Times. “If this situation continues, we are concerned that Ms. Kersten’s actions will irreparably tarnish the agency’s reputation and undermine the public’s confidence in the model of civilian-led police oversight.”

The letter prompted the closed-door meetings that culminated in CCPSA’s notice to Kersten about the looming no-confidence vote.

Aside from claims of retaliation, the current and former staffers cited what they paint as a range of misconduct and mismanagement. They wrote that:

The agency’s disciplinary recommendations had been “issued without regard for fairness or consistency” under Kersten, who “actively obstructed COPA investigative staff’s access to essential information, at times misled the public and manipulated investigations to align with her own policy agenda and to manage public perception.”
The chief administrator’s tenure “has been marked by inconsistencies in the handling of complaints and a lack of focus on COPA’s core mission and values of complaint investigations and transparency.”
Kersten’s leadership “has been heavily rooted in cronyism, which has had a detrimental effect on staff morale and the overall functioning of COPA.”
She has criticized other city agencies and refused to resolve disagreements over misconduct findings and disciplinary decisions with police Supt. Larry Snelling, who publicly lambasted Kersten’s response to the shootout in which Reed was killed.
Kersten’s administration demonstrated a “marked lack of initiative” in making recommendations to change the Chicago Police Department’s policies, practices and training, threatening reform.

CCPSA has the authority to remove a COPA chief for “just cause” — a legal standard that typically refers to serious misconduct or poor job performance.

But the source close to COPA’s leadership says the evidence fell short of meeting that burden, noting that CCPSA had given her glowing performance reviews in recent years and describing staff members’ complaints as part of an unfounded hit job.

‘A lot of palace intrigue’

The current turmoil at COPA marks the latest backslide in the city’s experiment with civilian police oversight, which began in the 1970s with the Chicago Police Department’s troubled Office of Professional Standards and continued with the city’s successor agency, the Independent Police Review Authority.

IPRA faced criticism for rarely sustaining accusations of misconduct in shootings by police officers. The agency was disbanded amid the firestorm that followed the police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald on the Southwest Side. Months after City Hall finally made public video of the deadly shooting, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced that COPA was being established to replace IPRA in August 2016.

Kersten rose the ranks at COPA after working as a Cook County prosecutor and an administrative law judge for the Illinois Department of Healthcare and Family Services. Before being installed as the interim chief and confirmed for the full-time job, she worked in COPA’s legal department, was the deputy chief administrator for investigations and led the agency’s investigative unit.

The COPA supervisor questions Kersten’s leadership style and says that, though some staffers had complained and spoke with CCPSA members last summer, the “internal dissent” grew after Kersten fired Haynam and Schaaf.

“This has been a lot of palace intrigue and drama and lawsuits, and it’s all totally unnecessary and unhelpful for the city,” the COPA supervisor says. “I’m personally looking forward to hopefully someone from the outside coming in.”

The inspector general’s office has also stepped in, according to the supervisor, who says about six COPA employees have been interviewed by the internal watchdog agency, some of them multiple times.

Inspector General Witzburg won’t comment on the investigation. But she says the city’s lagging reform efforts hinge on creating a police disciplinary system that works for those reporting misconduct and the officers targeted in investigations.

“It should be a system where, when something does go wrong, we are equipped to deal with it in a responsible and transparent way which people have confidence in,” she said. “So that members of the public can be confident that, if something bad happens to them, their complaint will be pursued thoroughly and appropriately. And members of the [police] department can be confident that, if they’re accused of doing something wrong, they’re going to be treated fairly, and their rights are going to be protected.”

Deborah Witzburg, City Hall's inspector general. — Deborah Witzburg, City Hall’s inspector general

While CCPSA is conducting a nationwide search for the next COPA chief, which could take months, it’s up to Mayor Brandon Johnson to appoint an interim replacement for Kersten even as the City Council remains deeply divided over policing issues.

Johnson, who has said he wants to do more to address the causes of crime as part of his policing strategy, has limited power, though, over the selection of a permanent COPA boss. His office didn’t respond to questions.

As part of its search, CCPSA will identify a candidate for the job, and that person’s appointment then would be subject to City Council confirmation.

Driver, the commission’s president, says the body will continue to be a check on the officials leading the agencies it oversees — COPA, CPD and the Chicago Police Board.

“I will not turn a blind eye to any injustice that I believe is occurring while I’m in this role,” he says, “and I will always push for the strongest accountability system.”

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