After firing their guns, some Chicago police officers returned to work without completing the required training that’s designed to help them process trauma, the city’s watchdog said in a new report issued Tuesday.
“The discharge of a CPD member’s firearm may have enormous consequences impacting members of the community, but also impacting the member themselves,” Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Deborah Witzburg said in a statement.
“CPD members who have discharged their firearm should not be returned to duty unless, and until, it is safe and appropriate for them to do so. The Department must have a robust process in place to manage that return — and it must comply with that process.”
CPD policy requires that officers who fire their gun — while on or off duty — must be assigned to administrative duty for 30 days and complete three counseling sessions and training courses. Officers who fire their weapon on accident or to kill a threatening animal are exempt.
The Office of the Inspector General found that 52 CPD officers fired their guns between February 2017 and June 2018.
Those officers were required to participate in a counseling session within three days of the shooting. Another mandatory training session is designed to inform officers support services available to them. That session, dubbed “Critical Incident Overview Training,” also includes time at the CPD’s firing range to re-acclimate officers with firing their weapon. The third training session, administered by the CPD’s Education and Training Division, is tailored individually to each officer.
The OIG found that, of the 52 officers examined, nine of them returned to their normal duties without completing their Critical Incident Overview Training. One of those nine was involved in another shooting less than two months later, according to the OIG. Another officer did not complete the Traumatic Incident Stress Management training session and later committed suicide.
Neither officer was identified in the report.
The CPD’s first deputy superintendent is ultimately responsible for an officer returning to their normal duties after the officer is involved in a shooting. The OIG said the the first deputy’s office “has not yet developed or adhered to consistent procedures for fulfilling its responsibility to monitor and verify the satisfaction of all return-to-duty requirements.”
For its part, according to the OIG, the CPD “agrees that the Post-Firearm Discharge protocols should be standardized and [the CPD is] working to determine the best way to do this.”
“That said, it is important to not that the recommendations made by the OIG report appear to be based on the exception rather than the rule.”
