With the release last Friday of a batch of police shooting videos, Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority has given the public what it’s been clamoring for. But as visitors to IPRA’s portal have already learned, videos of police shootings rarely are clear, coherent, and germane. Many of the videos show “hours of things like cops milling around at crime scenes and grainy images of tree tops,” as WBEZ put it.
That’s absolutely true. The problem is that under IPRA’s new policy, although videos of police shootings will be released quickly—usually within 60 days—the “critical facts and context” may not be made available to the public for months or even years.
Valid or not, all this means that under IPRA’s new quick-release video policy, citizens will be able to watch the videos months before they can intelligently assess what they’re watching.
Complicating matters is the fact that IPRA’s days are numbered: in April, Mayor Emanuel’s Police Accountability Task Force called for IPRA to be replaced with another oversight body, and Emanuel said last month he plans to do just that. Sissac says Fairley hopes that whatever lessons IPRA learns in the meantime will be used by the new oversight agency.
