Across Illinois, police officers with proven histories of misconduct continue to move from one department to another—sometimes after being fired, sometimes while being flagged by prosecutors as unreliable witnesses.
In theory, longstanding Supreme Court precedents should prevent officers from slipping through the cracks by requiring prosecutors to disclose all of their credibility issues to defense attorneys. In practice, however, prosecutors' compliance with the law has been uneven and inconsistent, undermining Illinoisans' due process rights and contributing to wrongful convictions.
This investigation will be the first to track, statewide, how officers with credibility problems evade scrutiny and remain in positions with authority to make arrests.
By creating a public database of tarnished officers and bringing greater attention to this issue, this project aims to bring some long-overdue accountability to prosecutors who aren't fulfilling their constitutional duties and the officers whose misconduct has gone unnoticed. The reporting will expose not just individual failures by specific prosecutors, but the policy gaps and weak oversight that allow officers' misconduct to go unchecked.
