But data recently obtained by the Citizens Police Data Project show that there are quite a few bad officers in the Chicago Police Department, many of whom have exhibited patterns of misconduct without punishment. University of Chicago Law School professor Craig Futterman and the Invisible Institute, a journalism nonprofit, has published visualizations of the Chicago police misconduct data, including a set that names police officers who’ve been the subject of complaints, how many complaints each has received, and how often they’ve been disciplined.
The biggest takeaway is that it appears from the data that Chicago cops are rarely punished, even when found culpable for the misconduct they’re accused of. Van Dyke was the subject of 17 citizen complaints in the years before he killed McDonald, though he was not penalized for any of them. The data profile below, also from Futterman’s project, shows another police officer, Raymond Piwincki, who’s had 68 complaints filed against him, but has only been penalized twice.