As the Illinois Appellate Court weighs arguments over the future of police discipline in Chicago, two rulings by the Chicago Police Board have been bolstered by Cook County judges.
In one case, decided last month, Cook County Judge Michael Mullen denied an effort by Chicago police Superintendent Larry Snelling to impose discipline on an officer, James Hunt, whom the board cleared of wrongdoing in 2023. Hunt had faced administrative charges for his role in a chaotic arrest during the riots and unrest of summer 2020 in the wake of George Floyd’s murder by a Minneapolis police officer.
It was the first time since 2015 that the city’s top cop filed a complaint for administrative review against the police board. Snelling said the board’s findings “are not supported by the record, are clearly erroneous, and/or are against the manifest weight of the evidence.”
In the other case, ruled on in late October, Cook County Judge David Atkins upheld the police board’s decision to fire a sergeant who was involved in the February 2019 raid at the home of social worker Anjanette Young. Court records show the sergeant, Alex Wolinski, is now appealing the Circuit Court decision.
Representatives for the Chicago Police Department and the city’s Law Department, which handles police board cases, declined to comment. An attorney for Wolinski did not respond to an inquiry.
Hunt is currently assigned to the South Chicago District (4th), police said.
Jim McKay, Hunt’s attorney, said in a statement to the Tribune: “Officer James Hunt did nothing wrong during the George Floyd riots in Chicago that day. He never should have been charged.”
“The evidence at the Chicago Police Board hearing was overwhelmingly in favor of Officer Hunt,” McKay said. “In fact, when the alleged victim testified at the hearing she identified some other officer as the offender. She testified that she never saw Officer Hunt. I submit that it was an easy decision for the Board and it was an easy decision for Judge Mullen.”
The police board voted in October 2023 to find Hunt not guilty of all the administrative charges brought against him. Hunt was accused of violating nine different CPD rules during the arrest of a woman who struck a police officer with her car as she tried to drive away from a violent scene near Kinzie and Dearborn streets. After he saw the collision, Hunt ran over to the vehicle and broke the rear driver’s side window with his baton, records show.
The driver was soon arrested and charged with disorderly conduct, but prosecutors later dropped the case.
The board’s decision to acquit Hunt was nearly unanimous. In its October ruling, board members said that attorneys for the city weren’t even close to proving Hunt’s guilt, though they said the officer’s behavior at the time of the arrest was not ideal.
“(Hunt) acted in the best way he saw fit within the limited amount of time he had to ensure everyone’s safety in the context of a chaotic and violent scene,” the board wrote in its decision.
CPD records show Hunt joined the department in 2013. He was the subject of at least two other internal investigations in recent years. The Independent Police Review Authority cleared him in the fatal 2014 shooting of a 17-year-old boy in the Chatham neighborhood. Four years after that, Hunt was captured on cellphone video telling two men, “I kill mother——-.”
In Wolinski’s case, 13 CPD tactical officers used a no-knock warrant — based on bad information — to enter Young’s Near West Side home on Feb. 21, 2019, in search of a man believed to have an illegal gun. Police body-camera footage of the raid showed officers handcuffed Young, who was naked when police arrived, as she repeatedly told them that they were in the wrong place.
Less severe CPD misconduct cases are still being adjudicated internally, but decisions in the most serious cases — those historically decided by the police board — have slowed to a trickle over the last 18 months.
The impasse stems from a 2023 union contract award that provides accused officers with an option: have their misconduct cases decided in public by the police board, or opt for a third-party arbitrator to hear and decide the case out of public view. So far, just six CPD officers have asked for board hearings. Meanwhile, both the city and the Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents rank-and-file CPD officers, have filed briefs with the Illinois Appellate Court.
The city’s contract with the FOP bars a superintendent from unilaterally firing an officer. If he could pluck an officer from the department, Snelling previously said, that would “resolve a lot of issues.”