Chicago's criminal cop crews
Chicago police data study yields index for identifying networks of criminal cops
The study detected approximately 160 potential "crews" of officers, networked by formal or informal work assignments and co-allegations. "Crew" officers comprise less than 4% of all Chicago police officers, yet they account for approximately 25% of all use-of-force complaints, city payouts for civil and criminal litigations and police-involved shootings.
Detected "crews" also contribute disproportionately to racial disparities in arrests and civilian complaints, generating nearly 18% of all complaints filed by Black Chicagoans and 14% of complaints filed by Hispanic Chicagoans.
"This paper shows we can identify possible crews of bad cops using historical examples, like the Ronald Watts case, as a point of calibration," Papachristos said. "The Watts case is shaping up to be one of the largest police corruption scandals in U.S. history, and our paper shows what we're learning here can possibly help us find other groups of criminal oriented cops.'"
"We know that more than 200 convictions have been overturned because of the Watts case alone," Papachristos said. "If our results hold, we are talking about possibly thousands of Chicagoans who have been directly subjected to such cop crewsand even more that have been indirectly impacted."
https://phys.org/news/2022-05-chicago-police-yields-index-networks.html