Opinion & Comment

Comment: The Who did the Huh with the What now?

In every big city in the world, and the little ones, too, every so often there comes a simple story that, at first, seems relatively inconsequential until one thing leads to another and you're wide eyed and thinking to yourself, "the Who did the Huh with the What now?"

Craig Walker

01 Mar 2022 — 11 min read

From L to R: Chief of Internal Affairs Yolanda Talley, Andrea Kersten of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, Kenneth Miles the informant, and Anjanette Young from the New York Times profile.

In every big city in the world, and the little ones, too, every so often there comes a simple story that, at first, seems relatively inconsequential but, as more and more information is scrutinized and one thing reveals itself to lead to another, you follow the white rabbit and, next thing you know, you find yourself reporting from Wonderland. Or if I'm really going to start this off with a reference to a children's book, maybe it'd be better said due to the Chicago connection that, one day, among the many pathways and roads nearby, all of which lead in various directions, you find the one paved with bright yellow bricks.

Next thing you know, you're looking up from the paper or the computer or the television with wide eyes and perhaps a smirk and thinking to yourself, "the Who did the Huh with the What now?!"

On February 1st, officers in a gang investigations squad were targeting drug sales on the city's west side when, according to a police report, they saw a man in a black mask pick up a bag near a black SUV and enter the passenger side of a silver Lexus. Officers followed the vehicle and said they originally moved to stop the car in the 500 block of N. Saint Louis Avenue in the East Garfield Park neighborhood because the driver made a left turn without using a turn signal but, while they were following, the man in the passenger side allegedly tossed a Ziploc bag containing 84 pink packets of heroin out the window.

When they went back to the bag, Police said they recovered about 42 grams of heroin worth about $6,300. They arrested the man and he was charged with possession of a controlled substance. The driver of the Lexus was not taken into custody.

The man they arrested has an extensive criminal record that includes multiple drug-related arrests, seven of which resulted in convictions. At the time of the February 1 arrest we're discussing, he was free on bond in a separate felony case for manufacturing and delivering fentanyl.

Simple story, right?

Another low-level drug dealer taken off the streets. Book 'im, Dano. Open and shut case. Nothing to see here...

A couple weeks later, the Sun-Times received a tip that the silver Lexus the man was arrested in on February 1 was registered to Yolanda Talley, Chief of Internal Affairs.^[1]

"Well, that's not all that interesting," you might think to yourself. "From sea to shining sea, everyone knows Chicago auto thefts have skyrocketed in recent years. Surely, the Chief of Internal Affairs' car was stolen and used to distribute drugs on the city's west side," may be your next thought?

The Lexus was being driven by Yolanda Talley's niece. Her niece who, according to the Sun-Times' source, even name-dropped Talley to the arresting officers, saying, "My auntie’s probably your boss."

"Well, you know," you might say as you shake your head with a shrug. "Young people these days have no respect. What're ya gonna do?"

Talley's niece was cut loose due to a lack of evidence connecting her with the drugs. From there, the Lexus was taken to the Homan Square impound where it was reportedly decided by top CPD brass to forgo normal procedure and release the vehicle. And, it turns out, the day after the initial incident, the arresting officers were pulled from streets with no explanation and assigned to "soft desk" duty, where they've sat ever since.

Additionally, it has been reported that the man who was arrested was "a reputed member of the Traveling Vice Lords street gang" and that he is in a relationship with and lives with the Chief of Internal Affairs' niece. Again, the niece who was driving the Chief of Internal Affairs' car while, ostensibly, participating in the distribution of drugs on the city's west side.

"Well, I guess," you're probably thinking. "pretty wild..."

But the story's not done...

Chicagoans may recall the wrongful raid of Anjanette Young’s home in February 2019?

You know, the case in which the city cut a $2.9 million settlement check to end litigation in December?^[2] You know, the case in which Mayor Lori Lightfoot claimed she didn't know anything about the strange circumstances surrounding the botched raid but it turned out she and her administration most definitely did know?^[3] You know, the case in which the Civilian Office of Police Accountability's report took heavy criticism for it's handling of after action recommendations where they even recommended punishment for Officer Ella French's role in the raid, and released it publicly three months after she was killed in the line of duty?^[4]

Yeah, that case.

Due to good ol' fashioned sleuthing and the extremely poor mishandling of sensitive records and data by COPA in that Anjanette Young case, CWBChicago dropped the bombshell that the informant whose bad information led police to Anjanette Young's home and to the eventual $2.9 million settlement with the city was, in fact, the same 6-time felon and reputed Vice Lords gang member arrested on February 1, 2022, after tossing $6,300 in heroin from the passenger seat of the silver Lexus SUV registered to Yolanda Talley, Chief of Internal Affairs, and in a live-in relationship with her niece who was ostensibly helping to distribute those drugs and was comfortable enough to name drop her in her arrest.^[5]

Again, all information on a confidential police informant that CWBChicago gleaned from and uncovered due to lackadaisical review of the public release of the Anjanette Young COPA report, the same above mentioned report that everyone from CPD to COPA to the Mayor botched and Chicago taxpayers all cut the check for.

Uh-huh.

The Who did the Huh with the What now?

When you've finished shaking your head, I'm sure that you, like me, can conjure dozens of follow up questions for police and city leadership and dozens of follow-up questions stemming from of those dozens of follow-up questions.

Don't worry, I won't list them. Many are obvious and need to be answered by the new Chief of Internal Affairs and she better have some damn good answers for those questions but, to me, there's not much fun in discussing the obvious. I'd like to take a different approach with my initial thoughts.

While I admit I am trepidatious to do so and acknowledge I may have to revisit this take in the future, my slings and arrows are pointed much further than Yolanda Talley and I see the most glaring targets off in the distance shining not on her, specifically, but more on the general sense of leadership in this city writ large.

By all available records and accounts, Yolanda Talley has been a rising star in the Chicago Police Department and, in recent years, has been quickly promoted through the ranks.^[6]

Raised within and still living on the city's west side, Talley's a 25-year veteran of the department. In recent promotions, Police have touted that, early in her career, she worked as an undercover narcotics officer. She's a graduate of Northwestern University’s school of police staff and command and has a master’s degree in forensic psychology from the Chicago School of Professional Psychology. She's worked as a commander and watch operations lieutenant in the Austin District and was the Deputy Chief of Recruitment and Retention. The department publicly announced that Talley was promoted to the Chief of Internal Affairs on December 1, 2021.

I want to give her the benefit of the doubt. At least, for a time...

Human nature being what it is, this happens all the time. People are alike all over, after all, and though the players on the stage may change the stories are the same.

We can try but, ultimately, none of us can change who our family members love or those they try to love. No matter our rank or position or level of success, all of us have that family member or close friend who...doesn't make the best choices when it comes to relationships. And if you can't think of that person in your own circle, it's you.

That doesn't mean we can't or don't continue to do our best to help those family and friends, try to guide them, and, most importantly, be there for them when they, hopefully, learn from the mistakes we all make on this long journey through life. Including but not limited to continuing to let them use your silver Lexus.

That's not to absolve the IA Chief of any responsibility, as I tried to enunciate above, but it's also to turn the light away from the public interrogation of a potential personal family matter onto the larger problems exposed and the bigger questions requiring answers from CWBChicago's excellent follow-up reporting.

As the conversation over redefining police policies has boiled these last few years, and violent crime has continued to rise through the same period, Chicago as a whole continues to struggle to define the basic fundamentals and come to terms with the contentious nature of the job itself. It allows a tiny but loud fraction of its populace to twist its feckless leaders into knots in order to obfuscate and redefine common sense principles.

The result? Tensions remain high. The feeling of alienation among officers is profound and to say morale in the ranks is low can't be properly expressed with the word understatement. Just as with citizens fleeing the city and state for greener pastures, officers continue to seek work elsewhere, anywhere but here. With upwards of 3,000 department retirements fast approaching and an alarmingly low number of recruits, the city is on the brink of a policing crisis.

Yet the leadership, who are supposed to be the reformers of this supposed unwritten code of conduct, time and time again get caught with their pants down protecting themselves, even for the petty or relatively small personal problems (does anyone remember Eddie Johnson's affair and drunk snooze behind the wheel?), and get caught using excuses to hide behind others' mistakes or the bad policies their city administrators create solely for campaign ads while preaching outside both sides of their mouths about how its least powerful citizens need to follow the letter of the law and be held accountable. And then they wonder why people like Kim Foxx win elections to be their lead prosecutor?

What's worse? The leadership of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, the people who are supposed to be the whom of those who watch the watchmen, can not only seemingly not be bothered by or don't have the decency and respect to figure out a way to work around a simple municipal policy code to protect the reputation of a beloved Officer killed in the line of duty, that same leadership cannot even be trusted to protect the community members who may or may not one day be tasked with informing on those who continue to terrorize this city with its plague of violent crime. What community member in their right mind is going to respect and want to work with the Chicago Police Department when not even the people who this administration and those that came before have done all they can to convince that community this office and more government over their daily lives is the panacea for their problems has the decency to do a proper review of the public release of paperwork? That's the reform they're so proud of?

Oh, by the way, that same woman who was in charge of that Anjanette Young report and its now incomprehensibly bungled public release?

Andrea Kersten was confirmed by the city council to lead the city’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability last Wednesday.^[7]

Uh-huh.

The Who did the Huh with the What now?

Many will read the above as a full throated defense of Deputy Chief Talley and/or the Chicago Police Department as a whole but, I assure you, that is not the case. To reiterate once more, as I tried to indicate above there are tough questions for Yolanda Talley, tough questions for First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter and Superintendent David Brown, and there are tough questions for Mayor Lori Lightfoot and her administration, all of whom have yet to answer anything beyond the usual stock, legally protected response, "we're continuing to investigate." Further, there are more tough questions to ask of Andrea Kersten who was in charge of the COPA report on the Anjanette Young case, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability as a whole and their ability to adjudicate law enforcement, and of the City Council.

The difference between well-run cities and poorly run cities is simple. Leadership.

Just when you begin to think the behavior of the people in leadership positions in this town can't possibly get anymore absurd, another story like this one comes to light and I'm forced to harp on this time and time again because city leadership continues to fail to get it right. Regardless of how this incident eventually plays out, it's yet another highlight in the long line of highlights to one of my primary recent themes. It's yet another example in a long line of examples of the hypocrisy and incompetence the people of this city see and experience on a daily basis. And it's a big, bright, shining star of an example for critics to point toward and will outshine hundreds of jobs well-done.

We carry high-end film cameras, recording studios, and publishing houses in our pockets and they can't answer an honest question. And those of us trapped within these city limits and this region continue to be lorded over by a leadership, and the constituents that mind-bogglingly elect them, who are so quick to promise and profess their commitment to transparency and all the talking points that go with it while continuing to create more and more levels of bureaucracy and made-up nonsense to hide behind.

It's oxymoronic. We're being led by oxymorons. None of whom can or will or do answer for any of their decision-making. They get promoted. They get appointed to higher positions by city council. They win elections.

And that makes us oxymorons.

You voted for this, Chicago. This is what you continue to allow. Over and over and over again, you blindly follow this leadership to the same destination.

Uh-huh.

The Who did the Huh with the What now?

If you haven't figured it out, yet, it's you.