RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, on July 23, 2018, a federal lawsuit was filed by a former investigator with the Independent Police Review Authority against the City of Chicago claiming he was fired for refusing to lie and make a police-involved shooting seem unjustified; and
WHEREAS, Kelvin Lett, a former investigator with the Independent Police Review Authority, which is now known as the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, alleges that while he was working with the agency, then-Chief Administrator Sharon Fairley suggested he needed to have a more devious mind and ordered him to "lie in his reports that a gun was planted on the victim by the officers involved in the shooing;" and
WHEREAS, Kelvin Lett alleges that when he refused to lie, Sharon Fairley demoted him from the position of investigator to janitor; and
WHEREAS, Kelvin Lett alleges he was then wrongfully fired by Sharon Fairley in connection to a 2012 incident where Chicago police tased Lett's friend, Philip Coleman, who later died, in which an investigation showed that Lett released confidential information about Coleman's death; and
WHEREAS, Kelvin Lett was subsequently rehired and assigned to a position as a FOIA officer after a third party arbitrator ruled in his favor, but claims that he is not being allowed to return to work; and
WHEREAS, if factual, the events alleged in Kelvin Lett's complaint suggest that then-Chief Administrator Sharon Fairley instructed a City of Chicago employee to falsify investigative reports into police-involved shootings, both weakening the agency's credibility and harming the careers of police officers; and
WHEREAS, in addition, if the events alleged in Kelvin Lett's complaint are factual, other falsified investigative reports could have been made at behest of Sharon Fairley in separate incidents of police-involved shootings; and
WHEREAS, the use of falsified reports in Independent Police Review Authority investigations concerning police-involved shootings not only tarnishes the credibility of past investigations made by the Independent Police Review Authority and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, but could potentially have affected the lives and careers of the police officers investigated; and
WHEREAS, the allegations made by Kelvin Lett in his complaint against the City of Chicago and the Independent Police Review Authority are severe, and call for an investigation to be made by the proper authority into the events described involving then-Chief Administrator Sharon Fairley; now, therefore
BE IT RESOLVED, that we, the Mayor and the members of the Chicago City Council, assembled this twenty-fifth of July, 2018, do hereby urge the Office of the Inspector General and Cook County State's Attorney's Office to open an investigation into the events described in Kelvin Lett's federal lawsuit against the City of Chicago.