© 2024 WNIJ and WNIU
Northern Public Radio
801 N 1st St.
DeKalb, IL 60115
815-753-9000
Northern Public Radio
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations
Report for America is a national service program that places journalists into local newsrooms to report on under-covered issues and communities.

Complaint Against O'Shea Dismissed

Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco
Fire and Police Commissioner Meeting in City Hall

Rockford’s Board of Fire and Police Commissioners voted unanimously to dismiss a formal complaint against the city’s police chief.

Commissioners found no probable cause to proceed to an evidentiary hearing over a formal complaint alleging that Police Chief Daniel O’Shea violated policy by showing bias and discrimination.

The complaint arose over a commentO’Shea made in May during a news conference.

O’Shea said, “The 16, 17-year-olds running around shooting each other, we’re not wasting our time trying to save them. They are lost. We’re trying to focus on 4 or 5-year-olds all the way up to 12 or 13, where we have a chance at saving them, changing their lives and changing the direction they are going in it.”

 

Aija Penix wrote the complaint. She says the dismissal didn’t surprise her and that her fight is long from over. 

"What comes next as we move to the next level of accountability, and now we have to hold the commissioners accountable," said Penix. "And now we have to hold the mayor accountable because the people that he appointed to hold the police chief accountable are not doing so."

O’Shea stated his comments were misinterpreted. He pointed to several youth programs as evidence that he and the department are providing resources to support older teens.

  • Juanpablo Ramirez-Franco is a 2020 corps member for Report for Americaan initiative of the GroundTruth Project which is a national service program that places talented journalists in local newsrooms
Juanpablo covers environmental, substandard housing and police-community relations. He’s been a bilingual facilitator at the StoryCorps office in Chicago. As a civic reporting fellow at City Bureau, a non-profit news organization that focuses on Chicago’s South Side, Ramirez-Franco produced print and audio stories about the Pilsen neighborhood. Before that, he was a production intern at the Third Coast International Audio Festival and the rural America editorial intern at In These Times magazine. Ramirez-Franco grew up in northern Illinois. He is a graduate of Knox College.