Chicago police boss, COPA don’t see eye to eye on fatal police shooting of Reginald Clay Jr.

A fatal shooting two weeks earlier was still on the officers’ radar.

Gunfire had left a 32-year-old man dead on west Flournoy Street in the West Garfield Park neighborhood, and police had no suspects. Now, three plain-clothes officers from the Chicago Police Department’s Harrison District (11th) were pulling up to a two-flat in the 3800 block of west Flournoy — about a block from the earlier shooting — and found several people standing outside.

Someone else nearby yelled out, “It’s real,” signaling to others that police officers had arrived. It was just before 10 a.m. on April 15, and one of the men, 24-year-old Reginald Clay Jr., was leaning against a nearby vehicle.

“Get the (expletive) out of here,” one of the men told the officers. “We’re going to a funeral,” mentioning services for the man killed two weeks earlier.

Clay soon started to walk away through a nearby gangway, armed with a handgun. Officer Fernando Ruiz, who followed Clay into the gangway, ordered him to drop the gun, and then opened fire.

COPA has now called for Officer Ruiz to be dismissed. But CPD superintendent Larry Snelling disagreed, instead calling for the officer to face a brief suspension, one of the latest examples in which COPA and CPD have taken disparate views on an officer’s recommended punishment for alleged misconduct.

Despite Snelling’s initial call for a two-day suspension, city law now dictates that CPD file administrative charges against Ruiz — a process that will likely take years to resolve — after the president of the Chicago Police Board last week ruled that the superintendent did not overcome the preponderance of evidence laid out by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability.

COPA centered its decision on the foot pursuit that preceded the high-profile shooting, records show.

Snelling has responded by saying, in effect, that COPA did not take into account that officers were operating with a heightened sense of awareness due to the earlier homicide.

“In this case, COPA did not assess the reasonableness of P.O. Ruiz’s foot pursuit based on the totality of the circumstances related to the incident,” Snelling wrote to COPA chief administrator Andrea Kersten. “P.O. Ruiz’s actions were in line with CPD policy, and the evidence presented by COPA is legally insufficient to sustain this allegation.”

The differing opinion could be a demonstration of Snelling’s police experience colliding with an agency that, amid scrutiny from law enforcement supporters, has sought to quickly address high-profile shootings in recent years while the department is facing mandated reforms. And all of it comes against the backdrop of a disciplinary process that remains essentially frozen as the result of a legal battle between City Hall and Chicago’s largest police union.

That “nonconcurrence” between COPA and CPD triggered a process in which a single member of the Chicago Police Board, selected at random, would decide if that officer would face administrative charges. During the board’s monthly meeting last week, Cooper announced that would be the case.

“After considering this matter, reviewing the evidence in the review file and the body-camera footage, it is my opinion that the superintendent did not meet (his) burden of overcoming the chief administrator’s recommendation for discipline,” Cooper said. “Therefore the recommendation of the chief administrator will be adopted by the police board.”

Cooper added that the rest of the process is still to play out.

“It is important to note that this ruling does not mean that the accused officer is currently being found guilty of the alleged misconduct, it only means that this matter will now proceed to either a hearing before the police board or, if the officer chooses, public or private arbitration, depending on the outcome of the court ruling.”

Ruiz violated CPD’s foot pursuit policy when he followed Clay and he failed to use de-escalation tactics, but the shooting did not break any CPD rules, COPA found. The officer also failed to notify the Office of Emergency Management and Communications of the foot pursuit and he didn’t turn on his body-worn camera in time. The agency recommended in May 2024 that CPD fire Ruiz.

“COPA finds by a preponderance that Officer Ruiz violated CPD’s foot pursuit policy for the following reasons: (1) Officer Ruiz did not have a valid law enforcement need to detain when he initiated the foot pursuit; and (2) even if Officer Ruiz had a valid law enforcement need to detain that need did not outweigh the threat to safety posed by the pursuit,” COPA investigators wrote in the agency’s final summary report of the shooting, obtained by the Tribune through a Freedom of Information Act request.

CPD responded in August to COPA’s findings and recommendations, records show. The department agreed that Ruiz didn’t activate his camera in time and that he failed to notify OEMC of the pursuit, but pushed back on COPA’s assertion that the foot pursuit was unjustified. CPD called for Ruiz to be suspended for two days.

It’s not the only time Snelling and COPA have taken differing views in a disciplinary case.

In February, Snelling offered a harsh critique of COPA during the monthly meeting of the Chicago Police Board.

“What we’re seeing are egregious penalties for extremely minor infractions,” Snelling said at the time.

One of the COPA supervisors who called for Ruiz to be fired was Matthew Haynam, records show. Earlier this year, Haynam was fired by COPA chief administrator Andrea Kersten, who also approved calling for Ruiz’s firing. Haynam subsequently filed a still-pending whistleblower lawsuit against the city, alleging that his firing was a result of him speaking out against COPA’s alleged anti-police bias.

COPA records show the agency has called for 52 CPD officers to be fired so far in 2024, though it’s been months since the CPD filed administrative charges against a rank-and-file officer accused of serious misconduct.

The ongoing pause on serious misconduct cases is the result of a protracted court fight between the city and Fraternal Order of Police, the union that represents rank-and-file CPD officers, detectives, evidence technicians and retired officers. The dispute stems from an arbitration award issued in summer 2023 that provided CPD officers accused of serious misconduct the option to have their administrative cases decided by the Chicago Police Board or in private by a third-party.

Board president Cooper said during last week’s meeting that the city’s appellate brief is due to be submitted to the Illinois Appellate Court by Oct. 31. Still, Cooper said, it’s unlikely that the case will be resolved any time this year.