Sharon Fairley came to public prominence in 2015 as Rahm Emanuel’s pick to lead Chicago’s police oversight agency—then the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA)—in the wake of revelations about the city’s attempts to conceal the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke in 2014. She’s now among ten candidates vying to replace her former boss, Illinois attorney general Lisa Madigan. Fairley has spent the last two years under intense public scrutiny as the head of an agency that the Department of Justice found failed to deliver justice to victims of police misconduct. She also led IPRA’s transmutation into a new city agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). She says her run to be Illinois’s top lawyer doesn’t have much to do with all that, though. And, for the record, she says she doesn’t “know Rahm well.”
And the second thing is I’m absolutely not trying to parlay anything into anything. My decision to enter this race is based off of my entire record, not just that particular experience. I spent eight years as a federal prosecutor and did a lot of really important work and got a lot of really relevant experience that’s important in the role of attorney general. I prosecuted narcotics and gangs, I prosecuted firearms trafficking cases, I prosecuted a bank robbery murder case, I did counterintelligence and counterespionage work. And you know beyond that I’m not just some Joe Schmo candidate. I’ve got an undergraduate degree from Princeton in mechanical and aerospace engineering. I’ve got some serious credentials to do this job, so I don’t understand why people would think that’s even remotely appropriate to say about me.
We know that there’s been a lot of concern about officer-involved shootings and police violence in Chicago over the last couple of years. We also know—recently they’ve done the reporting at WBEZ—that officer-involved shootings are an issue beyond the city as well. We need to address the legal structure that governs the use of legal force by law enforcement. And I think there’s a couple ways to approach that. One is really focus on shaping the policies that are in place in law enforcement agencies throughout the state, much like the Chicago Police Department addressed their policy last year and made significant and very important improvements. But also there’s a state law, there’s a statute that dictates the sort of instances under which law enforcement officers can use lethal force, and I believe that that needs to change as well.
I know that the marketing practices of these companies have a profound effect on doctors’ prescribing habits. That’s a huge part of the problem, and that’s why I believe that the attorneys general have done the right thing in suing these companies to try to recover the cost they have incurred by fostering the kind of health-care practices that have caused these folks to become addicted. I mean, there’s no reason for somebody who has a minor issue to be prescribed an opioid for several days. I know how the medical marketing works. I wasn’t working on marketing to doctors. I worked on marketing to consumers, which was fairly new at the time. Obviously what we need to do is make sure that these companies are following the law when it comes to their marketing and that they aren’t going beyond what they’re supposed to be doing in terms of the promises they make about the drugs and how they’re directing doctors to use them. We also have to worry about doctors’ prescribing habits, and then we also have to educate consumers about the risks.
