The Chicago Police Board announced at its monthly meeting last week that four officers accused of misconduct — making false statements and using excessive force during the unrest of 2020 — were not guilty of the administrative charges against them.

And, in response to an order from a Cook County judge, the board also upheld an earlier decision to fire two other officers who had fired their guns at a stolen vehicle during a 2018 chase that ended in the shooting death of the vehicle’s teen driver by a CPD officer.

The board voted 8-0 to uphold its 2018 decision to fire now-former Officers Michael Coughlin and Jose Torres for their actions during a 2016 pursuit in the South Shore neighborhood that ultimately resulted in the shooting death of 18-year-old Paul O’Neal. In 2020, the City Council approved a $2.2 million lawsuit settlement for O’Neal’s family.

But for the four officers who were acquitted of the administrative charges brought against them — Armando Ugarte, Michael St. Clair, Michael Deneen and James Hunt — the members of the Police Board were much more divided in opinion.

Some votes varied slightly, but board members Steven Block, Aja Carr-Favors, Mareilé Cusack, Nanette Doorley and Andreas Safakas were largely unconvinced that four officers were guilty of the charges against them.

Outgoing Police Board President Ghian Foreman, Vice President Paula Wolff and board member Michael Eaddy, who was not renominated to his seat earlier this month, were largely in favor of finding the officers guilty.

In all, the board announced its decisions in six separate disciplinary cases during its monthly meeting Thursday, an unusually high number for the nine-person panel, whose makeup has changed much in recent months as long-sought changes to the city’s police misconduct apparatus continue to reverberate.

“This was a busy month,” Foreman said in between announcing the board’s decisions in two cases.

Andrea Kersten, chief administrator of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, reported to the board that, since October 2022, the agency’s log of open cases has shrunk from 1,700 to 900.

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Speaking to the Tribune after the board voted to acquit four officers, Kersten questioned the standard by which the board was operating.

“I have larger questions about how the preponderance of evidence standard is being analyzed,” Kersten said. “I think this is a challenge for people that’ve worked in criminal courts or criminal law-adjacent, to move from this idea of ‘proof beyond a reasonable doubt’ to what a preponderance standard truly looks like. I’m excited to see more about the Police Board with how they start to interpret that because we’re going to continue to give them more and more cases to decide.”

For more than six decades, the board was a nine-person panel appointed by the mayor to mete out discipline in the most serious cases of alleged police misconduct, cases in which the officer was to be suspended for at least a year or fired.

In recent years, though, after the city established the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, the Police Board’s role and makeup has shifted. The board no longer oversees the search for new CPD superintendents, and no longer are board members hand-picked by the mayor.

Now, after a board member’s five-year term ends, the CCPSA will submit three names to the mayor, who can pick one of those candidates or ask for a new group.

Mayor Brandon Johnson has about six weeks to select four new board members from six candidates submitted to him this month.

Meanwhile, the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, the union representing rank-and-file CPD officers and detectives, announced last week that it reached a proposed agreement with the city for a new four-year contract that would mean a roughly 20% pay raise for officers. The tentative agreement would also provide officers accused of serious misconduct the choice to have their cases heard and decided by a third-party arbitrator behind closed doors. The contract proposal is still subject to City Council approval.