Chicago Police Officers Appeared on Membership List of Extremist Oath Keepers Group

The Chicago Police Department has resisted taking decisive action on reports that some of its officers had ties to the Oath Keepers, an anti-government extremist group deeply involved in the January 2021 siege on the U.S. Capitol.

Reporting by Chicago public radio station WBEZ, the Chicago Sun-Times and OCCRP has identified nine current and at least 18 former members of the Chicago Police Department on past internal rosters of the Oath Keepers obtained by OCCRP. The investigation identified another 12 working in law enforcement elsewhere in Illinois who were on these lists, which cover the period from 2009 to 2018.

An exhaustive search of police personnel records, involving more than 200 Freedom of Information Act filings by the Sun-Times and WBEZ, reveals that several of these current and former Chicago officers on the lists have faced excessive-force complaints, while some were accused of using racial slurs.

Nine Chicago officers on the Oath Keeper membership lists had at some point been part of the Special Operations Section, which was tasked with fighting street gangs. That corrupt, now-disbanded unit carried out home invasions, and was found to have stolen cash, drugs and jewelry. Several officers were later indicted for their actions.

Personnel records obtained by reporters show that the Chicago Police Department does not appear to have investigated most of the police officials who appeared in the leaked membership list. Only one officer on the list had personnel records that showed he was investigated for his membership in the Oath Keepers.

Journalists also discovered that the Anti-Defamation League, a civil rights group, provided the names of eight alleged Oath Keeper members in a letter to the Chicago Police Department in August 2022. The Anti-Defamation League would not disclose the names to reporters.

In the face of the new questions raised by reporters, the Chicago Police Department provided a statement to the Sun-Times confirming that there is an internal investigation into Oath Keeper members on the force. The department did not give any further information.

“We encourage them to engage in a thorough investigation once these allegations are brought to their attention,” David Goldenberg, the Anti-Defamation League’s midwest regional director, told journalists.

The tepid effort to identify Oath Keepers in Chicago police ranks doesn’t surprise Craig Futterman, director of the Civil Rights & Police Accountability Project at the University of Chicago Law School.

“The City of Chicago has resisted initiating any proactive investigation to discipline or fire police officers who may be engaged in a pattern of racist abuse. The data is there,” he said. “City leaders simply need to muster the political will and investigate patterns.”

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson came into office in April, having promised on the campaign trail to fire any officers who were found to be part of an extremist group.

“The mayor's position remains clear, this is something that we can't stand for,” said Garien Gatewood, Chicago’s deputy mayor for public safety, cautioning that “we don’t right those wrongs overnight.”

There is currently no prohibition in the Chicago Police Department or in federal law enforcement on officers belonging to extremist groups. Advocates are urging law enforcement agencies to implement policies explicitly banning such membership.

The presence of Oath Keeper members places one of the largest U.S. police forces in an unwanted spotlight.

The Chicago Police Department already operates under a court-ordered decree mandating “broad police reform” following a civil rights investigation by the U.S. Justice Department. It was brought about by the October 2014 murder of teenager Laquan McDonald, who was shot 16 times by an officer. The officer was convicted, but released after serving just three years.

Who are The Oath Keepers?

When the Oath Keepers were founded in 2009 they positioned themselves as defenders of the Constitution. The group became associated with anti-government views after members showed up to defend Nevada ranchers in a 2014 armed standoff with the Bureau of Land Management, which was enforcing payment for cattle grazing on federal land.

The Oath Keepers took on a racial dimension later that year and in 2015, when armed members began showing up to the poor Missouri suburb of Ferguson, where residents and supporters were protesting police violence after the killing of a black teenager.

The group became a household name after playing a significant role in the January 6, 2021, insurrection in the U.S. Capitol, where lawmakers were meeting to certify the 2020 election results. Oath Keeper founder E. Stewart Rhodes III was sentenced to 18 years in prison this past May on seditious conspiracy charges for his role in the violence. Several other Oath Keeper leaders were also handed long sentences.

The Officers

One person named on the Oath Keeper membership list obtained by OCCRP is Michael Nowacki, who worked for the U.S. military in Iraq as an interrogator. In an essay exploring his conflicted feelings about the experience, he wrote: “Sometimes to be good, you have to do things that are evil, right?”

Personnel records obtained in 2023 indicate that Nowacki is an active duty officer. The records show he worked in some of the city’s poorest neighborhoods, rising to the rank of sergeant.

Over Christmas holidays in 2007, Nowacki received an email from community activist Deborah Payne, soliciting a donation to help two needy families. Nowacki had given her his card at a community event designed to build trust.

“You’re a goof,” he responded from his police email address. “I have no desire to help inner city poor people,” he added in a subsequent email.

Payne reached out in tears to a veteran activist, who wrote to Nowacki’s commander and an investigation followed. She cried again after learning that Nowacki had joined the Oath Keepers after that interaction.

“They're supposed to serve and protect, and their heart has that kind of venom in it,” she said.

Nowacki did not respond to requests for comment.

Knowing there are Oath Keepers in the police ranks erodes trust and undermines effective policing, warned Deborah Witzburg, Chicago's inspector general.

“We solve crimes because somebody trusts the police officer enough to tell them what happened. And if people do not trust the police department, they will not share information with the police,” said Witzburg.

Another Chicago police officer who appears on the Oath Keepers membership list is John Nicezyporuk. Personnel records obtained in 2023 show that he was still employed by the Chicago Police Department, and reveal that he was investigated in 2014 for an alleged incident of racial abuse.

The alleged victim was Brandon Forbish, a special education teacher who was returning from watching college basketball with fellow church members when he inadvertently drove the wrong direction up a one-way street. He pulled into an alley to turn around and was stopped by Nicezyporuk.

Police records show that Forbish sought out the nearest police station to file a report immediately after the incident, and later sat for an interview with internal Chicago police investigators.

The report says Forbish complained Nicezyporuk used racial slurs against him. He told an investigator he was “scared to be around white people like that … especially white cops.”

Nicezyporuk denied the accusations, the personnel documents show. He did not respond to requests for comment.

Investigators concluded that Forbish could not prove his allegations, because he lacked audio or video evidence. Records also show Nicezyporuk faced a similar complaint from a black man in 2010 who alleged the officer used racial slurs during a stop.

Police personnel records obtained by reporters do not show any investigation into Nicezyporuk’s and Nowacki’s Oath Keeper links.

Records do show an internal probe of one law enforcement officer on the Oath Keeper membership list. An Oath Keeper spreadsheet showing dues-paying members in June 2012 included Matthew Paulish, who self-identified as a police officer. He joined, it said, after learning of the Oath Keepers from “a friend at work,” suggesting at least one other colleague may have joined too.

Reporters discovered Paulish has been assigned to work as a police officer on the campus of the University of Illinois at Chicago since 2005.

An internal affairs document shows that campus police received a complaint in August 2022 from the Anti-Defamation League that Paulish had been “at some point a member of a far-right anti-government militia known as the Oath Keepers.”

What followed, or didn’t, is notable.

“While your participation in the group was virtually nil, the mere fact that you failed to conduct thorough research of their mission or philosophy prior to joining this group and combined with the fact that you were identified as a member in and of itself reflects adversely on the department,” Paulish was told in a warning that went into his personnel records.

In a videotape of his interview, Paulish tells investigators that he sent a one-time donation to the group in 2009 and had no further contact. Oath Keepers records show him as an active member in 2012 and having made a $100 donation. Paulish did not respond to requests for comment.

One of the few Chicago police officers who agreed to speak about their presence on the Oath Keeper membership list was Alberto Retamozo, a Navy veteran. He said he couldn’t recall who signed him up and said he never paid dues. The records show he had “full member” status that involved monthly $50 payments for nearly two years.

The Oath Keepers support for the Constitution caught his attention, he said, but his views have changed. “It’s like a slap in the face,” he said of the Oath Keepers and the leadership role in the 2021 insurrection.

Going Forward

A civilian-led panel has been working with Chicago police officials to broaden an existing policy that bars officers from joining street gangs and other criminal organizations. Draft language would explicitly include extremist groups, including those that “seek to overthrow, destroy, or alter the form of government of the United States by unconstitutional means.”

Larry Snelling, Chicago’s new police superintendent, cautioned in an interview that officers should be allowed to defend themselves against accusations of belonging to hate groups.

“But what I would like to see is something more concrete, something more written in stone, that would give us more of a balance in how we determine if someone is a part of a hate group,” he said. “Now, when we know that we have a hate group, any affiliation there is unacceptable.”

City Alderman Chris Taliaferro, a former internal affairs investigator for the police department, wants an explicit ban on membership in extremist organizations.

“I think our department has to be very clear, and not leave it to interpretation as to whether or not this organization is viewed as an extremist organization,” Taliaferro said.

“Give them a rule or policy that they know that if they do it, they know they will violate it,” he added.