Chicago PD Murder for Hire Plot

[ilbob]

I think Deanimator is on his own personal jihad to bash entire police departments and the officers who serve.

IIRC, he has mostly bashed the CPD, which by all accounts has earned a good bashing. This is certainly a department that is in the running for the worst department in the country, and there has been no serious effort to change that since it started that run back in the 1920s.

BTW, there are worse departments even in Illinois (Cicero comes to mind) but they are no where near as big. Of the large city departments, New Orleans and Chicago seem to have the worst, followed closely by NYC, DC and maybe LA and Phillie. Get past those forces, and you get relatively decent departments.

But it is not really a police, or police officer problem. Its up to the politicians to deal with the problem they created and they have little or no interest in doing so.

 

[Deanimator]

You are also aware that this isn't the first blanket indictment that you've issued on a police department so stop acting like you don''t now what I'm talking about

Why is Fitzgerald investigating Chicago's Internal Affairs unit?

 

[Wheeler44]

Another beautiful day on the High Road

the sun is shining, the birds are chirping, someone posts about dirty cops, someone calls it cop bashing.

Scorpius, a jihad is a struggle within, Deanimator shares with us all. I suggest that you counter his "cop bashing" with an occaisional post about policing done right.

What I personally take from the original story is a reafirmation that power corrupts, and unchecked will corrupt absolutely.

That makes me want to buy a gun.

Wheeler44

 

[Deanimator]

In case anybody doesn't know, the original case was regarding a home invasion, burglary, kidnapping ring inside the SOS unit in the Chicago PD.

It's one thing to have pretend police doing home invasions.

In Chicago the REAL police do home invasions and IAD does nothing about it.

Where does that leave a citizen faced with a home invasion committed by police? Do you have the right to defend yourself? What happens if you do? What happens if [as happened in the Jefferson Tap incident] you dial 911 and the cops doing the home invasion wave off the other police?

Those seem like legit legal questions to me...

 

[ilbob]

Those seem like legit legal questions to me.

I think the official THR answer to dealing with LE misconduct is to 1) take your lumps, 2) hope you live through it, 3) use the system to complain about it later.

I know it is not a very satisfying position to take, but that seems to be the official THR position on that particular subject.

Given that option 3 is not realistic in most cases with the worst offenders, I am not sure where you go. I am pretty sure that physical attacks on LEOs are going to be counterproductive.

 

[Deanimator]

Given that option 3 is not realistic in most cases with the worst offenders, I am not sure where you go. I am pretty sure that physical attacks on LEOs are going to be counterproductive.

The problem is that these behaviors are escalating even AFTER those involved were originally arrested.

What do you do when they decide to add rape to their repetoire? Is doing nothing in that case less counterproductive than defending your wife, girlfriend, mother or daughter?

 

[ilbob]

The problem is that these behaviors are escalating even AFTER those involved were originally arrested.

What do you do when they decide to add rape to their repetoire? Is doing nothing in that case less counterproductive than defending your wife, girlfriend, mother or daughter?

I recognize the frustration, but I do not know how to deal with the problem in an effective way. The politicians just do not care, and they are the only ones who can fix things. The voters of Chicago show no signs of changing to a different group of politicians who will make an actual effort to improve the situation.

 

[ilbob]

How long will this thread remain open? Or even remain?

 

[Deanimator]

But it is not really a police, or police officer problem. Its up to the politicians to deal with the problem they created and they have little or no interest in doing so.

The problem in Chicago is that the fundamental structure of the system is now totally compromised.

This isn't any longer a matter of individual officers doing wrong and being caught and punished. It's become an analog of the child sex abuse scandals in the Catholic Church. The disciplinary mechanism has been subverted to protect neither the public nor the integrity of the system. Instead the system is used by those in positions of power to protect their friends and business associates, and to protect the REPUTATION of the organization rather than its actual integrity. Two of the most blatant examples of these phenomena occurred in connection with the shooting of Michael Pleasance. Superintendent Cline fought tooth and nail to prevent the complete video of the shooting from being released to the public. When the video could no longer be suppressed, instead of following the recommendation of a disciplinary board that Officer Alvin Weems be fired for shooting an unarmed man in the head, Superintendent Cline, a past supervisor of Weems, ordered him suspended for 30 days for KILLING an UNARMED man. Weems was subsequently promoted to detective. Such collusion and favoritism has destroyed any public confidence in the system or its ability, indeed its WILLINGNESS to protect the public good.

 

[Deanimator]

How long will this thread remain open? Or even remain?

Probably as long as nobody allows themself to be baited into debating personalities instead of the legal issues.

At least that's what I hope.

I'm not going there. These things are far too important, life and death in fact.

 

[ilbob]

You would think that the worst cases would result in some appropriate action,if nothing else than to appease public outcry. But without public outcry, there is no need to appease. I am astounded at how we as citizens tolerate out of control government, and even demand more of it.

 

[Deanimator]

You would think that the worst cases would result in some appropriate action,if nothing else than to appease public outcry. But without public outcry, there is no need to appease. I am astounded at how we as citizens tolerate out of control government, and even demand more of it.

It's ironic that those in Chicago who suffer the most from the meltdown of the criminal justice system are supporters of the man holding the blowtorch underneath it.

As I said before though, I think Daley's going to be feeling the heat himself soon. His former position as State's Attorney is a HUGE legal Achilles heel for him. It seems to me that Daley's playing checkers while Fitzgerald is playing go. He's thinking fifty moves ahead, and Daley doesn't even know he himself is playing.

 

[wheelgunslinger]

Deanimator, I think you hit the nail squarely on the head when you asked this series of questions:

Where does that leave a citizen faced with a home invasion committed by police? Do you have the right to defend yourself? What happens if you do? What happens if [as happened in the Jefferson Tap incident] you dial 911 and the cops doing the home invasion wave off the other police?

While this whole mess is being played out between Daley and the US Attorney's office, what are the citizens to do during this situation?
Granted, not every officer is going rotten, but the public's faith has to be shaken.
I'm not sure what I would do, were I to live in Chicago.

 

[littlegator]

Based upon the reference to using a silencer, the police officer obviously thought about using the gun to commit the additional crime of offing the other officer. Therefore, we can now assume that antis will be lobbying to take guns away from police...

 

[Autolycus]

I am thinking that maybe the Chicago PD should be disarmed. Or at least have a SWAT team on call to deal with situtations where armed personnel are needed. Perhaps they could use FBI HRT teams. I am thinking along the lines of Britain. We need to disarm them until we can figure out who is corrupt and who is not. Similar to the way police disarm some people until they figure out the situation and resolve it.

Its just about civilian safety.

 

[Deanimator]

While this whole mess is being played out between Daley and the US Attorney's office, what are the citizens to do during this situation?
Granted, not every officer is going rotten, but the public's faith has to be shaken.
I'm not sure what I would do, were I to live in Chicago.

The problem for Chicago cops not engaged in criminal behavior is that there have been far too many incidents in the last 6-8 months, nevermind the past few years to just brush these things off as "isolated incidents". When you consider that virtually EVERY incident has involved collusion and or preferential treatment, what's the public to think? Why would anyone want to take a chance by interacting with the Chicago PD?

One serious incident a year is bad, but it's approaching one a MONTH.

 

[Scorpiusdeus]

Probably as long as nobody allows themself to be baited into debating personalities instead of the legal issues.

At least that's what I hope.

I'm not going there. These things are far too important, life and death in fact.

So what does your post have to do with the Legal issues related to firearms?

 

[Deanimator]

I am thinking that maybe the Chicago PD should be disarmed.

Has there ever been an example of a big city police department which was essentially disbanded and reformed from scratch? I think that at this point, it's the ONLY thing that might work.

It's no longer a matter of individuals. The entire SYSTEM is broken. At this point, merely firing a few people (or taking their guns) is just rearranging the deckchairs on the Titanic.

SOS demonstrates that the Office of Professional Standards and IAD are a farce. Both need to be eliminated and at least for the foreseeable future replaced by some outside agency, preferably at the Federal level. If Fitzgerald's investigation reaches high enough and there's a consent degree and Federal monitoring, that might just happen. I'm sure it's the ONLY thing that could ever turn the Chicago PD into a law enforcement agency as most people understand the term.

 

[Scorpiusdeus]

If you actually want to fix things, most likely half the City government would need to go and you'd need to bring in a Reform type Chief from outside the State. Maybe some Federal oversight?

 

[.cheese.]

I just want to be clear:

when I asked towards the beginning of this thread:

is this really gun related?

or just cop bashing?

I wasn't meaning to implicate anybody in particular, nor was I meaning to specifically criticize the OP for posting it (implying some type of sinister motive). I hope my comment wasn't what sparked the arguing that ensued shortly afterwards.

All I meant by it was that I was under the impression (and possibly mistakenly so) that threads that criticize police or police actions without being specifically gun or gun law related were considered "general cop bashing" - at least in the sense that they invited/provoked it and were against general THR rules.

My mistake was that I'm not a mod, and therefore should have just kept my mouth shut since it wasn't really my business.

I apologize.

 

[ilbob]

Granted, not every officer is going rotten, but the public's faith has to be shaken.

You are assuming Chicago residents recently had faith in the first place. I can assure you that, in general, Chicago residents on the whole know exactly just how much faith to place in the police department, and their government.

When I lived in Chicago (late 70s) the standard approach to being stopped for a traffic infraction was to have a $20 bill in with your DL. You handed both to the officer and your DL was returned. The only reason this widespread practice stopped was that Daley wanted the revenue to spend himself.

Which should show that it is possible to change things, but only if the politicians really want it changed.

 

[Art Eatman]

This thread shouldn't have gotten started in this forum. Laws get broken every day, but that's not why this forum exists. It's not a daily paper, and we ain't into letters to the editor.

APS stuff...

Art