A civil (servant) war brews in Chicago

I see Mayor Rahm-bo has utterly infuriated the Chicago police force - again.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel today addressed the Chicago City Council in a special meeting called to discuss police accountability, saying the city is facing a "defining moment on the issue of crime and policing, and even the larger issue of truth, justice and race."

. . .

"We can either be defined by what we have failed to do or what we need to do," the mayor said, telling the alderman that "nothing can excuse" what happened to McDonald. "We need a painful but honest reckoning of what went wrong ... over decades."

. . .

Emanuel's address comes days after his top cop stepped down, two more controversial videos were made public and a Department of Justice Investigation was announced.

"Every police officer is sworn to protect life and in the most extreme circumstances, to take life," Emanuel said. "It may be too much to expect that every officer will always get it right, but it is not too much to expect that we can put the safeguards to ensure police accountability when they get it wrong."

The mayor also mentioned the police department's "code of silence," saying permitting and protecting even the smallest acts of abuse lead to a culture where extreme acts of abuse are more likely.

"We cannot have effective policing if we turn a blind eye to police misconduct," he said. "Respect must be earned. Respect is a two-way street."

There's more at the link.

I agree that the Chicago Police Department has long been a hotbed of corruption, dishonesty and flagrant disregard for civil rights.  Homan Square is perhaps the best-known example, but there are many others.  The city has paid out over half a billion dollars during the past decade to settle lawsuits against it and its police force, and cover its own legal expenses.  Nevertheless, Mayor Emanuel appears to have thrown the entire PD - good officers as well as bad - under the bus in his recent statement.

Unsurprisingly, Chicago cops appear to be royally pissed at him.  We've encountered the blog Second City Cop several times before in these pages.  Now a retired PD officer reacts to the Mayor's assertions.

Rahm completely threw the Department under the bus ... His speech was pure unadulterated crap. This statement [was] just f***ing dumb:

Emanuel said he was with a group of young men last weekend, describing them as all having "a history with the criminal-justice system," but "trying to get on the right path, do the right thing."

"One young man asked me a simple question that gets to the core of what we're talking about. He said, 'Do you think the police would ever treat you the way they treat me?'

"And the answer is no," Emanuel said. "And that is wrong. And that has to change in this city. That has to come to an end now. No citizen is a second-class citizen in the city of Chicago."

Do you even know why the answer was "no" Rahm? Do you have a clue? Perhaps it's because you aren't driving a ghetto-hoopty ride with one headlight, invalid plates and music jacked up do window rattling volume at all hours? Maybe you aren't howling gibberish, shoving shoppers, snatching iPhones on Michigan Avenue? Maybe you aren't hanging out on the corner at all hours, holding an entire neighborhood hostage with your drug sales, threatening, beating, burning the houses of those who complain? Or maybe, just maybe, you aren't firing weapons at someone who "dissed" you over a rap song, killing the rival dealer or executing 9-year-old kids for who their relative are to the tune of 450 murders and 2,800 wounded.

. . .

A lot has changed since we went through the Academy, especially if Officers are taught how to see souls. We are a reactionary job - how the encounter goes is determined by the subject's behavior, 99.9 times out of 100, plain and simple. And the last time we saw an "artist" on video, he was punching a Chicago Police Officer in the head and getting charges dropped by the State.

We don't know how many way to say it, but you have been abandoned by the City. Rahm and the Machine will sacrifice you on the altar of political correctness and not lose a wink of sleep over it. Where does that leave you? Your family? Your kids? Back living with your in-laws while everything you worked for is destroyed for a political game? And when you get out from under, you're doing what? Something that doesn't have a stringent background check we suppose.

The criminal element has won. Self initiated police work is a fool's errand. Every citizen contact you make is immediately suspected of racist undertones. Every observation you make, the ones that make the back of your neck prickle, is subject to review by local, state, federal, IPRA, politician, reverend, lawyer oversight. Every piece of paper you are required to fill out is there to hang you, regardless of what the bosses are tell you.

Again, more at the link.  The comments in particular are breathtaking in their rudeness.

If I were Mayor Emanuel, I'd be a little less confident in the 'protection' offered by my Chicago PD security detail from now on . . .




Peter

EDITED TO ADD:  Bloviating Zeppelin points out that there are now calls to defund the Chicago PD.  He dares them to do just that.  I think the results of such a move would be . . . interesting . . . in the sense of the Chinese curse!