Chicago's Thick Blue Wall

[Modbert]

Chicago's Thick Blue Wall - Reason Magazine

Christopher Drew had every intention of getting arrested. The 59-year-old artist and executive director of the Uptown Multi-Cultural Art Center in Chicago set about his city earlier this month in a red poncho and a sign that read "Art for Sale: $1." It was a protest against Chicago’s law on unlicensed peddling, which Drew believes puts up unconstitutional barriers preventing artists from selling their work.

The artist was confronted by Chicago police and arrested on December 3. Because he recorded the entire incident, on the understandable assumption that the reasons the officers gave for arresting him may prove useful to his follow-up lawsuit, Drew was also charged with "felony eavesdropping."

The most famous incident was footage of an off-duty cop viciously beating a female bartender who refused to continue serving him in 2007. He wasn't even charged until three months later, after the surveillance video surfaced on the Internet, generating worldwide outrage. There are other examples: six cops beating two men in a bar brawl; a video of a fatal police shooting in a subway station where officer accounts of the incident don't match the video footage. The department also recently disciplined two officers after a video showed up on the Internet showing a Chicago PD unit posing for a trophy photo with a protester they had apprehended earlier this year at the G20 summit in Pittsburgh.

A 2008 study by University of Chicago law professor Craig B. Futterman found 10,000 complaints filed against Chicago police officers between 2002 and 2004. That's more than any city in the country, and proportionally it's 40 percent above the national average. Of those 10,000 complaints, just 19 resulted in significant disciplinary action. In 85 percent of the cases, the complaint was dismissed without even interviewing the accused officer. The study also found that about 5 percent of the department's 13,500 officers accounted for more than half the complaints.

Yet the Chicago PD recently went to federal court—and won—to prevent the release of the names of 662 officers who had more than 10 citizen complaints filed against them between 2001 and 2006. Even members of the city's Board of Aldermen aren't allowed to see the officers' names.

Thoughts?

 

[WillowTree]

With that many complaints sound like the Police of Chicago are doing it right!

 

[Charles Stucker]

With that many complaints sound like the Police of Chicago are doing it right!

Right. I hope that was satirical, because it sounds from the article as if the Chicago police routinely abuse the power of their positions. Torture Ring? Theft?
5% of the force generating 90% of the complaints is actually the only unsurprising thing; a lot of studies show that the worst 5% in any group are responsible for 90% of the problems
(5% of drivers cause 90% of accidents, 5% of physicians account for 90% of malpractice, etc)

However the policies which effectively condone such behavior are unconscionable. That is a problem which needs to be addressed before it creates more violence; even violence against police often spills onto civilians, and while the Chicago police may have, through their misdeeds, earned punishment the civilians who do not commit crimes have not.

 

[GHook93]

I live in Chicago (well a burb at least). Chicago is a tough town! Chicago Cops have a tough job, esp with all the corruption from the top running down.

That said there are some real asshole cops out their that needed to be off the street.