The Chicago Police Department is demoralized, understaffed, and controlled by a political apparatus that sees the department as a petty political battleground and not a public service. For our City Council and mayor, the specifics are less important than the impact: high crime means an upset electorate; never mind the fact of the crime itself. It is time that the mayor and his allies in the Council, like Alderman Isaac Carothers (Austin), reach out to the rank-and-file cops and figure out why the crime rate has exploded with no end in sight. Browbeating a neophyte like seven-month Superintendent Jody Weis is not going to help matters. Weis' cosmetic purging of district commanders as a way to symbolize a new era in the department is not enough, and may have been a mistake. We the public need to hear from rank-and-file cops, and those rank-and-file cops need to be listened to by elected officials who control their work life. If rank-and-file cops from each district told me what they needed to do their job, I'd be a lot more comfortable giving it than if Mayor Daley or Ike Carothers — or any number of aldermen or bureaucrats — told me.
For a couple years there, the rumors on the street about some units of the Special Operations Section were that they were the CPD street gang, the jump-out boys who held up gang parties in masks and demanded tribute from gang leaders for release of "kidnapped" associates. These rumors bubbled up and led to a federal investigation of the "rogue unit" of SOS. Poor oversight by supervisors had allowed a highly-trained elite unit go rogue. The problems with the SOS compounded a spate of abuse scandals that hit the media and a number of lawsuits against the department for excessive force.
What does that say about the CPD's 9,000+ sworn officers? Little to nothing. No matter how much some politicians, media and some activists want to pretend otherwise, there is no excuse for the level of disrespect shown to our rank-and-file cops. It is unreasonable to believe that the great majority of those 9,000 officers want anything other than to survive their beat and keep those same beats safe. But cops suffer the same prejudice in political culture faced by so many of civil servants, including teachers and social service providers: they are portrayed either as lazy opportunists, lounging in their union-protected position benefitting from the public trust, or sociopaths who got into the business only to do harm to their fellow citizens.
If you don't accept those views, what is left is to accept the fact that cops — working class men and women who have chosen to go into a uniquely dangerous public service — want to be good cops. They want to be effective. They want the criminals in jails and the law-abiding safe walking down the street. Cops, like teachers, are not social workers. They cannot be expected to address the deep-rooted social troubles that lead to young men getting involved in criminal networks; they are not responsible for the flight of well-paying, low-skill jobs from the city. But they can be expected to have quite a bit of knowledge about what the nature of street crime in Chicago is, and the best way to address that crime.
Forget "culture" and race and all the other excuses we hear — the reality is that crime is tied directly to the availability of entry-level jobs for young men. It's not a mystery. The correlation has been demonstrated again and again. You'll always have a strata of society that preys on their fellow man, but crime only becomes a serious problem when there are no well-paying jobs for young men to move into if they cannot or will not pursue education. (For one study relating particularly to homicide, read "Industrial Restructuring and Violence: The Link between Entry-Level Jobs, Economic Deprivation, and Black and White Homicide" by Edward S. Shihadeh and Graham C. Ousey in the journal Social Forces, Vol. 77, No. 1 [Sep., 1998], pp. 185-206.) The destruction of working class jobs and the redistribution of wealth to a very small minority has done more to accelerate criminality since the 1960s than anything else. Our cops can't do anything about that. We're on the hook, you and I, for the causes of crime; cops are only on the hook for its effects.
But they have to be out there every day, anyway. And when they are treated like a necessary evil by our elected officials, when they are discussed in the same way as dogs that can either be obedient servants to their masters or rabid beasts that need to be socially euthanized, we should not expect them to sacrifice much for their work. Would you?
Just two of Chicago's organized gangs — the Gangster Disciples and the Latin Kings — have been estimated to have as many as 90,000 members and associates (the official city estimate is much lower, at 40,000 for all gangs), men and boys who have been trained over years of interaction with other gangs and police on how exactly to best perpetrate crimes without being caught — who are armed and unafraid of prison. This doesn't even touch the petty crime that having such a vast gang network generates — the junkies smashing into cars and homes, prostitution, extortion and so on. It is a precarious situation, and our cops need to feel that the people of the city have their back. At this point, some of these gangs can boast three generations in a family. That is a hold that no cop on the beat can break. All we can expect of our rank-and-file cops is to protect the law-abiding.
Does that mean we shouldn't prosecute police brutality? Of course not. Cops aren't always right. There are bad cops just like there are bad anythings. The answer to our surging crime problem is not to set the rank-and-file cops out there with a mission to club people into submission. Nor should we pretend that there isn't a real problem of cops ignoring people's civil rights out of a sense of righteousness (or maliciousness). But we'd be making an indefensibly broad statement if we said that "the cops" were the problem, and not their leadership.
Mayor Daley needs to make a public statement, himself, in support of the rank-and-file police. Cases like Luis Colon's need to be addressed loudly by a city that is in need of a reinvigorated and empowered rank-and-file police force.
Colon, only 18, was killed by police on the Northwest Side last month. His family has since filed a wrongful death suit against the Department. We're all innocent until proven guilty; and the facts need to be demonstrated. But Colon was on probation for a weapons conviction, and according to the cops brandished a loaded weapon at them. How can the mayor stay silent on cases like this? He needs to be showing his face with the cops accused in cases like this and insisting that the City will fight for its cops' rights to defend themselves. The unfortunate fact of the matter is that in most cases like this, there is no clear cut answer of right and wrong. We'd do well to act like adults and realize that there is no 100 percent good guy and 100 percent bad guy; that sometimes bad things happen in the cold gray shadow between black and white. (And the cops themselves would do well to realize that the culture warriors who love to defend cops against civil rights groups are not interested in helping them, but only in demonizing a "common enemy." It's the economic policies of the Right, not some "cultural" problem, that lead to crime epidemics).
Because our rank-and-file police officers are not superheroes. They are normal guys and gals, who go home to family at night. They get scared and nervous; they get tired and confused. And the fact of the matter is that most complaints against cops filed with the Independent Police Review Authority are not sustained or found with any merit. The mayor knows this. The aldermen know it. The rank-and-file know it, but the media loves the abuse stories and everybody gets a boost by piling on some crooked or abusive cops — nothing tugs at the public heart strings like the little guy who stands up to the big bad cops.
We do not need to hear Superintendent Weis', Alderman Carothers', or even Mayor Daley's ideas about what will best address the lawlessness and slaughter infecting and terrifying the city. We need to hear from the rank-and-file cops, and we need to give them the real power to demand reform, judge their peers' performance, and have meaningful input into who their commanders are.
Pedro / July 23, 2008 9:32 AM
It's the economic policies of the Right, not some "cultural" problem, that lead to crime epidemics).
I think that you'll find that the lack of entry level jobs are more to do with the taxes that have been levied by the Democratic-led city and county governments. The businesses that can provide entry level jobs for people with relatively little education have been pushed out of the city to areas where it is cheaper to operate.
We don't need to take a look at the giant companies, its the small to mid-size firms that get squeezed the most, and it is these companies that provide the growth-oriented jobs that provide opportunity for advancement.
If you support employment, you should support employers.
I would also argue that there is a cultural component to the problem that is perpetuated by fostering an identity of victimization and dependence on government to solve problems.