Ed Brayton is a journalist, commentator and speaker. He is the co-founder and president of 
Balko has an article at Reason about the rampant corruption in the Chicago Police Department and the fact that they're actually working to become even less accountable than they already are - which scarcely seems possible. He recounts some of the recent scandals there:
You can certainly understand why someone would want to get a planned interaction with Chicago police on tape. In the last few years, the department has been hit with scandals of egregious police misconduct that, had they not been captured on tape, likely would either never have been investigated, or the investigation wouldn't have been based on what actually happened.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.
And points to some alarming statistics:
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.
And shows how they're making it even worse now:
Now, the police department is working to become even less accountable. Last October, a study from the Chicago Justice Project found that on those rare occasions when Chicago police brass want to fire an officer, the Chicago Police Board--the agency that oversees the department--nearly always overrules them. On the very same day that study was released, the department announced a new policy whereby it would reserve the option to file criminal charges against citizens who file police misconduct reports deemed to be without merit. I'm sure false misconduct reports are common, and likely a bureaucratic hassle. But you can't start charging citizens who claim to have been mistreated by police with crimes because a department that has shown it isn't capable of investigating and policing itself has decided, unsurprisingly, that once again its officers did nothing wrong. The policy will likely deter false complaints; but it will also deter legitimate ones.
Appalling. It is long past time to reign in the police in this country and make serious reforms in the entire criminal justice system.
Politics
Comments
Given that IANAL, I'm wondering if a class action civil suit is feasible. Distinct from the prior, are there triggers that would allow the federal government to investigate and remediate?
Posted by: Michael Heath | December 20, 2009 9:18 AM
"Appalling. It is long past time to reign in the police in this country and make serious reforms in the entire criminal justice system."
Given who's in charge of this country and what connections he has, I wouldn't expect the effort to begin in Chicago.
Unless one of the Chicago police happens to be a Christian, of course.
Posted by: Pat Donohue | December 20, 2009 9:44 AM
#2:
ooh, cute... I think you must be insinuating that the President is a secret Muslim out to get those durned Christians eh? Are you truly this juvenile? I sure hope it is an act to elicit conversations.
Posted by: DJ | December 20, 2009 10:01 AM
What were the Chicago cops doing in Pittsburg?
Posted by: Rodney | December 20, 2009 10:16 AM
I have no doubts that Pat Donohue is totally Poe-riffic. He links to articles on The Onion to prove his "points", fer chrissakes.
Posted by: Captain Mike | December 20, 2009 10:21 AM
DJ, don't even bother with Pat. He was once entertaining, but he's become a really bad Poe as of late. This blog deserves a better breed of troll.
Posted by: penn | December 20, 2009 10:29 AM
Poes are nothing but trolls who muddy the waters for conventional trolls. I'm sick of them. They are a waste of time and mental energy.
Assuming that Pat is really a Poe, he is a subtle one. Surely he is capable of writing intelligent comments that directly state his views.
Pat, you need to throw off your troll drag and join the adults.
Posted by: xebecs | December 20, 2009 11:25 AM
I'm not much of a statistician, but that's hardly the sort of random distribution I would expect from false misconduct complaints. Five percent of the force wouldn't be that much of a hardship to replace, either, if only someone were serious about cleaning up.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | December 20, 2009 1:03 PM
After the previous CPD superintendent resigned because of rampant criminality in the department, the mayor hired an outsider to replace him Jody Weis, a 22 year veteran of the FBI, appears to be both competent and honest, which means that, since accepting the job, rank and file Chicago officers have been on a non-stop campaign to undermine his efforts and to discredit Weiss with phony charges of incompetence. The sense of entitlement to behave corruptly is so deeply entrenched that police officers actually believe that ordering cops to obey the law and behave like professionals is grossly unfair.
The 5% figure for officers accounting for half the citizen complaints might lead one to believe that the problems lies with a few rotten apples. But the CPD has been dominated by bad attitudes and an ethos of laziness and casual corruption across the board for as long as I can remember. Most of it is the sort of behavior that doesn't result in citizen complaints, but it leads the average citizen to regard the CPD as a thoroughly corrupt organization. For years, we saw checkered police hat bands hanging in personal vehicles parked illegally and police officers who walk into convenience stores, taking whatever they would like without paying—the price of decent service from the CPD.
Then there are the shitty attitudes routinely displayed toward citizens who aren't even suspected of crimes. The third and most recent time my home was burglarized, I didn't even bother to call the police because I didn't want to wait 3 hours for a police officer to show up and treat me with contempt for bothering him as had happened previously.
On another occasion, my car was hit by an unlicensed driver as I was leaving my home. The other driver and I waited for the police to arrive for well over 90 minutes before I no longer felt I was justified in demanding that the other driver stick around. The police showed up two hours after that. The officer barked at me: "what the hell do you want us to do? I can't do anything if the other driver isn't here." He refused to even take a report.
In my 35 years living here, I can only remember one encounter with CPD that I would consider positive, while in at least a half-dozen other personal encounters, as a witness or crime victim, I've been treated with disrespect or outright verbal abuse.
I have to laugh when I hear CPD complain about of lack of citizen cooperation and a no-snitching ethic that makes their job harder. The CPD goes to great effort to discourage honest citizens from ever dealing with the police. Accordingly, most people I know have a high threshold for calling the police. You always have to ask yourself whether the potential abuse from the cops will be worth it.
Posted by: Dr X | December 20, 2009 1:07 PM
We've had a few incidents here in RI where police in Woonsocket, Lincoln, and Providence have been recorded on video beating suspects who were already restrained.
In the case of Providence, that cop is under investigation by the FBI. The Lincoln cop has been discharged and is currently under prosecution. The Woonsocket incident is still winding through the process.
I have some advice for police officers. Always assume that you are being recorded. Always! Camcorders are ubiquitous now. So never assume that it's being done in a private location. Smile, you're on Candid Camera!
Posted by: Tony P | December 20, 2009 1:11 PM
Ed: "rein in", as in horses, not "reign in" as in kings.
/pedant
Posted by: Amadan | December 20, 2009 3:46 PM
I dunno. A good Poe can be entertaining, and Pat's done some pretty funny ones in the past. But I agree that today's isn't one of his best.
One of the hallmarks of a good Poe is that it scrupulously follows its own internal logic. That's not happening here...we've got two conflicting premises: "President Obama wants to perpetuate corruption in his hometown's police department" and "President Obama wants to persecute Christians". Either one would work fine by itself, but taken together they just lead to a muddled conclusion.
Anyway, my advice for the prospective Poe-artist is: Quality over quantity. If you can't get an idea to work, then don't feel like you have to post it anyway. Spend some more time fine-tuning it, or just give up and wait for a new and better opportunity to present itself.
Posted by: chaos_engineer | December 20, 2009 4:56 PM
While looking up news articles on the DC snowball fight incident, I came across this article about a Philadelphia policeman who shot and killed a guy while off-duty and (reportedly) drunk. The guy had seven prior complaints for drawing his gun on people or otherwise offering violence over personal, off-duty disputes, but every one of them was dismissed as "unfounded" - at the same time that Internal Affairs was describing his conduct as "unprofessional" and in "direct violation of departmental policy." That's how reliably a complaint is likely to be judged valid.
Posted by: Scott Hanley | December 20, 2009 10:27 PM
Rodney, if I had to guess, I'd say they were there to help out with all the manforce needed for a gathering of that magnitude. You know, volunteers (paid, of course).
Posted by: Bachalon | December 20, 2009 11:32 PM
@ Scott Hanley
the 5% of officers receiving complaints could still be covered by false misconduct reports depending on the work they do eg anti drugs teams are more likely to get false complaints than someone who works in admin.
That said that particular argument is used to explain why the tactical support groups in the UK have higher number of complaints.
This has been a tad dented though by the number of complaints about their peaceful protest control measures and the way everytime video has turned up they have, indeed, been happily battering people counter to their claims of innocence.
Posted by: kevinj | December 21, 2009 4:27 AM