- Mayor Lori Lightfoot summoned interim Police Supt. Charlie Beck and the 41 commanders under his control to City Hall on Tuesday to talk about ways to tamp down the violence after Chicago suffered its deadliest February weekend in 18 years.
“I wouldn’t describe the mayor as angry. I’m not angry. She’s not angry. We’re concerned,” Beck told the Sun-Times. “We have some issues that we’re dealing with in certain pockets of Chicago. We met to talk about those strategies. I’m not gonna go into them in depth, except to say that they involve a broad range of resources focused on areas that have suffered the violence the most.”
- Chicago “could have a mess on our hands that eclipses some of the worst years of violence” the city has seen, unless police get proactive and use all the tools available to them, Mayor Lori Lightfoot warned Wednesday.
After a weekend of violence — including nine homicides — that was the worst in February in 18 years, Lightfoot summoned interim Chicago Police Supt. Charlie Beck and 41 CPD commanders under his control to essentially read them the riot act.
“This weekend’s crime numbers, where we saw so many homicides and we saw a lot of shootings, were incredibly distressing to me,” Lightfoot said. “I’m not gonna shy away from that and I had a lot of very difficult conversations with CPD leadership over the weekend, Monday and yesterday.”
Did any of the conversations center around the continuous harassment of Police by so many oversight organizations, that actual policing is dead? COPA is re-opening investigations that have been adjudicated years ago, just so they can fire officers previously cleared. Force Review is fine-combing videos looking for any and all infractions and recommending officers be pulled from the street for "training" - training that is actually punishment. IAD is continually covering for corrupt clouted officers.
And do we really have to go over the Crimesha disaster, where robbers are pled out to probation and then go on to murder multiple victims at the same time. Continuing Investigations that never get charged. Last week's article about murder stats being fudged, meaning known murderers are out and about, free to kill again.
Stop-and-Frisk? "Racist."
Citizen contacts? "Racist."
Traffic stops? "Racist."
If you get told over and over, even after months of training and hours of on-the-job training and extra training and more training that ever before, that everything you do is under review by armchair quarterbacks who never served a day on the street, that never made a snap decision under unbelievable pressure, then guess what? The smartest move you can make, day after day, is to disengage. Do not jeopardize your continued employment or your remaining free from prison and/or bankruptcy.
You have sown the wind. Now reap the whirlwind.
UPDATE: As many mentioned, coming up on THREE years without a Contract, and the only reason it's take this long is the political players want the FOP (and PBPA) to sign off on every single negotiated Disciplinary Protection....you know, to make it even easier to fire us for any offense, real or imagined.
Makes us want to rush right out and fight crime....how about you?
Labels: department issues