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Tag: chicago

  • Chicago police shooting of Laquan McDonald

    The video is out. Finally. After long attempts to sweep it under the rug failed.

    This Sun-Times editorial provides good background.

    It’s a bad shooting. (Though honestly I was expecting even worse, like an unarmed rationally behaving victim.) The mayor (now, at least) and the police chief have said the officer is at fault.

    The officer who killed McDonald fits the pattern of bad cops: high activity, drug work, too many complaints. Sure, all the complaints weren’t justified, but some of them were. And undoubtedly he did a lot of bad shit that people didn’t file formal complaints about.

    From the Washington Post:

    The allegations against Van Dyke include 10 complaints of excessive force, including two incidents where he allegedly used a firearm, causing injury. He was also accused of improper searches and making racially or ethnically biased remarks. Four of the allegations were proven factual, but Van Dyke’s actions were deemed lawful and appropriate. In most of the other cases, there was either not enough evidence to prove or disprove the complaint or the allegation was proven unfounded.

    …

    The data shows that it’s rare for any officers to be penalized, and white officers were half as likely as black ones to be disciplined for a complaint.

    …

    Apparent repeat offenders — officers with more than 10 complaints against them — represented 30 percent of all complaints, even though they made up only 10 percent of the police force.

    …

    That distinction [the most complained-about officer] goes to Jerome Finnigan, the subject of 68 citizen complaints in nearly two decades with the Chicago Police Department; none of the allegations resulted in disciplinary action.

    In 2011, Finnigan was convicted of robbing criminal suspects while serving on an elite force and ordering a hit on a cop he thought might turn him in. At his sentencing, Finnigan admitted to having become “a corrupt police officer,” according to the Chicago Tribune. But he said the police department was aware, and for many years did nothing.

    “My bosses knew what I was doing out there,” he said, “and it went on and on. And this wasn’t the exception to the rule. This was the rule.”

    68 complaints and a criminal conviction and no disciplinary action?! That is rotten.

    So this cop shows up on a scene and, rather than doing nothing, gets out of his car, puts himself almost in harm’s way, and kills this guy. And then keeps firing. Fires 16 shots. No other cop saw a need to shoot. Because there was no need to shoot. You contain, retreat, or make do. Then you tase this guy. Or what about having shields and a straight baton?

    Anyway, will Chicago riot like Baltimore? No. For two reasons. First of all there is now legal accountability. That’s the way the system is supposed to work. You murder somebody? You face justice. Second, unlike Baltimore Mayor Rawlings-Blake and former Police Commissioner Batts, the political and police leadership in Chicago have a minimum level of basic competency.

    Update: Here’s the initial account(hat tip to Chris Hayes)

  • High Crime Neighborhood + Cops on Bikes = Less Crime

    From the Chicago Tribune:

    The [Chicago] impact zones, established in February 2013 after a violent 2012, comprise just 3 percent of the city’s geographic area but account for one-fifth of its violent crime, according to the department.

    From the Sun Times:

    In March 2013, the department began assigning foot patrol offers to the high-crime areas. McCarthy said feedback from the communities has been positive, as have the results. Since Feb. 1, 2013, in the impact zones, murders are down nearly 50 percent, shootings are down 43 percent and overall crime is down 26 percent, doubling and outpacing citywide reductions, he said.

    How is the different than NYC? Hopefully, one would think, the cops in Chicago are doing something other than feeling quota pressure to write citations.

    In numbers, though, we’re not talking many cops. 360 officers in total. 140 on bike 220 on foot. That’s 18 cops per impact zone, which means about 4 or 5 on duty 16 hours a day. The zones seem rationallysized. The few I checked are about one-quarter to one-half square mile (or 30 to 55 blocks).

  • Why (some) good people don’t like cops

    Because (some) cops enforce non-existent laws and treat them like sh*t. Ta-Nehisi Coates writes about a recent encounter with police on the streets of Chicago:

    Catercorner to the volunteers of Safe Passage, two cops sat in an SUV, snug and warm. Our video team was shooting the conversation between our host and the kid. One of the cops rolled down his window and yelled, “Excuse me you need to take your cameras off this corner. It’s Safe Passage.”

    …

    When the officer wanted us to move, there was a very easy way to handle the situation. You step our your car. You introduce yourself. You ask questions about what we’re doing. If we are breaking the law, you ask us to move. If we are not breaking the law and simply making your life hard, we are likely to move anyway. You are the power.

    The cop did not speak to us as though he were human. He spoke to us like a gangster, like he was protecting his block. He was solving no crime. He was protecting no lives. He was holding down his corner. He didn’t even bother with a change of uniform. An occupied SUV, parked at an intersection, announces its masters intentions.

  • Good news from Chicago

    NBC Chicago Reports via Atlantic Cities:

    Chicago closed out the first 11 months of 2013 with 380 murders, a drop from 474 in the same period of 2012, according to police data. That’s the fewest for any year in Chicago since 1965, according to Adam Collins, the Chicago Police Department Director of News Affairs.

  • Bang Bang, That Awful Sound

    Chicago’s 2012 murder total was 532. NYC’s total number for 2012 was 417. Even in absolute numbers this is significantly lower than Chicago! Amazing. The comparable homicide rates for NYC and Chicago are 5 and 20 per 100,000.

    Homicides in New York City declined 19 percent from 2011 (just to remember: in 1990 2,245 people were killed in NYC). To get such a substantial drop on such a low (by US standards) homicide number needs some explaining. Chicago saw a 23 percent increase from 2011.

    Had the New York numbers gone up and the Chicago numbers gone down, you’d hear sage mumblings from chin stroking academics about regression to the mean (which, of course, assumes there is a mean (average) homicide rate toward which to regress… but I digress). I’ll tell you what the answer isn’t: people in New York just loved each other more; while clearly hate was on the rise in Chicago.

    [More tomorrow]

  • While I’m out…

    Check out this lengthy piece (and well worth reading the whole thing) by David Simon about murders, stats, the BPD, the state’s attorney’s office, and the need for main-stream media. (And thanks to an anonymous comment for cluing me in.)

    The Stat:

    In 2011, the Baltimore Police Department charged 70 defendants with murder or manslaughter.

    Yet in 2010, the department charged 130 defendants with such crimes.

    …

    What is happening?

    Are Baltimore’s killers showing more cunning, are murders becoming
    harder to solve?  No indication of that from any quarter.  Did the
    homicide unit lose a ton of veteran talent?  Nope.  Not between 2010 and
    2011 at any rate.  No, the dramatic collapse of the department’s
    investigative response to murder is the result of a quiet, backroom
    policy change that has created a bureaucratic disincentive to charge
    people in homicides.

    Also, and unrelated, McCarthy in Chicago says police don’t have to answer stupid 911 calls for service anymore. It might seem minor, but this could have a huge impact on policing (as Chapter Six of Cop in the Hood — “911 is a Joke” — describes in breath-taking page-turning detail). McCarthy is talking about “beat integrity” and says he’s willing to face the political flack for fewer police responses. He also wants to give powers of where police go to police bosses (instead of giving all the power to the dispatcher). This is all good. (Maybe in Baltimore they’ll actually bring a box back to put call in!) From the Sun-Times:

    McCarthy replied that the change was
    already under way, with the goal of creating, what he called “beat
    integrity.” That means leaving police officers to patrol their assigned
    beats, instead of chasing their tails by running from one 911 call to
    another at the behest of dispatchers. …

    “Previously, the dispatcher would direct
    the resources, while the sergeants in the field would basically just be
    receiving them. [Now], sergeants in the field are in charge of
    dispatching resources if they don’t like the way [dispatch] is doing it. …

    [Dispatch] has also abandoned what McCarthy called the “clean screen concept” at the 911 center.

    “They would dispatch a car from one end
    of the district to the other end of a district to simply get the job off
    the screen. That’s the clean screen concept,” he said.

    “What we’re now doing is maintaining
    beat integrity. … If a job comes in in a neighboring beat and it’s not
    an emergency call for service, that job will actually get stacked until
    that beat is available to handle it. That’s what beat integrity is all
    about. Same officers in the same beat every single day. Those officers
    are not only accountable for what’s happening on the beat, they also
    know who the good kids are from the bad kids. They’re not stopping
    everybody. They’re stopping the right people because they know who they
    are.”

    McCarthy said a more dramatic change is
    coming soon, when the Chicago Police Department determines “which jobs
    we’re not gonna respond to” anymore.

    “That’s a call that I’m going to make — and there’s going to be some wrankling about that,” he said.

    “We don’t need to respond to calls for
    service because, ‘My children are fighting over the remote control.’ We
    don’t need to respond to calls for service because, ‘My son won’t eat
    his dinner.’ Unfortunately, believe it or not, those are calls we
    actually respond to today.”

     And the political flack will come when one of the my children are fighting over the remote calls turns into a homicide. But you can’t dedicate half the police department to every idiot who can pick up a phone.

  • Good Policing in Chicago

    Well done. I wasn’t expecting things to go so well with the NATO summit. But they did. Kudos to Police Superintendent McCarthyand all the men and women of the Chicago Police Department. Lesson can be learned (particularly by West Coast police departments that don’t seem to be so good at this) and proper preparation is key.

    1) Don’t tolerate minor disturbances. Because they will grow to big disturbances, especially when those disturbances are perpetrated by people intent on chaos and damage. And once you lob the tear gas, you’ve already lost control.

    2) Intel.

    3) Target individuals who are doing things and not the crowd en mass.

    4) Have the top brass out there with the rank-and-file. This seemingly minor point is vitally important. And when a good word about McCarthy comes from the lips of Second City Cop, you know he’s done something right.

  • Guardian Angels Stabbed In Chicago

    I’ve always admired the Guardian Angels. They made me feel safe when in high school and riding the L alone, late at night. A man was being robbed, and they — unarmed — intervened. They got stabbed. From the Sun Times.

    Meanwhile in Chicago, a group of 100 white out-of-towners take a stroll through the Southside.

  • Murders Up 35% in Chicago

    My man McCarthy not off to a good start.

  • In the Windy City, Blowing People Away

    One easy way to tell if people have no relation to the criminal justice system is if they believe it actually works… you know, works as in guilty people get convicted after a fair trial, innocent people walk free, and victims feel like justice has been served.

    If you believe that, you watch too much TV.

    The Chicago Sun-Timesis looking back at a particularly bloody weekend in 2008 when 40 people were shot, seven fatally.

    So far, not one accused shooter has been convicted of pulling the trigger during those deadly 59 hours from April 18-20 of that year.

    Only one suspected triggerman — a convicted armed robber caught with the AK-47 he allegedly used to blow away his boss — is in jail awaiting trial.

    Three other victims said they know who shot them but refused to testify.

    Refused to testify? Now you might be thinking, “Serves them right if they won’t testify.” Sometimes indeed, criminals won’t testify and it’s hard to care too much about them. But other times victims are scared to testify, which is much more troublesome.

    But here is where it gets interesting. Let’s say you dotestify: “After Gamble took the witness stand against the guy who he says shot him, a judge ruled Gamble wasn’t credible because of his criminal record and found the suspect not guilty.” Ouch.

    How many shooting victims don’t have a record (answer: almost none)? But if you’ve got a bad record your testimony isn’t credible? Any wonder why people get away with murder?

    Last year, according to the Sun-Times, more than 90 percent of Chicago shootings resulted in no charges. With odds like that, you’d have to be a chump notto kill.