In the past ten years, the city has paid five hundred and twenty-one million dollars in alleged police-misconduct cases, according to a study by the Better Government Association
How do you a fix a system that has accepted and enabled this kind of violence as an entitlement of the job? There are clearly a lot of cops who have absolutely no business being cops.
The Mayor, the State’s Attorney and even the alderman who agreed to allow these payouts to happen. The system is a broken mess and they should all be held accountable for sweeping it under the rug and looking the other way.
There is but one way to reform the CPD–and it will never happen.
That is: Fire everybody and start over from scratch.
There is no way possible to reform the organization from within. Bringing in a new chief from outside will only cause a circling of the wagons from those on the ‘inside’
Our model of policing is antiquated and unsufficient to deal with high crime/gang neighborhoods.
Human beings are not capable of experiencing repetive scenes of violence and suffering without being traumatized. We are asking people who are trained for typical police duties to work in war zones. Add a police department whose leadershipoperates as an old boys network (typical in all parts of this country) and you have a recipe for poor outcomes.
I have seen friends who are cops and firefighters, who were raised well and educated adopt racist stereotypes, lose empathy and look at citizens as enemies when they are exposed to constant scenes of violence, brutality and suffering.
This is a difficult problem with no easy answers. I don’t know of any country that has had success implementing a strategy to deal with violent gangs. Look at Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua
What is needed is a complete overhaul of the selection and screening process for hiring police. The focus should be on hiring the most professional, the most level-headed, and most patient individuals out there.
I’m not sure, though, how to attract these individuals to a job that usually pays poorly and invloves seeing a fair amount of death and destruction on a daily basis.
LMG, what in the world are you talking about? You’re trying to assign PTSD en masse to the police department as an excuse for police crimes and cover ups?
What, if any, evidence do you have of that?
What do you think “typical police duties” have been in Chicago for the last 100 years? Barney bringing in Otis to sleep one off in the cell?
Violent crime in Chicago is half of what it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And how’s about Prohibition? What were “typical police duties” then?
Read the linked article. They shot dead an unarmed kid, planted an inoperable gun on him, lied that he fired at them first……
Stop making excuses for lawless behavior by the police.
This is almost like a toy company adding money into the budget to pay for lawsuits from toys that hurt kids or a computer company adding money into the budget to pay for lawsuits from parts that catch fire.
I believe that Mayor Emanuel and whoever is the new, full-blown CPD Supe to learn the words “quality control”.
On a side note, I read over lunch that State Police officials raided an apartment at Cougar Village on SIUE’s campus because of marijuana. Words fail me.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:03 pm:
==The Mayor, the State’s Attorney and even the alderman who agreed to allow these payouts to happen. The system is a broken mess and they should all be held accountable for sweeping it under the rug and looking the other way.==
Your second sentence is great, but your first one misses the mark.
“Payouts” are not really the word and they’re not part of the problem. They’re supposed to be part of the solution.
For years, over the course of many editorials, advocates have been asking WHEN officials will be embarrassed enough over the “police brutality budget” to make real change, and WHEN taxpayers will be tired enough of paying to hold them accountable for making that change.
The tort system in this state (unless the governor has his way) holds RATIONAL actors accountable to make change as they don’t wish to keep paying and paying.
The problem in Chicago is that until now the leadership, media, power elites, and many citizens have been willing to pay the pricetag for brutalized enforced segregation. It’s been a rounding error, really.
The solution is that now they are beginning to feel, or at least fear, the real pinch.
I honestly can’t remember where I read this (could’ve even been here) but one suggestion was to require policemen to carry insurance (similar to the malpractice insurance that doctors carry). When the insurance company (and not the taxpayers) are paying off millions of dollars due to reckless cops those bad apples would effectively be priced out of police work through skyrocketing rates or simply ineligible when no insurer would cover them.
I know next to nothing about the insurance industry so I cannot even offer a comment on whether it’s ever been tried or is even possible to implement. No doubt any effort to start such a plan would likely meet insurmountable resistance.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:05 pm:
“beginning to feel, or at least fear, the real pinch” = damage to political, financial, reputation capital. Broad exposure. Public accountability.
- Formerly Known As... - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:19 pm:
So selling off 75 years off parking rights gets you money to fund about 20 years of police misconduct incidents?
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:52 pm:
Individualized malpractice insurance is a terrible idea.
Yes, there is a distinct class of overly punitive, rogue, bad-apple cops. But there is also a system that relies on and shields them. Why? Do we really want our leaders to let insurance companies have the job of policing the police? Come on.
We the people need to decide whether the police are in fact doing what we want them to do, or whether they aren’t.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve agreed that they are not.
- FormerParatrooper - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:54 pm:
If I read this article without knowing it was the CPD, I would think I was reading a newspaper from the 1980’s when I was in Central America.
Loose meat burger - very insightful. Thank you for sharing it. There could be an angle to that I hadnt thought of - violence levels of gangs causes increased rapid burnout of professionals and the policing model was developed for low incidence-low level violence scenerios. Chi-raq war zone and we send in Barney Fife. I think the actual solution is probably multi-faceted, penalties for perps changes, police methods changes, including manpower level changes, processing changes after perp is delivered to holding, chaehing perps the cost of their policing arrest and suing them for the money/judgements, so on and so forth
“Violent crime in Chicago is half of what it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s”.
The problem is far more complex today than then, and we need to stop comparing this time period in Chicago crime to today …
1. Crime during the time period cited by you, does not put into consideration the concentration of high-crime areas. Robert Taylor & Cabrini Green were high crime areas. Since the destruction of these homes, the gangs have spread to other neighborhoods.
2. Gangs have been fragmented into “cliques” and are continually fighting amongst themselves. This has been fueled by social media spats.
3. Advancement in emergency responses and trauma rooms, have prolonged the lives of many gunshot victims. Thus, skewing the data of the murder rates for that time period.
Jockey, I was responding to a previous commenter who suggested that Chicago police are unprepared and untrained for a new level of violence that didn’t exist before.
With all due respect to the Chicago media ( and I seldom check local news sources unless referred by this site ) why do New York and National media sources always seems to report details of this kind?
Did any Chicago news sources report this info before the NewYorker published it? The Better Government Association is to be commended for their study, and I feel fairly certain that this study was made available to the other news sources in the area.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:21 pm:
The $521 million was reported by Andy Shaw in the Sun-Times in April 2014.
Let raise the taxes in Chicago and the rest of the state to keep paying for the misconduct. Raise taxes, raise taxes, tax this or that. Maybe if Chicago didn’t have to pay out FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS. They would not need all the tax income.
crazybleedingheart - thanks for the clarification. I live in the metro east so I do not often check the Chicago media. Always glad to be politely corrected and will always accept the fact that there are others who know more details than I might be privy to.
Two points — first, no matter the merits, Cook County and N.D. IL remain plaintiffs’ venues. No matter the liability, settlements are going to be high.
The second though is that jury verdicts tend to make the news and settlements often do not. Is Corp. Counsel going to roll the dice on a trial that could be won if an adverse verdict may make the Mayor or others look bad. Typically defendants evaluate settlement strictly on cost of defense and potential verdict. This makes me wonder if there are other factors.
Or it could just be that CPD was terribly managed and that these settlements were all completely justified. I’m not ruling that one out.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:49 pm:
Sorry, Illini, my snark wasn’t aimed at you. It wasn’t reported much after it was reported, y’know?
More important for most media and electeds to keep getting those insider perks than to have the mayor cut you off for being one of those howl-at-the-moon “CBH”s.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 4:22 pm:
Sounds like Mike Allen at Politico just got kicked out of the clubhouse.
Wordslinger: I am not making an excuse for unconstitutional police violence and evidence tampering. I am merely pointing out a possible factor that might exacerbate the situation or be part of the cause. Once you have officers lying about the events on written reports, tampering with evidence and deleting tapes you have strong evidence that there are massive institutional problems within the dept.
I strongly disagree with you that gang violence today is anything like it was at anytime before. Today It is much more violent and there are no rules. Everyone is a target and no place not a church or school is safe. As evidence I offer every interview of current and former gang members by Spike Lee and Vice TV, check them about. Vice has done great reporting on Chicago gang violence.
When a police officer responds to a violent shooting or a firefighter responds to a terrible car wreck with multiple fatalities, those responders should be given time to process the things they saw and they need to incentivize counseling in a job field where repression and machismo dominate the culture. Additionally it would help if there were residency requirements. Officers patrol the area in which they live.
==Do we really want our leaders to let insurance companies have the job of policing the police? Come on.==
Of course not but do you trust the current system as-is to deal with them? There have been statistics showing that the vast majority of these guys are REPEAT offenders so the current system of discipline obviously isn’t weeding them out.
I’m not a cop but in that line of work I’d have to assume it’s difficult, if not impossible to avoid any and all complaints but to protect the jobs of guys who have consistently abused their powers at the taxpayers expense.
Is insurance the answer? I Don’t know. I do know that Rahm Emanuel doesn’t have the answer either.
“On a side note, I read over lunch that State Police officials raided an apartment at Cougar Village on SIUE’s campus because of marijuana. Words fail me.”
Me too. One way to lessen gang influence and a major cause of adverse citizen-police interactions would be to stop the insane war on drugs. We learned nothing from the stupidity of the many years of alcohol prohibition.
- Blue dog dem - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 11:52 am:
would have been a tidy little sum put towards CPS pension obligations.
- 100 miles west - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 11:53 am:
“Misconduct” costs $143,000 per day.
- Vee - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 11:56 am:
No amount of money is worth the life of any human. How shameful of them to want to pay someone for the murder of their child.
- Aldyth - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:04 pm:
How do you a fix a system that has accepted and enabled this kind of violence as an entitlement of the job? There are clearly a lot of cops who have absolutely no business being cops.
- JS Mill - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:12 pm:
Holy banned word!!!
- Honeybear - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:15 pm:
Listen up FOP sisters and brothers. As they say in East St. Louis, “You need to get you some act right”.
- Spliff - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:15 pm:
The Mayor, the State’s Attorney and even the alderman who agreed to allow these payouts to happen. The system is a broken mess and they should all be held accountable for sweeping it under the rug and looking the other way.
- train111 - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:18 pm:
There is but one way to reform the CPD–and it will never happen.
That is: Fire everybody and start over from scratch.
There is no way possible to reform the organization from within. Bringing in a new chief from outside will only cause a circling of the wagons from those on the ‘inside’
- loose meat burger - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:19 pm:
Our model of policing is antiquated and unsufficient to deal with high crime/gang neighborhoods.
Human beings are not capable of experiencing repetive scenes of violence and suffering without being traumatized. We are asking people who are trained for typical police duties to work in war zones. Add a police department whose leadershipoperates as an old boys network (typical in all parts of this country) and you have a recipe for poor outcomes.
I have seen friends who are cops and firefighters, who were raised well and educated adopt racist stereotypes, lose empathy and look at citizens as enemies when they are exposed to constant scenes of violence, brutality and suffering.
This is a difficult problem with no easy answers. I don’t know of any country that has had success implementing a strategy to deal with violent gangs. Look at Brazil, Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua
- Practikal - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:25 pm:
What is needed is a complete overhaul of the selection and screening process for hiring police. The focus should be on hiring the most professional, the most level-headed, and most patient individuals out there.
I’m not sure, though, how to attract these individuals to a job that usually pays poorly and invloves seeing a fair amount of death and destruction on a daily basis.
- wordslinger - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 12:50 pm:
LMG, what in the world are you talking about? You’re trying to assign PTSD en masse to the police department as an excuse for police crimes and cover ups?
What, if any, evidence do you have of that?
What do you think “typical police duties” have been in Chicago for the last 100 years? Barney bringing in Otis to sleep one off in the cell?
Violent crime in Chicago is half of what it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s. And how’s about Prohibition? What were “typical police duties” then?
Read the linked article. They shot dead an unarmed kid, planted an inoperable gun on him, lied that he fired at them first……
Stop making excuses for lawless behavior by the police.
- Team Sleep - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:00 pm:
This is almost like a toy company adding money into the budget to pay for lawsuits from toys that hurt kids or a computer company adding money into the budget to pay for lawsuits from parts that catch fire.
I believe that Mayor Emanuel and whoever is the new, full-blown CPD Supe to learn the words “quality control”.
On a side note, I read over lunch that State Police officials raided an apartment at Cougar Village on SIUE’s campus because of marijuana. Words fail me.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:03 pm:
==The Mayor, the State’s Attorney and even the alderman who agreed to allow these payouts to happen. The system is a broken mess and they should all be held accountable for sweeping it under the rug and looking the other way.==
Your second sentence is great, but your first one misses the mark.
“Payouts” are not really the word and they’re not part of the problem. They’re supposed to be part of the solution.
For years, over the course of many editorials, advocates have been asking WHEN officials will be embarrassed enough over the “police brutality budget” to make real change, and WHEN taxpayers will be tired enough of paying to hold them accountable for making that change.
The tort system in this state (unless the governor has his way) holds RATIONAL actors accountable to make change as they don’t wish to keep paying and paying.
The problem in Chicago is that until now the leadership, media, power elites, and many citizens have been willing to pay the pricetag for brutalized enforced segregation. It’s been a rounding error, really.
The solution is that now they are beginning to feel, or at least fear, the real pinch.
This is a good summary:
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/dec/02/chicago-police-chief-gone-but-fight-against-police-violence-continues-in-city
- CrazyHorse - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:05 pm:
I honestly can’t remember where I read this (could’ve even been here) but one suggestion was to require policemen to carry insurance (similar to the malpractice insurance that doctors carry). When the insurance company (and not the taxpayers) are paying off millions of dollars due to reckless cops those bad apples would effectively be priced out of police work through skyrocketing rates or simply ineligible when no insurer would cover them.
I know next to nothing about the insurance industry so I cannot even offer a comment on whether it’s ever been tried or is even possible to implement. No doubt any effort to start such a plan would likely meet insurmountable resistance.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:05 pm:
“beginning to feel, or at least fear, the real pinch” = damage to political, financial, reputation capital. Broad exposure. Public accountability.
- Formerly Known As... - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:19 pm:
@CrazyHorse - it was here
https://capitolfax.com/2015/11/24/the-supreme-power-of-video/
Good comments about that in the post.
- CrazyHorse - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:26 pm:
Thanks FKA. I should’ve known it was from CapFax. So much info available here.
A great suggestion by the the Northwestern Professor IMHO but as I said I just doubt it ever gains any traction.
- Ay Caramba! - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:31 pm:
That’s a staggering amount of pay-offs for misconduct. How many police officers are on the force in CPD?
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:42 pm:
Around 12,500 sworn officers, including desk jobs
(over $40k liability per position)
Again, “pay-off” is the wrong term.
- hisgirlfriday - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:45 pm:
So selling off 75 years off parking rights gets you money to fund about 20 years of police misconduct incidents?
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:52 pm:
Individualized malpractice insurance is a terrible idea.
Yes, there is a distinct class of overly punitive, rogue, bad-apple cops. But there is also a system that relies on and shields them. Why? Do we really want our leaders to let insurance companies have the job of policing the police? Come on.
We the people need to decide whether the police are in fact doing what we want them to do, or whether they aren’t.
Unfortunately, I don’t think we’ve agreed that they are not.
- FormerParatrooper - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:54 pm:
If I read this article without knowing it was the CPD, I would think I was reading a newspaper from the 1980’s when I was in Central America.
- Downstate - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 1:57 pm:
Wow! Yesterday I was making fun of the fact that the city would make a $5 million settlement without asking any questions.
Today, we find out that, on average, they are making those types of settlements every 35 days.
- internal angel - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 2:04 pm:
Loose meat burger - very insightful. Thank you for sharing it. There could be an angle to that I hadnt thought of - violence levels of gangs causes increased rapid burnout of professionals and the policing model was developed for low incidence-low level violence scenerios. Chi-raq war zone and we send in Barney Fife. I think the actual solution is probably multi-faceted, penalties for perps changes, police methods changes, including manpower level changes, processing changes after perp is delivered to holding, chaehing perps the cost of their policing arrest and suing them for the money/judgements, so on and so forth
..
- Jockey - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 2:23 pm:
@ Wordslinger 12:50p.m.:
“Violent crime in Chicago is half of what it was in the 70s, 80s and 90s”.
The problem is far more complex today than then, and we need to stop comparing this time period in Chicago crime to today …
1. Crime during the time period cited by you, does not put into consideration the concentration of high-crime areas. Robert Taylor & Cabrini Green were high crime areas. Since the destruction of these homes, the gangs have spread to other neighborhoods.
2. Gangs have been fragmented into “cliques” and are continually fighting amongst themselves. This has been fueled by social media spats.
3. Advancement in emergency responses and trauma rooms, have prolonged the lives of many gunshot victims. Thus, skewing the data of the murder rates for that time period.
- wordslinger - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 2:27 pm:
Jockey, I was responding to a previous commenter who suggested that Chicago police are unprepared and untrained for a new level of violence that didn’t exist before.
- A friend - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 2:36 pm:
Read this http://www.policeforum.org/assets/docs/Critical_Issues_Series/civil%20rights%20investigations%20of%20local%20police%20-%20lessons%20learned%202013.pdf
- Rich Miller - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 2:37 pm:
Jockey, you missed the point entirely.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 2:40 pm:
Internal angel, war analogies don’t work here. The people are not the enemy of the state.
Policing “solutions” that start from that premise have not worked over the last decades they’ve been tried.
Doubling down is not a rational response.
- illini - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:17 pm:
With all due respect to the Chicago media ( and I seldom check local news sources unless referred by this site ) why do New York and National media sources always seems to report details of this kind?
Did any Chicago news sources report this info before the NewYorker published it? The Better Government Association is to be commended for their study, and I feel fairly certain that this study was made available to the other news sources in the area.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:21 pm:
The $521 million was reported by Andy Shaw in the Sun-Times in April 2014.
http://chicago.suntimes.com/politics/7/71/167182/city-pays-heavy-price-for-police-brutality
As I said, many have been asking for years when the city will pay so much its leaders are held accountable.
…Bueller…
- Broke - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:34 pm:
Let raise the taxes in Chicago and the rest of the state to keep paying for the misconduct. Raise taxes, raise taxes, tax this or that. Maybe if Chicago didn’t have to pay out FIVE HUNDRED TWENTY MILLION DOLLARS. They would not need all the tax income.
- illini - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:37 pm:
crazybleedingheart - thanks for the clarification. I live in the metro east so I do not often check the Chicago media. Always glad to be politely corrected and will always accept the fact that there are others who know more details than I might be privy to.
- Gooner - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:42 pm:
Two points — first, no matter the merits, Cook County and N.D. IL remain plaintiffs’ venues. No matter the liability, settlements are going to be high.
The second though is that jury verdicts tend to make the news and settlements often do not. Is Corp. Counsel going to roll the dice on a trial that could be won if an adverse verdict may make the Mayor or others look bad. Typically defendants evaluate settlement strictly on cost of defense and potential verdict. This makes me wonder if there are other factors.
Or it could just be that CPD was terribly managed and that these settlements were all completely justified. I’m not ruling that one out.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 3:49 pm:
Sorry, Illini, my snark wasn’t aimed at you. It wasn’t reported much after it was reported, y’know?
More important for most media and electeds to keep getting those insider perks than to have the mayor cut you off for being one of those howl-at-the-moon “CBH”s.
- crazybleedingheart - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 4:22 pm:
Sounds like Mike Allen at Politico just got kicked out of the clubhouse.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/local/politics/ct-rahm-emanuel-cuba-family-vacation-20151202-story.html
- loose meat burger - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 4:41 pm:
Wordslinger: I am not making an excuse for unconstitutional police violence and evidence tampering. I am merely pointing out a possible factor that might exacerbate the situation or be part of the cause. Once you have officers lying about the events on written reports, tampering with evidence and deleting tapes you have strong evidence that there are massive institutional problems within the dept.
I strongly disagree with you that gang violence today is anything like it was at anytime before. Today It is much more violent and there are no rules. Everyone is a target and no place not a church or school is safe. As evidence I offer every interview of current and former gang members by Spike Lee and Vice TV, check them about. Vice has done great reporting on Chicago gang violence.
When a police officer responds to a violent shooting or a firefighter responds to a terrible car wreck with multiple fatalities, those responders should be given time to process the things they saw and they need to incentivize counseling in a job field where repression and machismo dominate the culture. Additionally it would help if there were residency requirements. Officers patrol the area in which they live.
- illini - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 4:46 pm:
Thanks, but I did not consider your response to be snark
- CrazyHorse - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 4:47 pm:
==Do we really want our leaders to let insurance companies have the job of policing the police? Come on.==
Of course not but do you trust the current system as-is to deal with them? There have been statistics showing that the vast majority of these guys are REPEAT offenders so the current system of discipline obviously isn’t weeding them out.
I’m not a cop but in that line of work I’d have to assume it’s difficult, if not impossible to avoid any and all complaints but to protect the jobs of guys who have consistently abused their powers at the taxpayers expense.
Is insurance the answer? I Don’t know. I do know that Rahm Emanuel doesn’t have the answer either.
- Striketoo - Wednesday, Dec 2, 15 @ 5:42 pm:
“On a side note, I read over lunch that State Police officials raided an apartment at Cougar Village on SIUE’s campus because of marijuana. Words fail me.”
Me too. One way to lessen gang influence and a major cause of adverse citizen-police interactions would be to stop the insane war on drugs. We learned nothing from the stupidity of the many years of alcohol prohibition.