[Peace-discuss] Chicago police -- holding out until the lawsuits stop?

[E. Wayne Johnson]

Actually I am a bit skeptical that Police have all that much to do with 
stopping murders.
I would suppose that the Police actually get called to the scene after 
the event, and that Police are
actually doing very little to prevent murders since they would have no 
way of knowing whether or
not one is about to occur.  I think the Chicago Police is trying to pull 
the wool over the people's eyes.
On the other hand such a confession to a deliberate dereliction of duty 
should lead to immediate dismissal of those
so motivated as to "let the bodies pile up".

A 10% change could just be a chaotic fluctuation in the data or it might 
be a reflection of the declining economy
leading to an increase in urban misery showing up as  increased homicide 
rate.

Stuart Levy wrote:
> At yesterday's AWARE meeting I mentioned hearing, on NPR station WBEZ in Chicago,
> a report that (a) the Chicago murder rate is up this year and (b) that may be
> because (some?) Chicago police are unwilling to risk being sued/charged for
> misconduct as a few have been recently.  (Also, "juries in 2008 are different,
> they are much less inclined to just believe the police version of events.")
> Therefore, the suggestion is, police are taking it easy on law enforcement,
> declining to apprehend people that they would have pursued in the past.
>
> One police officer is quoted ("a grim assessment") as saying that they would
> just let the bodies pile up until there was enough pressure from the public,
> and from the police officials, to let the police do their work
> undisturbed by misconduct lawsuits.
>
> Several appalling things about this, including the reporter's lack of
> criticism in a couple of directions:
>   - of the police (if there's truth to this theory), and
>   - of the theory itself.   When trying to find this story, I ran into
>     various articles online about large-city murder rates, which are
>     up in other cities as well.  So it could be happening for reasons other
>     than this kind of hold-the-city-hostage behavior.
>
> Here's the source:
>
>     http://www.chicagopublicradio.org/Content.aspx?audioID=26287
>
>     We're now halfway through the year and the homicide rate is up more
>     than 10 percent compared to last year. A police source says the
>     unofficial tally is around 230 murders in 2008 compared to just over
>     200 by this date last year. There are many theories as to what’s
>     causing the rise. Chicago Public Radio’s criminal justice reporter
>     Robert Wildeboer shares one of them—a theory that’s held by some
>     of the officers themselves.
>
> For the audio of the story (~6 min), follow the above page's
> "Download" link to MP3 audio:
>     http://audio.wbez.org/848/2008/07/848_20080702a.mp3
>
>
> Also, a blogger (apparently a lawyer), outraged at hearing the same story, wrote about it:
>
>    http://chicagocrimelaw.wordpress.com/2008/07/02/police-misconduct-and-the-increased-homicide-rate/
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