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

[John W.]

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:02 AM, Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> 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.


It seems to me to be a very tenuous correlation at best.  Police generally
don't PREVENT murders.  They generally solve them, or try to solve them,
after they've already occurred.

About the only argument I can think of is an indirect one:  If police are
taking fewer potential murderers off the streets on other pretexts (such as
gang members for selling drugs, etc.), then that could conceivably account
for the (relatively slight) increase in the murder rate.  Also, I guess, if
word has gotten around among the gang members that the police are taking it
easy.



> 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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