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

[Brian Dolinar]

I can assure folks, the Chicago Police are not letting up on their
brutality.

BD

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:18 AM, E. Wayne Johnson <ewj at pigs.ag> wrote:

> 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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>>
>>
>
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-- 
Brian Dolinar, Ph.D.
303 W. Locust St.
Urbana, IL 61801
briandolinar at gmail.com
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