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

[Barbara kessel]

There is also the fairly recent Supreme Court ruling in relation to
Washington D.C. that cities cannot have their own gun ban laws, and when
that happened, the city of Chicago was mentioned as having gun lawys most
similar to Washington, D.C. The prediction by the mayor of Washington D.C.
was that murders would rise as more handguns rush into the market without
any regulations about purchase and possession - which had been thrown out by
the Supreme Court. It is unconstitutional, don't you know? Barbara K

On Mon, Jul 7, 2008 at 11:32 AM, Stuart Levy <slevy at ncsa.uiuc.edu> wrote:

> On Mon, Jul 07, 2008 at 11:21:25AM -0500, John W. wrote:
> > 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.
>
> Yes, if you listen to the report that's the kind of mechanism they seem to
> suggest.
> In particular, they mention removing guns from the street.
>
> No matter how you read this, it's ugly:
>
>   - If (some) police are actually holding the city hostage (whether it's
> having
>        a measurable effect on murder rates or not), it's dereliction of
> duty.
>
>   - If they're just using an unrelated rise in murders to try to
>        stop scrutiny of police misbehavior, it amounts to
>        extortion on a grand scale by whoever is promoting this story.
>
>   - Police who aren't involved in either of the above should be furious.
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