Hard to trust Daley 'reform'
Hard to trust Daley 'reform'
BY CAROL MARIN
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
July 18, 2007
Reform? Transparency? Or same old, same old?
Thursday, the Chicago City Council will vote on Mayor Daley's proposal to reform the way police misconduct and brutality complaints are handled.
In the wake of embarrassing television images of off-duty Officer Anthony Abbate whaling away on a female bartender and another bunch of off-duty Chicago cops caught on videotape beating the bejesus out of a bunch of guys in a bar, Daley has ordered the dawning of a new day. He's proposed revamping the Office of Professional Standards, the secretive, civilian agency that has historically done too little, too late, and sometimes nothing at all to tackle rogue officers who betray the public trust and, along the way, taint the reputations of a majority of honorable cops.
How will the mayor's reform be accomplished?
Ah, that's the rub.
Under the mayor's plan, OPS, which now reports to the superintendent of Chicago Police, would answer to Daley.
That would be the same Mayor Daley who has done everything but stand on his head to avoid a thorough, thoughtful or completely candid public discussion of past police abuses that date all the way back to his days as the Cook County state's attorney. The same Mayor Daley whose law department continues to pay millions of dollars to outside legal firms to defend 20- and 30-year-old cases of police torture that center on a rogue clan of cops who reported to former Cmdr. Jon Burge, now living comfortably on a police pension in Florida. It's the same Mayor Daley whose law department has run circles around at least three distinguished federal judges by bailing out of an agreed upon $14.8 million settlement to torture victims and by refusing to deliver their client, the mayor, to sit for a deposition demanded by a federal magistrate.
Just this week, it was Mayor Daley's lawyers who appealed U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow's order to release the names of cops who had 10 or more citizen complaints against them. A total of 662 officers -- 5 percent of the force --have exhibited conduct that any sensible police department and any transparent, reform-minded mayor should want to take a very close look at. Not to mention we, the public, who pay all their salaries.
But no, no, no. The city insists we just don't understand that these are personnel matters, and so they are secret. Off-limits not to be disclosed.
How do you charge off into the future when you haven't honestly dealt with the past? A past, when it comes to unacknowledged, unaddressed cop abuse, that is a stain on this city. And, by extension, a stain on officers who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Let's remember that there are approximately 13,200 cops on the force and 19 out of every 20 do not have a stack of citizen complaints against them.
Of the ones who do, we're told some have been exonerated, others have not, and some units have way more complaints than others.
The only reason we even have those small bits of information is that Jamie Kalven, a Chicago writer, spent years begging for someone, anyone to pay attention to the case of a woman named Diane Bonds who lived in public housing and was shamefully abused by police. Bonds won a federal lawsuit and a $150,000 settlement from the city. But the mayor and his law department don't want us peering more closely into the discovery in the Bonds case to see all the evidence that caused her to win and the city to lose. That's why the city is fighting Lefkow's order to open up the files and let the sunshine in.
So Thursday, when the City Council takes up the mayor's revamp of OPS, maybe the aldermen can explain it to us. Maybe they can tell us why we should believe in promises of transparency when we're still choked to death by secrecy.
BY CAROL MARIN
Copyright by The Chicago Sun-Times
July 18, 2007
Reform? Transparency? Or same old, same old?
Thursday, the Chicago City Council will vote on Mayor Daley's proposal to reform the way police misconduct and brutality complaints are handled.
In the wake of embarrassing television images of off-duty Officer Anthony Abbate whaling away on a female bartender and another bunch of off-duty Chicago cops caught on videotape beating the bejesus out of a bunch of guys in a bar, Daley has ordered the dawning of a new day. He's proposed revamping the Office of Professional Standards, the secretive, civilian agency that has historically done too little, too late, and sometimes nothing at all to tackle rogue officers who betray the public trust and, along the way, taint the reputations of a majority of honorable cops.
How will the mayor's reform be accomplished?
Ah, that's the rub.
Under the mayor's plan, OPS, which now reports to the superintendent of Chicago Police, would answer to Daley.
That would be the same Mayor Daley who has done everything but stand on his head to avoid a thorough, thoughtful or completely candid public discussion of past police abuses that date all the way back to his days as the Cook County state's attorney. The same Mayor Daley whose law department continues to pay millions of dollars to outside legal firms to defend 20- and 30-year-old cases of police torture that center on a rogue clan of cops who reported to former Cmdr. Jon Burge, now living comfortably on a police pension in Florida. It's the same Mayor Daley whose law department has run circles around at least three distinguished federal judges by bailing out of an agreed upon $14.8 million settlement to torture victims and by refusing to deliver their client, the mayor, to sit for a deposition demanded by a federal magistrate.
Just this week, it was Mayor Daley's lawyers who appealed U.S. District Court Judge Joan Lefkow's order to release the names of cops who had 10 or more citizen complaints against them. A total of 662 officers -- 5 percent of the force --have exhibited conduct that any sensible police department and any transparent, reform-minded mayor should want to take a very close look at. Not to mention we, the public, who pay all their salaries.
But no, no, no. The city insists we just don't understand that these are personnel matters, and so they are secret. Off-limits not to be disclosed.
How do you charge off into the future when you haven't honestly dealt with the past? A past, when it comes to unacknowledged, unaddressed cop abuse, that is a stain on this city. And, by extension, a stain on officers who had absolutely nothing to do with it. Let's remember that there are approximately 13,200 cops on the force and 19 out of every 20 do not have a stack of citizen complaints against them.
Of the ones who do, we're told some have been exonerated, others have not, and some units have way more complaints than others.
The only reason we even have those small bits of information is that Jamie Kalven, a Chicago writer, spent years begging for someone, anyone to pay attention to the case of a woman named Diane Bonds who lived in public housing and was shamefully abused by police. Bonds won a federal lawsuit and a $150,000 settlement from the city. But the mayor and his law department don't want us peering more closely into the discovery in the Bonds case to see all the evidence that caused her to win and the city to lose. That's why the city is fighting Lefkow's order to open up the files and let the sunshine in.
So Thursday, when the City Council takes up the mayor's revamp of OPS, maybe the aldermen can explain it to us. Maybe they can tell us why we should believe in promises of transparency when we're still choked to death by secrecy.
posted by Carlos T Mock at 9:23 AM
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