Let’s examine some of the allegations that were spewed at Superintendent McCarthy at the “Save the 13^th District” community meeting on Oct. 25^th at Ukrainian Cultural Center on West Chicago Ave. 

Allegation: “You are hiding all of your data”

Not sure what the citizens are talking about here, but the CPD’s annual reports for the last decade have been available online for years.  Also, the CPD just released their annual reports going back to the 1960s on their website.  Could and should they be more open about what happens after a report is taken? Yes, but this allegation refers to incident data only, and is simply not supported by the facts.  However, when you get to calls for police service it is an entirely different story, and agency that keeps that data.  Sadly I doubt many citizens have a clue that the Office of Emergency Management and Communications even exists or what it does.

Allegation:  “All the data is doctored”

This is a very interesting allegation but unlikely to be true (at least, not to the level needed to alter the violent crime level significantly) especially because this woman was specifically talking about data being doctored at headquarters and not the district level.  Do I believe that some police data is manipulated or altered on the local level to deal with either community pressure or pressure from superiors to reduce crime?  Yes, but once again I do not believe it is being done at a level that would significantly impact the numbers to the point where a community with high levels of violent crime would be reported as a district with a low level of violent crime.   

Allegation:  “This is a secret plan to remove officers from our community and move them.”

 This is both true and false.  The reality is that the CPD is a very top-heavy organization with a high level of managerial staff that needs to be reduced.  Former Mayor Daley had a consultant’s report dating back to the early 1990s that detailed a number of police districts that needed to be closed.  The reality is that Daley lacked the political will to accomplish this task.  In the meantime he built countless new district stations throughout Chicago.  I have yet to see any evidence that shows that the three stations they are closing are the ones that are supported by all the crime and calls-for-service data.  The reality is that the data may reflect that a station or two other than these stations should be closed, but they cannot close those stations because Daley just rebuilt them over the last decade. It’s hard to explain why you are closing a building that you just spent $10 million constructing just a few years ago. Daley may have very well screwed the new administration, the new superintendent, and the citizens of Chicago building these superfluous police stations. 

As for removing officers, this might happen but I am not sure it shouldn’t.  There have been significant population and crime shifts since the last time officers were allocated throughout the city (of course, when the last reallocation happened is in dispute).  I find it basically indefensible that police resources should not be reallocated based in large part on these shifts.  Also, there have been dramatic crime drops in large swaths of the city.  Given this I find it hard to comprehend an argument for maintaining police staff at the 1990 levels given the crime reductions experienced by Chicago and most of the rest of America.  Also, the vast majority of officers that can be removed from your police district already have been removed to create the special units under direction from Superintendent Phil Cline back in the early 2000s.  Interestingly enough, the community is arguing to keep the current levels in place because they feel safe with this staffing level despite the fact that several years ago many officers were removed from their community to create special units like the Targeted Response Unit, Special Operations Section (now called the Mobile Strike Force), Deployment Operations Section Units, Area Gun Teams, etc.  

Allegation:  “Crime is out of control in our community”

Patently false!  Nothing could be farther from the truth than this claim.  It is really sad because this was one of the most repeated allegations.  The 13^th District has come a long way from 1990 in terms of the amount of crime and violence the community experiences.  The major problem is that few in the room were either old enough to be in the community in 1990 or they simply do not remember what it was like back then.

* This includes the following crime types:  homicides, aggravated batteries, aggravated assaults, sexual assaults, and robberies.

Facts:

• Violent crime dropped 70% from 1990 to 2009, which included a 45% drop in violent crime from 2000 to 2009.
• From 2000-2009 the 19th district recorded the 4th lowest total in the total number of violent crimes committed.
  

Driving Fear of Crime

The sad reality is that the media counts on crime to help lead their newscasts and to put on the front pages of their newspapers.  Can you remember the last time the press lead a newscast with a contextualized report on crime, the big drop Chicago is experiencing and how safe people are in Chicago compared to 20 years ago?  Of course not, because that type of responsible reporting does not sell newspapers or make you tune it at 10pm to watch the news.

Another more recent culprit in the driving fear of crime is the Fraternal Order of Police, the patrol officers’ union.  They see the significant crime drop in Chicago as a threat to their very existence, since there is little reason to maintain police staffing levels as they are considering the huge drop in crime, especially violent crime, most of the city has experienced.  There is not a single business that would greet a 70% reduction in their business by maintaining or increasing staffing levels.  We all know that cuts would come well before the business saw a reduction of 70%, but the FOP is still pushing hard to maintain staffing levels.  How?  Through their rhetoric of “crime being out of control” and how most high profile violent crime incidents are a direct result of staffing level reductions.  I was on Politics Tonight on CLTV earlier this year with FOP spokesman Pat Camden and he tried to link the reduction in police staffing with the homicides of 5 police officers last year.  Besides being exploitative, this connection is just false. Yet for the ever-increasing FOP drum beat of crime being out of control, this was part of their narrative despite how terrible it was to exploit the deaths of these officers for political purposes.

There are real issues that need to be addressed regarding public safety in Chicago, none more important than the great disparity in violent crime experienced between the northside of the city and south and west sides.  I am not of the mind that simply redistributing officers to districts with higher levels of violent is going to have a major impact on the violence.  I also doubt that increasing the size of many beats on the northside is going to assist those communities in spiraling out of control in regards to the level of violence they experience.  Long-term answers are found in bringing back low and no skill employment opportunities and finding ways to increase the efficacy of our educational system in these targeted communities.  Sadly, in 2011 we continue to focus the debate in terms of the criminal justice system and with the Chicago Police Department being the focus of that debate.  Until we are willing to breakout of the frame of the criminal justice system as the answer to our deep rooted social ills we will continue to lock up our fellow citizens in cages instead of moving towards long term solutions that no only reduce our reliance on prisons while at the same time increasing public safety for our communities. 

Term Limits: 

No board members can be reappointed to the Board after serving more than 10 years in their lifetime.  This results in three current members being removed from the Board after their current appointments run out: 

• President Demetrius Carney
• Vice President Scott Davis
• member Rev. Johnny Miller

All three were just reappointed to the Board and will serve out the remaining time left on their appointments.  Carney and Miller were in the top four of the nine members for missing the most meetings over the decade CJP studied the Board's decisions. 

Consequences for Absenteeism

"If, during any calendar year, a member of the police board fails to attend three or more scheduled meetings of the board, the president of the board shall provide written notice of such fact to the mayor and a rebuttable presumption of neglect of duty shall exist."

This mechanism mandates that the Mayor's office is aware of any pattern of absenteeism and in a position to act to remove the member for cause. 

Two year terms for President and Vice President

This part of the reforms now mandates that the Mayor appoint the positions every two years.  This will allow for the replacement of one or both positions from members that are not appropriately living up to the duties of their office. 

Votes of Individual Member Now to be Posted Online

"The yeas and nays of police board members on all votes shall be posted by the secretary on the police board website within ten business days of any such vote and shall remain posted on such website for at least two years."

This is one of the two most important advances that are included in the reforms.  For the last 50 years the Police Board has operated in the shadows with little accountability for the actions and votes of members.  Now those votes will be online for the public and the rank and file members of the Chicago Police Department to access anytime they see fit. 

Written Rationals for Decisions to be Posted Online

"The findings and decision of the police board, including an explanation of those findings and decision, when approved by said board, shall be certified to the superintendent and shall forthwith be enforced by said superintendent. Such findings and decision, including an explanation of the reasons for such findings and decision, shall be posted by the secretary on the police board website within ten business days of the date of certification of such findings and decision to the superintendent, and shall remain posted on such website for at least two years. If any member of the police board dissents from the board’s findings and decision, such member shall state the reasons for his or her dissent. Such dissents shall be posted by the secretary on the police board website within ten business days of the date of certification of the board’s findings and decision to the superintendent, and shall remain posted on such website for at least two years."

This is the other most important advances that are included in the reforms.  Now Board members will have to provide written rationals for their decisions, this includes all members who decent from the majority decision.  In our 2009 study of the Police Board we found that in 42% of the decisions involving sworn officers there was some degree of descent among the 9 members. 

Power to Make Recommendations

"The board in its discretion shall have the authority to make recommendations to the superintendent of police and to the chairman of the city council committee on public safety or its successor committee concerning revisions in policy and operating procedures to increase the efficiency of the department of police. Such recommendations shall be posted on the police board website within two business days of the date on which such recommendation is made to the superintendent and shall remain posted on such website for a period of at least two years."

This same power was included in the ordinance that created the Independent Police Review Authority.  This will allow board members a vehicle to provide feedback to the Chicago Police Department on patterns they observe in the cases they handle.

We believe that the reforms included in this ordinance will bring the operations of the Chicago Police Board, which were stuck in 1960s legislation, in to the 21st century with an unprecedented level of transparency in their operations.  You can download a copy of the reform ordinance that passed the city council today below. 

Good research on this topic: 

Chicago Appleseed Fund for Justice

IDJISC

What Chicagoans need to understand is that the Chicago Police Department (CPD) views arrests for low levels of pot possession as a vital tool in getting “the bad guys” off the street, even if it is for a short period of time.  This is the main reason why Chicago has not moved to start issuing tickets (in the form of a municipal code violation) instead of making arrests.  The police typically have little problem finding a youth of color they consider to be a gang member holding a small amount of marijuana.  The police arrest the individual without even thinking about the possibility of a prosecution or conviction because the arrest is really being made just to get the individual off the street for a period of time.  Officers feel that if the “bad guys” are in lockup because of a marijuana arrest, they cannot be on the street perpetrating violence. 

This principal of arresting the “bad guys” for low level crimes as a tool for incapacitation is really at the heart of the strategy that has been brought to Chicago – from New York by way of New Jersey – with new Chicago Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy.  “Quality of life policing,” which McCarthy has been quoted saying he was bringing to Chicago, has its basis in arresting potential violence-doers for whatever minor law violation the police can.  The criminological theory behind this tactic is based in the “broken windows” perspective made famous by the New York Police Department.  This certainly seems to signal that the number of arrests for low level non-violent crimes is about to be seriously increased and not reduced under McCarthy’s administration. 

CPD as Feeder

The major problem with the CPD making a large number of arrests is that it leaves the agencies further down the line in the system to deal with the results of these tactics, while simultaneously bearing the financial burden.  What results you ask?  Let’s take a look:

• The Cook County Jail houses individuals that cannot make bail
  

• The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office has to prosecute the case

• The Cook County Circuit Court hears the cases and also manages the probation for anyone convicted and sentenced to probation

• The Illinois Department of Corrections houses individuals that get convicted for more than a year and also manages the parole for individuals that get convicted, sentenced to more than a year, and serve some of their sentence on parole

Now, since a vast majority of the arrests for low-level possession of marijuana do not result in convictions, not all of these expenses are incurred for every arrest.  The reality is that, to varying degrees, some of these expenses are incurred with many of the arrests, and not necessarily by the police, but by other agencies with separate budgets that are literally reporting to a different set of political leaders. 

Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle seems intent on seeking cost reductions and reforms in the Cook County criminal justice system.  For these efforts to bear fruit, the CPD is going to have to be not only an active participant, but interested in a level of reform never before imaginable for the CPD.  This reality certainly collides head on with the quality of life policing that McCarty seems intent on instituting in Chicago.  It will very interesting to see if Preckwinkle’s reform agenda wins out over McCarthy’s CompStat / quality of life policing agenda.

It is impossible to attempt to explain the levels of gun violence in Chicago without tackling the issues of race and class, because Chicago is a highly segregated city both in terms of class and race lines.  This is not something that has occurred overnight or even over the past few years, but has been orchestrated by urban planners and politicians over the course of decades. To try to comprehend why gun violence is so high now we must understand what political and public policy decisions have been made in the past that created these circumstances. 

We place exclusive blame on the Englewood man who pulls the trigger in anger, yet fail to address the factors that helped derail his life even before he was born, namely the abandonment of the his community in favor of the wealthy white ones.  Without this context, trying to understand why someone would be in the position to pull that trigger is mostly fruitless.  Now, trying to understand the circumstances and context that would lead two totally different people from two different cultures to attempt murder is a nearly impossible feat, especially for journalists who unfortunately do not have the time or an academic team to research.  This is not to say that every murder or shooting in underserved communities in Chicago is directly related to the last 30 years, but it is to say that just about all are. 

Below I provide two examples of violence driven by the decisions and actions of institutions.  To understand the role of institutions journalists must look below the surface facts and delve into the history of a community and city. 

TIFs as gun violence generators 

A quick review of how Tax Increment Financing dollars have and have not been spent over the last 25 years is evidence enough about how the city prioritizes whose interests to represent. 

“Developers received $505 million in subsidies, just over 30 percent of the total TIF money spent by Mr. Daley. Those payments included $5.4 million to United Airlines to move its headquarters to Willis Tower, $13.7 million for the insurance giant CNA to renovate its South Loop headquarters and $8.5 million to help renovate the Carbide and Carbon building to house the Hard Rock Hotel on Michigan Avenue.

The city also spent more than $200 million buying properties, razing vacant buildings and cleaning up toxic land, mostly for the benefit of private developments.

Another $90 million, or 5 percent of total spending, was used for program administration, consulting and legal services, and for job training for businesses in select districts. “  New York Times via Chicago News Cooperative ("TIF Aided Public and Private Projects Almost Evenly, Analysis Shows", Aug. 6, 2011)

It does not take a statistical wizard to figure out that the City spent about $90 million on a variety of programs that included some money spent on job training.  At the same time, the City spent $505 million on subsidies for developers.  When you talk about subsidies for developers, you are usually talking about using public dollars to subsidize gentrification.  When a community gentrifies, its poor residents are now forced to scatter across the city to even lower income areas.  What tends to be spurred by this movement?  Gun violence.  Why?  Because this movement across the city spurs gang conflicts as gangs try to fight over turf that continues to shrink.  Also, don’t forget that we have the families from the gentrified communities now seeking to move to a community that may or may not be of the same gang affiliation as their child.  This also spurs gun violence. 

This is also evidence about how the latest Mayor Daley valued professional jobs over industrial or manufacturing.  It is obvious that moving Boeing’s offices to the loop actually creates few jobs when compared to, say, moving Toyota’s factory to the city using the same public funds.  The city spent dollars on blue-collar job training, but spent more to bring in white-collar jobs.   Now, there might indeed be a small number of retail or fast food jobs created by moving a large number of white-collar jobs to the city, but those numbers pale in comparison to the number of jobs created by luring a factory rather than a corporate office. 

Charter Schools as Gun Violence Generators

I have written before on this blog about the experiences of the youth at Collins High School and Little Village High School.  In this example, the city under Daley closed Collins (which was in North Lawndale - 95 % Black and strongly affiliated with the Vice Lords gang) and shipped those kids to Little Village High School (99% Latino and affiliated with a variety of Latino based gangs).  What was the outcome?  Gun violence!  Wow, wasn’t that predictable?  Why did they close Collins High School and ship the kids into circumstances they knew or should have known would result in serious violence?  Money, of course!  Collins was turned into three charter schools because the powers that be targeted North Lawndale for gentrification.  The Mayor’s buddies bought property around and near the park and some brand spanking new (and expensive) town houses were built.  Too bad for all those investors, because the Olympics bypassed Chicago – the park Collins is situated in was going to host one of the events– and all the Mayor’s buddies lost their shirts. Unfortunately, the late Michael Scott lost much more than his shirt.

Conclusion

Neither example is easy to fit into a two nor three minute radio news story, or even a news article in what remains of our dailies.  If journalists don’t find a way to include the effects of racism and class divides into their reporting, we are going to continue to ignore it and allow communities to be devastated by the violence.  There is no cure in which the police department can be the sole player; everyone knows the steps that need to be taken, but there is no political will to take action.  Instead, we offer corporate giants millions of public dollars to move their operations into the loop so our politicians can claim they are creating jobs.   Racism and classism run deep in the policies and practices of our entire city, and until they are challenged nothing will change.  There can be no cure for the violence that plagues many parts of our city without seeking redress of the many crimes that have been thrust upon these communities by our political leaders over the last decades.  No matter how many Chicago Police Officers we hire, violence in Chicago will not be greatly reduced until we have provided an alternative to gang membership for the youth of our city.

Gentrification is not a cure for poverty and violence; on the contrary it merely displaces these problems and makes them worse.   The alternative must be to provide living wage jobs and a redistribution of the city’s resources to include every community.  Easy, right?

Let’s get some things straight:                

In Chicago:

• Crime has plummeted in Chicago over the last 20 years. Homicides are down from the 900s to the low 400s. All other types of violent street crime are significantly down from the highs in the early 1990s.
• Despite a significant drop since the early 1990s, homicides have failed to drop as low as other large urban centers like New York, LA, and Houston.  This does not mean that homicides are increasing; it just means that they have failed to continue to drop in line with the other large urban centers.
• Persistent problems with violence against women continue to plague our city, but data kept by the criminal justice agencies make it impossible to know to how prevalent these crimes are. 

Nationally:

• Crime has plummeted in relatively equal numbers throughout the US, despite the fact that the US is covered by 19,000 policing agencies that vary in size from 1-person agencies in rural areas, to 35,000-person-strong urban agencies. This dichotomy also represents significantly different approaches to responding to and preventing crime. 

• It is also important to note that, in general, police scholars are in agreement that random patrol (cops driving around in their cars through their patrol area in a random pattern) provides very little in the way of crime prevention. 

Now that we have the facts straight, you might wonder why this is not part of the nightly newscasts in Chicago.  Despite the amazing drop in crime that America has experienced over the last 20 years, the media does not make money off selling you good news because good news does not scare you into tuning in or buying papers; uncontrollable street crime does.  This line also plays right into the hands of the union representing the patrol offices of the Chicago Police Department; the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP).  The FOP does not want any discussions about how the police do not prevent crime or that crime is dropping despite the fact that the city has been quietly reducing the number of patrol officers in the city.  Why?  Because then someone might think we don’t need to spend all the money we do on the CPD and maybe turn it to something more beneficial like job creation, drug treatment, mental health treatment, or even tax breaks!

You see, there are immense interests that are hurt by the story of crime reductions.  The media loses circulation and viewers, and the FOP loses members of their union.  At the same time, the press continues to beat a drum with their violence coverage that then strongly impacts the average Chicagoans’ fear of crime.  The odds of a white Chicagoan being the victim of serious street violence in Chicago are quite small, but that is not reflected in the media’s coverage of crime or in how Chicagoans always seem to feel there is a need for more cops in their community. 

Now, does this mean Chicagoans should be satisfied with the levels of crime in some neighborhoods in Chicago?  No.  Yet at the same time, they have continued to vote for politicians who put forth policies that guarantee that the current conditions that are the basis for this street violence will continue to exist for years in to the future.  With this reality I cannot see how the average Chicagoan thinks things in these neighborhoods are going to change until they change the way they vote. 

All the pooh-poohing about what happens in these areas while the citizens vote for politicians that back programs and policies which rob these communities blind is the epitome of hypocrisy.   It would be nice for white Chicago to ask their Alderman where the money for their nice new park came from in the city budget.  If he mentions TIFs, then there is a good chance their nice rich community is a beneficiary in a great robbery of the poorest of the poor in Chicago.   For my part, CJP’s offices are at Wacker Dr. and Wabash Ave. where there are beautiful potted plants outside that the city changes several times year.  I wonder what child (or community of children) is going hungry today so that I may have these beautiful plants outside my office today. 

The press’ reliance on useless statistics to scare the public combined with their unyielding efforts to act as an uncritical megaphone for statistics provided by the Chicago Police Department is really sad.  It has gotten to the point where the press is relying on useless statistics from a useless time period to advance either a pro- or anti-police perspective.  Comparing crime statistics over as short a period as a weekend, week, or month is without any reliability.  Crime is influenced by a tremendous number of factors that the media either ignores or has no idea of the role these factors play.  If and when a reporter does know about such a factor – i.e the weather –  they add a line at the end of the report talking about weather differences between the two time periods as a caveat, as if to insinuate that this critical factor is not playing a big role. 

Comparing one month to the same month a year ago without taking weather or other issues into account makes any assumptions the reporters or the CPD are making completely worthless.  The problem is the public does not understand this and consequently believe what they see and read; thus police policy and public policy is driven inappropriately, either propaganda from the CPD or lazy and unprofessional reporting by the Chicago media. 

If we want change to occur we are going to have to mandate it from both our public officials and our media.  The reality is that our public officials spend much of their time attempting to repair the damage created by the media’s misinformed reporting.  Change in government can only really come in tandem with a change in the level of professionalization of our media. 

Police departments throughout the country have been slowly (and some not so slowly) reducing the size of their departments because of the expense, and to some degree the realization that officers do not prevent crime.  This of course does not sit well with the union that represents officers because the responsibility of the union is to build membership, not necessarily do what is best for the city or its citizens.  While I am sure most union officials are doing what they think is best for the city -such as working to keep a large police force on the street - it does not mean they are correct in their assumptions.   In fact, I am pretty convinced that for the most part officers do little more then displace crime, rather than actually prevent crime. 

Camden spouted the usual line from the FOP about the need for 2000 more officers and how this redeployment is nothing more than shuffling officers to new units and not necessarily from different parts of the city because both TRU and MSF were spending all their time in high crime areas of the city prior to the redeployment.  On the second point, Camden and I are in agreement; however, on the first point we are as far apart as possible.   I know the department has budgeted for 13,500 officers but I am unaware that there is some study citing that figure as being the optimum number of officers for Chicago.  I am assuming it is the number that the FOP figures they have a right to demand because the budget allows for that many officers.  It would be nice if they could bring some evidence to the argument, but it seems that would be expecting too much from the FOP. 

I think the highlight of the show was when Camden attempted (unsuccessfully) to exploit the deaths of 5 officers in 2010 as a reason why there is a need for the city to hire 2000 more officers.  The city certainly should mourn the deaths of the officers, just like we should mourn the death of all our citizens, but we should not use those tragic incidents to support political ends, regardless of whose ends those are. 

CPD Officer deaths in 2010:

• 3 officers are murdered while off duty as a result of robberies gone bad (link, link, link)
  
• 1 officer was off duty (in uniform) and shot by a deranged man while in the parking lot of the police station the officer worked in. (link)
  
• 1 officer was on duty as an evidence technician who was collecting fingerprints from a car that was broken into when a sociopath gunned him down with a retired officer.   At no time in the city’s recent history (over the last 30 years) has the CPD sent patrol officers to a crime scene like the one we have here with the evidence technician. (link)

Not a single one of these deaths had anything to do with depleted numbers of officers.   To suggest this in a media interview that they did is being dishonest and exploitative, neither of which honors the lives of the individuals.   We need to make sure that these tragedies are not used by anyone for political purposes, including and especially the FOP. 

If the CPD is in need of additional officers, then those hires should be withheld until they conduct beat realignment throughout the city and the Department brings forward evidence that their resources are allocated appropriately, taken into consideration violent crime rates and population shifts.  Communities throughout Chicago have little faith that new officers would be deployed to high crime areas, which unfortunately are populated by mostly people of color and have experienced decades of disproportionate allocation of resources from city officials. 

image courtesy of http://www.life.com/image/2434238

A source has informed CJP that there were prior complaints against at least one of the officers for sexual violent crimes, but that the women involved recanted after a period of time.  If this is true then the public needs to be able to know and be able to review the response from the entire criminal justice system in each of those cases.  Why?  Because, if there is to be trust between the police department and community, it is vital that when incidents like this arise that the public has the ability to validate the response from the system.  The traditional Chicago and Cook County “Trust Us” response falls significantly short of adequate in all police misbehavior cases, but especially in a case involving such heinous crimes as this. 

The public needs to be assured that all available avenues to pursue these officers, both criminally and in terms of employment, were fully exhausted.  It is inconceivable that the Department could have possibly kept either one or both of these officers on the street working under the color of law with badges and guns after even a single complaint for sex crimes on duty was received, regardless of whether or not the women recanted sometime after the initial allegation was filed.  If this is true then the Department and the individuals in charge have much to answer for, but the reality is that nobody can possibly be held accountable for their actions because access to the information needed to do so is restricted. 

One of the new superintendent’s priorities needs to be freeing information from the clutches of those that seek to restrict access in order to protect rouge officers or the results of bad practices.  The citizens of Chicago deserve nothing less than a police accountability system that is transparent; anything less will be nothing more than a continuation of practices that have gone on uninterrupted for a century in Chicago.  The accountability system has only taken baby steps towards transparency while at the same time extolling all the virtues associated with transparency.

What they don’t want you to know:

• How many complaints have been filed against an officer
• The quality of the investigations in to those complaints
• Whether an officer working in your community has complaints against them for sexual violence
  

The reality is that the short list of what the powers that be don’t want you to know about how the accountability system works (or doesn’t work) in Chicago is just the beginning about what we don’t know about how the criminal justice system operates both in our communities and behind closed doors. Chicago would be better served if officials stopped pretending to have a transparent system, and actually began using one.

Koschman Case

In the first example, investigators failed to immediately investigate the aggravated battery of David Koschman until he passed away twelve days later.  The first lineup was conducted 25 days after the original incident.  There is no way this would have occurred had the victim in the case been a relative of our mayor or had the offender been of color. 

There is a call for an outside investigation of the police investigation from Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alverez (see below).  The problem with the call for the investigation is that it was limited to only the initial investigation by Chicago Police Department (CPD) and it seemed to be barred from looking at the actions of the State's Attorney's Office (SAO).  From the reporting on the case the CPD did indeed seek felony charges against Mayor Daley's nephew R.J. Vanecko but the SAO declined to press charges.  Attempts by the Sun Times to look into the felony review process with the SAO uncovered that the file with the SAO had been lost.  The public has a right to the access needed to validate the practices of all public agencies included the SAO.  The fact that when the media came poking around the file was lost just increases the suspicion involved in the case and the fact that from the beginning the investigation was predetermined to go nowhere.  Clearly the public needs to know how and why that file disappeared to have any confidence in the SAO's practices going forward. 

Rape on Duty

The Chicago Police Department moved quickly to suspend a third officer involved in a previous incident involving the sexual assault of another woman (which also involved one of the original officers).  It is clear that the two officers involved in the March 30^th incident have a history of complaints from other women, yet somehow were allowed back on the street and were able to assault yet another citizen.

Access to information from the system is so restricted that communities are left completely in the dark when it comes to even the most generic information.  It is critical to public safety for community members to know that officers in their district have a history of allegations against them for sexually violent behavior against women.  The Chicago Police Department disagrees with this statement and considers the investigations into those incidents, and the allegations themselves, to be internal personnel matters.  This is not the attitude of an agency that seeks to inform communities of serious public safety issues.

In the Koschman case, despite fantastic reporting by the Sun Times, the public is once again left in the dark about vital public safety information.   The public does not know who made the decision to not investigate the case immediately – and wait 25 days before conducting a line up – and what communities those decision makers are currently working in. 

The public is equally uninformed by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, as we have no idea who within the office refused to press felony charges in the case, nor who lost the case file and if that person is still working on cases involving public safety. 

The pursuit of public safety is a very serious endeavor that requires empowering communities to be partners in that pursuit.  Communities can only be partners where there is symmetry between agencies and communities when it comes to information access.  This current imbalance leaves the agencies with all the power and community members both distrustful of the agencies and endangered by that very imbalance. 

Below I will summarize each of the candidate’s crime and violence platforms and interject a little bit of reality to help you cut through the propaganda that is being used.  The information presented here about the candidates was gleaned from their websites, the press, and the Fraternal Order of Police questionnaires answered by many of the candidates.

This should not be seen as an endorsement of any particular candidate but viewed as an effort by CJP to inform community members about each candidates views on crime and violence in Chicago. 

Carol Moseley Braun:

“I plan to work with the Chicago Police Department to review and implement new policies for patrolling and deployment of sworn personnel” 

“To help alleviate both the understaffing and budget issues, I create the Chicago Auxiliary Police Department comprised of retired CPD officers. Although these “reserve” officers have the authority to make arrests and carry weapons, they will be utilized primarily to perform the more mundane policing duties. For example, “reserve officers” can handle booking and normal police station paperwork, freeing up “actively serving full-time” officers to focus on serious crime. Most importantly, “reserve officers” can be hired at a much lower salary since they are already receiving pension payments. Implementing this staffing strategy would strengthen our overall police presence without incurring any additional pension obligations.” 

Wow, has anyone calculated the number of times over the last 2 decades that the CPD has moved officers from desk duties to the street?  How many could be left?  Braun’s idea would be interesting if anyone in the world would link the upsurge in crime in Chicago to the lower number of officers on the street.  Wait for it…crime actually declined last year.  Again, there is nothing original here except another appeal for the Fraternal Order of Police vote and the repetition of failed policies.

Gery Chico:

Gery Chico recently released a 17-page plan addressing crime called “The Chico Public Safety Plan”.  I will discuss many of his promises here. 

• Add 2,000 more police officers to the street by the end of the first term.

The Department loses approximately 500 officers a year through normal attrition, so adding 2000 officers over 4 years results in a zero sum gain.  What Chico should say is that his plan will do nothing more than keep up with the average number of officers lost yearly to attrition.  Secondly, he provides no information about where in the world he is going to locate the $200,000,000 needed to pay for these new hires.

• Reestablish Community Policing with sufficient police manpower so that residents are engaged in making their communities safe.

 I guess here Chico is assuming that residents are currently engaged in making their communities safe through community policing.  An Alderman once said to me that “CAPS is nothing more than a propaganda campaign for Daley” (whether or not that is correct, I will leave for another day).  One academic wrote about community policing, arguing that it is nothing more than the police obtaining a warrant from the community to do what they were going to do anyways. 

• Increase efficiency and coordination among centralized special units.

This is not worth addressing because Chico fails to provide any evidence that this is a problem that needs solving.  Lacking evidence, this point seems to be nothing more than propaganda. 

• Shift sworn officers performing office duties to District Law Enforcement.

Once again, this is nothing new, just the same stuff Daley and every superintendent of the CPD have said for the last 20 years. 

• Streamline executive staff and strengthen the chain of command.

This actually has some potential.  Sources within the CPD have claimed for years that the Department is top heavy with way too many layers of command staff.  Chico is on to something here, but his promise is vague at best and without details there is no way to measure if he lives up to this promise. 

• Expand Ceasefire’s program to all high-crime areas in Chicago.

Northwestern University’s evaluation of CeaseFire has demonstrated that the program showed statistically significant results in only one area. There is no reason to expand a program with such lackluster results, unless the person proposing the expansion is ignorant of its mechanisms or goals.”  I am in favor of increasing the amount of money spent in communities for anti-violence work.  I am just not sure CeaseFire should become the vehicle for this given its tainted past.

• Increase police presence in and around schools.

Whether or not children that are killed in violence are Chicago Public Schools students does not mean that this violence is occurring at schools, regardless of how the media focuses on this point.  In fact, analysis has proven that the vast majority died in violence that was blocks – if not miles – from the schools and during times outside school hours.  It would seem that if we are trying to end the school-to-prison pipeline, one thing we would want to do is remove officers from the schools, not increase their presence.

Miguel del Valle

“I recommend an ambitious but realistic plan to increase the level of police hires each year with the goal of achieving proper staffing levels within ten years….Second, it is past time to re-align district boundaries to reflect current trends in criminal activity.

I would start the process of increasing the number of police working to prevent and solve crimes by reallocating funds towards filling the current vacancies on the police force, and shifting city resources away from desk work and lower priorities, such as writing parking tickets.” 

I endorse programs like the Community Renewal Society High HOPES campaign, which focuses training and action of CPS officials around restorative justice practices

What is the proper staffing level for the CPD?  I am sure the Fraternal Order of Police (the union representing patrol officers) has a suggestion, but then again I have no idea what they would base their answer on, other than whatever increases the numbers, and thus power, of their union. It seems like the mayoral contenders just cannot help but advocate for an increased police force. 

What does separate del Valle from the field is that he is the first to come out in favor of beat realignment.  I guess it is pretty obvious that del Valle is putting the interests of citizens that live in high crime neighborhoods before the interests of those that comprise the white Northside vote.  His endorsement of the Community Renewal Society High HOPES program is the first instance of any mayoral candidate bringing a new idea to the table outside of continuing to confront social problems stemming from numerous social ills  with a criminal justice system response, namely sending in the cops to make arrest, and for that alone del Valle should be complimented.

Rahm Emanuel:

“I will be rolling out a comprehensive crime agenda in January that will put more cops on the street and give them the resources they need to do their job. I have already announced one piece of that plan – a three-year strategy using TIF funds to add 250 police officers to new squads that target crime in and around TIFs that are impacted by high crime rates.” 

“The cost of this initiative—$25 million—comes from the approximately $900 million TIF funds”  

“Research suggests that each 10 percent increase in the size of the police force reduces violent crime by 4 percent and property crimes by 5 percent, meaning that each extra dollar spent on policing can generate up to $8 in long-term savings.  More cops on the street also can create better relationships between law enforcement and communities.  Police officers will become a presence in the neighborhood, rather than only available in response to emergency.” 

“Reducing the layers of bureaucracy can save millions of dollars that will be reinvested in putting dozens of new cops on the street.  Rahm will give the new superintendent a mandate to make these efficiency changes and further streamline operations.  For example, there continues to be a commander in charge of the Inspections Division despite a significantly-dwindling number of personnel there.  This unit could be combined with others to realize savings.” 

download a copy of Emanuel's crime document here.

First, more officers will not make a difference. The suggestion that it will is doing nothing but placating the masses who do not understand that cops do little in the way of preventing crime.  Second, one can only wonder where in the world these officers would get deployed if they were tied to TIF districts.  It seems like Dumke and Javorsky proved that majority of the TIF money over the last decade went to the 2^nd ward to build up the South Loop.  Should we assume that the new cops would also go there?  I might be wrong, but I think the South Loop is a pretty safe area. 

After-school programs are great, but is this really a new approach to crime fighting?  It sounds a lot like what Daley has talked about and done over the past 20 plus years.   How many more kids are going to get caught up in the alternative markets and lose their lives before someone in a position of authority decides to stop repeating these failed practices? 

Let’s examine what 250 new officers would mean, using some math:

• 25 CPD Districts – each of which has 3 watches = 75 watches each day in Chicago
• 250 new officers / 75 watches = approximately 3 officers per watch. 

Now this calculation only applies if all 250 officers are assigned to regular patrol duties and none of the officers are assigned to inside jobs or specials units.  Also, as noted above, the CPD loses approximately 500 or more officers a year due to attrition.  So, it appears Emanuel’s plan would not increase the size of the force from the current numbers, but would merely soften the impact of the losses through attrition. For a single year, that is. 

Walls

To stop violent crimes, the City of Chicago must declare a “State of Emergency.” Thus the Mayor must institute a series of specific actions to immediately alleviate the root causes, which result in increased crime and thereby increase safety. Pursuant to the meaningful declaration of this State of Emergency, we must Suspend all Police Officer vacations and furlough days: Conduct high visibility Outdoor Roll Calls in and around high crime areas: Conduct Outdoor Police Academy Recruit Training sessions in and around high crime areas: Stop all Police Parking Ticket writing activities: Limit Police Traffic Court appearances to those involving personal injury, auto damage, DUI, drugs or weapons: Replace the vast majority of sworn officers presently assigned to office and desk duty with civilians and assign more officers to street beat patrol 

Walls’ platform is the embodiment of all that is wrong with the candidates’ and the press’ thoughts on crime.  Walls seems to think that the only way to deal with crime in high crime areas must be completely centered on the criminal justice system.  There really is not much to say here except that what Walls is calling for here is just short of calling in the National Guard. 

Watkins

“I have released “The SAFE CITY Initiative” that would increase the number of police officers working in our communities, and give them the resources to build community trust in preventing and solving crimes. The gripping causes of crime must be uprooted. As Mayor, I would make it a priority to address the shortage in the ranks of our police officers. It would be shortsighted and ineffective to implement any crime prevention plan that simply hires more police with no additional support. Chicago’s violence rate is more than double that of other major cities, such as Los Angeles and New York. Anytime a police office loses his/her life fighting crime it is tragic and senseless. A thoughtful, actionable precise economically feasible program must be implemented.  In addition, I would seek for innovative public/private partnerships to fund these programs” 

 “I recently announced that it time to bring a new approach to the way that Chicago fights crime and violence. We can no longer simply place more police in the line of fire, while the rest of us go home. The plan has 5 components: 1) Expansion of evidence-based, street level intervention programs, such as Ceasefire and the "Walking School Bus" program; 2) Overhaul of the CAPS program to create more trust between community residents and police officers, 3) Building stronger partnerships between the City and the State to improve reintegration and reduce risk of the record numbers of 24,000 inmates being released from prison to Chicago communities each year. 4) Continue the fight for common sense gun laws at the federal level because Chicago has some of the strongest gun safety laws in the nation, but individuals can still go to states with weaker laws and buy firearms. 5) Seek innovative public/private partnerships and programs, such as Social Impact Bonds to fund these programs” 

Well, I wonder where we have heard another mayoral candidate talk about increasing the size of the police force? 

I will take each of the five components separately:

1. There is no evidence-based research that shows that CeaseFire works as a crime reduction strategy.  This does not mean we should not fund community level anti-violence work — I actually am in favor of funding these programs– but to suggest that CeaseFire’s results are evidence-based is just incorrect.  Northwestern’s study of CeaseFire showed that it only worked in a single area in Chicago based upon an analysis of the available data.  I would not say this is evidence in support of CeaseFire.  I have no information on the Walking Bus Program, but would want to see independent research validating its efforts before we dump a bunch of money to expand the program. 
2. I am all for an overhaul of CAPS, but with the limited information that is provided here I have no idea what that means.  Also, from the data released by the city about participation in CAPS I am not sure if we should continue to drop money on a program that serves such a small amount of the residents.  Similarly, if the entire CPD is to adopt the program, then does it cease being alternative?  
3. I am all in favor of working to increase the success rate of the transition from prison to the community, but besides this line I have no idea what Watkins’ plan will consist of.  If Watkins is suggesting using the best evidence-based practices from around the nation then I am all for it, and I think this is a great idea that no other mayoral candidate has addressed.  The only problem here is the line is just a slogan and is not followed up with any real meat. 
4. Mick Dumke enlightened us to the propaganda role played by the City’s gun ban.  When the CPD seeks to charge someone with violating the gun ban, most of the time the prosecutors will drop it because the offenders have also violated the state’s law on guns which carry more serious repercussions.  I am in favor of strong gun control, yet remain unconvinced that Chicago’s gun ban has had a real impact.
5. I am all in favor of seeking innovative ways to fund programs, but once again most of what Watkins is talking about is focused on the enforcement side of the criminal justice system, and lacks any talk about job creation as being the vehicle for reducing crime.  
   

Conclusion

Upon review of each of the candidate’s platforms you can see that regardless of who the new mayor will be, they are going to continue to pour resources down the CPD drain.  While everyone is crying out for an increased police force, crime continues to decline in Chicago.  I am appalled by the resilience of the violent crime in some neighborhoods.  The same people who cry out for more cops seem unwilling to come to the realization that, with the exception of certain specific instances, the CPD are not a crime deterring force.  These same people refuse to do the politically-dangerous- yet-dearly-needed beat realignment, which would increase the size of beats in low crime areas and decrease the size of beats in high crime areas.  Why? Because nobody wants to lose the white Northside vote.  Northsiders believe the reason there is not crime on their streets is because of the police, so misguided.  What northsiders fail to understand is that there are a whole host of sociological factors that go into why someone does and does not commit crime and the police have only a small impact on this reality.  

It is clear this group of mayoral candidates is doomed to repeat the same mistakes Chicago has made for decades by flushing badly needed money down the CPD drain.  By the end of 2011, it is projected (we only have projections because the CPD refuses to release accurate data on staffing) that the CPD will be down 2000 officers which results in what CJP projected as $227,000,000.  Think about what could be done in crime prevention programs, mental health clinics, drug treatment facilities, and most of all subsidizing factories to come to Chicago and employ thousands of Chicagoans with low skill and no skill with jobs that will pay a living wage.  This is not a discussion that any of the candidates or the media want to have, so instead we are tying our future to our past mistakes.  How many more lives will be ruined by violence until we in Chicago try to find new solutions?

Weis was all talk about using calls for police service and “radio assignments pending call events”  – more commonly referred to as RAPS – as a basis for determining where police resources should be allocated. RAPS is a designation used to denote when a car is not available to respond to a call, but the agency still wants to keep track of the request for service.  Though it would seem to be a better idea to redraw police beats every 10 years, CJP has noted that none of the data Weis talked about is being made publically available.   I guess even in 2011 we are forced to trust the CPD that they have our best interests at heart, and that they are using the correct numbers and using them properly.

Since the CPD is not willing to release this information to the public, CJP has decided to release the information on our own.

The following data was culled from 10 years of CPD annual reports and from the results of a FOIA request filed with the Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC).  Shortly after Weis announced that the CPD was looking at realigning police resources, CJP filed a FOIA request with OEMC asking for both the calls for service and the RAPS by police district for the last decade.  Below we will present the data received from OEMC as well as some additional data that we are bringing forward. 

Do we need to realign police resources?

The lack of transparency regarding the current level of police resource allocation prohibits citizens from engaging in a badly needed discussion about this important topic.  Why?  Because the reality is that the Daley Administration and the CPD do not want community members involved.  Why?  Because then those in power can make sure that typical Chicago politics and corruption can rule the day once again.  Weis can, of course, tell everyone that this allocation is needed, but has any proof been presented to back up his statements?  No, and this proof will never be presented. It will remain locked and hidden thanks to the usual Chicago political corruption that has been alive and well in Chicago for decades.  By not releasing the data the usual back door politics can influence a vital public policy reform. 

I am not arguing that the available data points do not point to a  need for reallocation, I am just commenting on the lack of access to data that ought to be made public in order to make an informed decision.

Bring on the Data!

Below you fill find two charts that display the following data:

• In the top chart you will find the total number of violent crimes by police district for the years 2000-2009. 
• In the second chart you will see the top & bottom 5 police districts for total calls for police service over the last decade.   
  

Notice any problems with the data?

1.  Racism

There is little doubt that over the years that some white north side alderman believe that their local district officers are a force against the ever increasing tide of gang members (which is code for young men of color that live in the city) that are just chomping at the bit to come victimize their community.  While no alderman has or will ever say this publicly, if you unpack the comments over the past couple of decades racism is at the heart.

2.  Class

Interwoven within the comments that expose a racial animus from alderman and north side community members is also a class bias.  Despite the ever-present rainbow of colors presented by Mayor Daley in just about every press conference Chicago is still a very segregated city both by race and class (see this map of segregation in Chicago from 1910-2000).  Many north side residents and political figures see the CPD as the state’s arm enforcing race and class boundaries.  North side communities fear poor people penetrating their borders as much if not more than they do people of color.

3.  Police as crime preventers

I have talked about this at length in other posts so I will keep it short.  What exactly prevents some people from committing crimes while having no impact on others is a mystery.  Certain interventions can have an impact but deciphering the level of their impact is nearly impossible for an ethical criminologist.  The reality is that researchers are starting to figure out there is a meaningful difference between preventing crime and displacing crime.  I will explain below:

Crime prevention:

For a police department to achieve this outcome the potential perpetrator would have to not commit a crime that he or she was going to commit, ever.

Crime displacement:

This is when a potential perpetrator decides not to commit his crime against a certain individual at a certain time and place because of some measures taken by a police agency or community to make that potential site at the specific time unsuitable for the commission of the crime.  The perpetrator then goes on to commit the crime at a different time and place, maybe against the same individual or a completely different individual.  Now the measures taken by the police or the community at the original location have prevented crime from taking place at the original location but have only displaced where it occurred but have not prevented it from occurring all together.  

Another way at looking at the difference:

• Crime Prevention = no victim

• Crime Displacement = same or different victim

The current belief by most alderman in Chicago that the CPD is a crime preventing organization are for the most part dead wrong.  Why, because with the exception of a few very specific instances they are not meant to be.  The CPD currently has roving units that are used to flood areas where gang violence has spiked to help cool down the tensions in hope that after the short cooling off period the retaliatory crimes will not be committed.  I think that the CPD has had some success doing this but it is very hard to measure because a murder that occurs six months after the officers are removed from the community may be linked to a past act of violence that occurred prior to the CPD flooding the area with police.  Outside of this limited role the CPD is not really a preventative force.

Why Re-Deployment is happening now?

This is simple:  The Mayor is finally a lame duck and many of the alderman are either not running for reelection or are safe enough to withstand the political fallout.  However, the manner in which this re-deployment plan is currently being handled is problematic.  It is being done with little to no community input behind closed doors in the Mayor’s office.  Always a good sign that clout and incompetency is not at work, right?  There should be an ordinance passed detailing a process by which every 10 years, maybe with the census, the City is required to conduct a beat realignment based on crime figures.

Superintendent Weis’ tenure with the Chicago Police Department is winding down as the chorus calling for his resignation grows louder.  It is critically important that the new mayor learn from the reaction by the old guard within the Chicago Police Department and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) leadership.

It has become clear that the Fraternal Order of Police cannot live with the idea of an outsider running the Department.   The Department is in great need of a high integrity leader concerned solely with bringing in the best practices in policing from around the nation and the world.  If the new mayor brings in a superintendent concerned with pleasing the old guard of the Department any possibility of restoring the trust of communities in the Department will be lost.

Weis’ critics are too quick to try to distance the Department from the scandals that brought Weis here including that of the Special Operations Section.  The fruits of the federal investigation into this scandal have yet to be revealed.  The city continues to pay out huge amounts of money from civil settlements regarding police abuse with no end in sight, $34,000,000 on average over the last decade.  Promoting within the Department to fill the position of Superintendent should be done with all due caution as nobody would benefit from a return to a typical CPD style of policing.  Willingly or unwillingly a best practices mentality must be thrust upon the Department regardless of the reaction from the minority of old guard officers. 

Have no doubt that within the Department the needed elements to start constructing best practices based Department can be found.  These elements have been silenced both under Weis and the string of past superintendents who have been more about keeping their job and political expediency then doing what is in everyone’s best interests.  Any new superintendent must have a track record of being able to nurture these elements found within the Department while also putting aside political pressures to cover up for the worst within the Department.   The new Superintendent must also make a strong commitment to foster a new age of transparency by opening police data and records to communities to allow community members to be fully informed partners in responding to violence in their communities as well as abusive and corrupt officers.

As demonstrated by their funding of Jon Burge’s defense the FOP is not willing to be an engaged partner in reforming the Department.  While there are plenty of factual reasons to criticize some of Weis’ decisions the onslaught of rabid complaints from the FOP and the old guard of the Department cannot be based on anything but a strong resistance to the possibility of reform that Weis embodied.  The citizens of Chicago and the men and women of the Chicago Police Department deserve a leader who is dedicated to bringing 21st century best practices into every aspect of the Department, from accountability to equipment.  Returning to the practices of the last 100 years will not benefit anyone.

First a few words on violence in Chicago

Question:  Is there is a huge new wave of violence in Chicago compared to previous summers? 

Answer:  No.  I greatly doubt that we are seeing a huge increase in violence.  The reality is that all summers see a large increase in violence to due many factors, including the heat.  This has been going on in Chicago for decades and probably will continue considering our continued efforts to rehash failed responses from the past that have no chance of being a long-term solution, i.e., the police and criminal justice system are not a long-term solution to violence.   What I believe is playing out is that violence is cropping up in areas that have not seen street violence at this level in many years, if ever, while simultaneously violence in what most Chicagoans would consider violence plagued neighborhoods is not as bad as it has been in recent years.  With restrictions on CPD data that exist today it is hard to validate any theory, including those posed by Superintendent Weis and Mayor Daley.

One of the major problems is the ability of citizens and the press to determine if there is an increase in violence without having to go through the propaganda machine known as the Chicago Police Department’s (CPD) press office.  Communities lack access to information that would allow them to determine for themselves if all the violence in their community is being captured by the CPD and how present levels of violence compare to previous years.  The CLEAR site maintained by the CPD is a failure not because it is not pretty and sophisticated but because it was never meant to be a community empowerment tool.  It was designed to allow the CPD to put information online to silence transparency critics without making information useful to community members so that communities could be empowered to challenge CPD practices. 

Communities should have ready access to all the statistical information they need to do the following on a regular basis:

• Contextualize the historical and present day levels of crime and violence in their community
• Compare the levels of crime and violence in their community to levels in other communities throughout the city. 
• Be able to compare how the CPD and other criminal justice agencies respond to crime and violence from their community to other communities throughout the city.
• Be able to understand how the CPD and other criminal justice agencies create and maintain their data to then verify if the statistics kept by these agencies adequately reflect the reality of crime and violence in their community.

Right now the CPD releases a reasonable amount of data but not in an empowering form, this must change.  The Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office (SAO) release no data, they should be considered the black box of the Chicago/Cook County criminal justice system.  The Office of Emergency Management and Communications (OEMC), similar to the SAO, releases almost no data and what they do release takes up only a couple of lines of the CPD’s annual report.  These restrictions on data and the limited format in which the data is released severely limits the degree to which citizens can engage the criminal justice system, which might just be the way the agencies want it.  

Question:  Why the all the indignation and outrage now and not 15 years ago when the homicide rate was almost double what it was last year and will most likely be this year?

Three Possible Answers:

1. I have been struggling with this question for some time without being able to determine a cohesive answer.  To some degree I believe that the recent shallow reporting around violence is nothing more than an extreme example of “if it bleeds it leads” mentality that took hold in the media a couple decades ago.   With newsrooms shrinking in response to changes in the media landscape reporting on violence is inexpensive and easy to conduct with little resources.   And it keeps the audience watching.
2. It could be that the majority white media in Chicago has finally decided to care about the victims of street violence most of whom reside in communities of color in Chicago; however, that would suggest a complete cultural renaissance within the newsrooms that I am just not ready to believe is possible.   Remember the care in reporting the same Chicago media demonstrated when reporting on both the Lincoln Porch Collapse and the E2 Night Club tragedies; the differences were completely based on the race of the victims.  
3. Someone, I believe it was Arne Duncan but I am not sure about it, decided to start reporting the number of Chicago Public School children that were murdered every year in gun related violence.  What a huge mistake this has been for the Chicago Public Schools, the youth of our city, the residents of Chicago, and the Chicago Police Department.  The major problem is that because their was no historical numbers to look at there was no ability for anyone viewing the statistic in the vacuum to understand if the figure was higher or lower than the last 5, 10, or 15 years.  Not to mention that the figure completely ignores other youth in our city that are not enrolled in Chicago Public Schools.  From a press perspective, it seems like they don’t matter.  Personally I believe any death resulting from a homicide is tragic, but public policy must be formed through evidence-based decision making and best practices and not on the reactionary knee jerk responses to sensationalist reporting from the local media.  I suspect that youth homicides of CPS students was already on a long down trend in a direct correlation with the overall homicide rates in Chicago at the time.  

Examples of Great Chicago Press:

Charles Thomas,
ABC 7 Blog Post
Aug. 11, 2010

To say that this post is horrible significantly understates the level to which this post plummets.  Journalists always have a responsibility to make sure they are informing the public with facts and not innuendo, gossip, or rumor.  This post is filled with proof that Thomas’ lack of understanding about police statistics allowed him to insinuate that the way the CPD calculates statistics permits them to show that crime is going down when crime really isn’t.  An astute accusation if it was only based on a hint of a fact.  

Problem #1:

“Roderick Drew, the police department's media affairs director, confirmed this morning that when multiple persons are shot during a barrage of gunfire in Chicago it is counted as ONE aggravated battery.”  That's right.  Only one.  That's because a shooting, no matter how many people are hit, is counted as a single incident.  Just last weekend (August 6-8), there were five incidents with multiple victims.  The cops counted only five aggravated batteries when in fact over 15 people were injured or killed.”  "I can't say why its counted that way", Drew told me.  "Its that way all over the country."

Here Mr. Thomas could have included the results of his legwork and pointed out to his readers that police agencies throughout the country collect data in a format that is mandated by the FBI for use in their Uniform Crime Reports (UCR).  All urban police agencies, and most of the 19,000 police agencies across the country, collect and maintain data in a format dictated by the UCR.  This is not a recent change as the UCR has been in place since 1930.

So despite Thomas’ insinuation that because the department counts a shooting where 5 individuals are shot as a single aggravated battery the CPD is able to show that violence is going down when it isn’t, the truth is the CPD has been keeping stats in this format for decades.  Since the statistical methods have stayed the same the only way this could be affecting the current crime statistics in a way that it didn’t in the past is if there is evidence of a much larger number of multi-victim shootings this year compared to past years.  Of course since Thomas is part of the Chicago media he did not make an effort to get data from the CPD and run the numbers to see if there are more or less multi-victim shootings in 2010 than in prior years.  Maybe there are, but I see no evidence provided here to support that assumption, in fact, I see no evidence to support anything in this piece. 

Problem #2:

“Also, when folks in Englewood, Roseland and other ultra violent neighborhoods hear dozens of gunshots on a hot summer night, the vast majority of the incidents--even those reported to 9-1-1--are not included in the crime stats.  Not only is it against the law to fire a weapon inside the city, the bullets--assuming most missed their targets--are evidence of attempted aggravated batteries or even attempted murders.  But again, nobody's including those obvious crimes in the statistics.”

Well, this is actually almost an interesting point Thomas has here, almost.  Once again he lacks any historical context to suggest that this problem did not exist in prior years or that there is some legitimate reason to include every call from 911 about hearing shots in the crime statistics.  If the CPD included a statistic for every time a person called police and heard shots as a shooting, which by the way there is no statistical category for, Chicago would be the most violent city in the world from now until eternity.  Are we to assume that everyone that calls from a specific geographic area around the first call is calling about the same sound and not a totally separate incident or are we to count each call as a separate shooting?  If no citizen is willing to sign a complaint that they were shooting at him/her what type of crime are we to register the shooting as?  A shooting?   Without any complainant there is no way to know if the shooter was shooting at a person, which could be aggravated assault, attempt aggravated battery, or aggravated battery, or if they were shooting into the air which would probably be considered miss-use of a firearm and illegal possession of a firearm.   This is not as easy as Thomas thinks it is. 

Are the CPD playing with the crime stats?  Yes.  The fact is they always have and always will be playing with the statistics because it is easy propaganda for lazy reporters and reporting.  Is it necessarily the way Thomas says it is?  Nope.  Read these posts and you will be filled in better: 

• Propaganda & Homicide Rates
• Chicago Police Homicide Clearance Rates

"The Vanishing Beat Cop"
Ben Joravsky
The Chicago Reader
Aug. 12, 2010

I am pretty speechless about this albatross on an otherwise stellar journalism career, but this venture into reporting on the CPD and issues involving crime was a complete failure by Joravsky.  He quite clearly demonstrated he should stick to his game plan and not venture away from reporting on TIFs.  As you read this story, you can see how it could have easily been written by the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) (the union that represents patrol officers) because it basically is filled with the unsubstantiated allegations that characterize much of their public commentary.  Let’s take a closer look at some of the ridiculous logic demonstrated by Joravsky. 

“"They were yelling, 'Fuck the police, fuck the police,'" says Hudson. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing. Believe me, I'm no fan of police brutality—but this shit is getting out of hand."  Hudson had never before seen such brazen defiance in the face of authority, but the incident was far from the first this summer in his corner of Logan Square, near Drake and Cortland. "The gangbangers will shoot off guns or keep us up late or break a window, and we'll call the police, and they're slow to respond," he says. "If they're openly defiant to police officers, how are ordinary citizens going to be safe? There's a loss of authority here."  The apocalyptic worldview Hudson has taken away from these experiences is echoed by a dozen or so police officers I've talked to over the last few weeks. They don't want their names used because they fear retaliation, but they're surprisingly candid about their growing sense of helplessness.”

Really, he has never seen kids say ‘fuck you’ to the police before, where has he lived his whole life?  The kids were saying what they were saying because they knew they could.  Why?  Not because they don’t fear the police, they probably knew they were not holding any drugs or weapons and the police were powerless to intervene in their lives, umm… because at that moment they were not breaking the law.  In a free country you can tell a cop to screw off if you are not breaking any other law.  How dare those kids bask in the glow of their rights?  Damn gangbangers!  As for not seeing it I saw the same thing 5 years ago during a ride along in Austin at 1am when the cops pulled over kids and searched them and the car for no reason.  Why did the kids smart off?  Because once again they were not doing anything wrong and knew they could.  As a social scientist I can only wonder what impact, if any, race had on the interpretation of this incident.   

“As they see it, it's open season on cops—and the cold-blooded murder July 18 of Officer Michael Bailey as he waxed his car in full uniform at six in the morning outside his Park Manor home is just the latest evidence.” 

This statement is a clear reflection of the view of a minority of the department.  This officer was killed as part of a robbery that went bad.  He was not targeted for murder because he was a cop.  City cops are the victims of crimes everyday in this city, sometimes while in uniform sometimes in civilian clothes.  The circumstances of this murder are horrible as all murders are, but nothing more than that and it does not represent anything even remotely close to it being open season on cops in Chicago.  Reporting nonsense like this statement without a rebuttal is doing nothing more than being a megaphone for the most paranoid and alarmist viewpoints on the force. 

“Even so, common sense says the falling number of beat cops will eventually pose a public safety issue that Chicago must come to terms with.”

Ben, even cops will tell you that they do not prevent much crime.  A new saying in police circles, the educated and best practices circles is “random patrol gets you random results” meaning that even cops know they don’t really prevent much crime driving around.  Police in the U.S. are not built to be preventative; in fact most Americans do not want officers to intervene before a crime has been committed.  It has something to do with the land of the free and all that junk.  For a glimpse at what that would be like get out of the Reader’s offices in the loop and go talk to some community members about how much they like the Special Operations Section’s type of policing.  They were “preventative.” 

"Then a high-ranking police insider showed me some documents. On a recent day shift, there were fewer than 1,100 officers actually working the streets. Compare this force of first responders with the 75,000 gang members the police estimate are out there. "We're outmanned," says this officer."

The same staffing declines are occurring with other positions, like detectives. Don't get cops started on that subject. "We don't have enough detectives," says the senior officer.

If fewer cops on the street means fewer crimes prevented, fewer detectives means fewer crimes solved. One shortage feeds the other. Clearance rates, meaning the percentage of cases where a suspect is charged, have been steadily falling. In 2001 the clearance rate for murders was 54.2 percent. In 2008, the latest year for which the department has released numbers, it was 37.4 percent.

Once again Ben you are pretty close to making a point but because you did not do any legwork the numbers are used out of context.  Comparing the total numbers of cops on duty to the total number of gang members (I have no idea how you got that number and doubt the validity of that number because it is so political but I will run with it here to prove my point) is ridiculous, and you should now better.  Never has there been or will there ever be a time when all the officers on duty in the city are called upon to do battle with all the gang members in the city.  This premise is stupid, and you using it to demonstrate how out-numbered the cops are is a horrible use of numbers. 

If you were going to do this story correctly you should have FOIAed the manpower numbers from the city by district and watch and then used those numbers to demonstrate how many officers each district is short per watch.  But you didn’t because that would have taken time and been representative of a responsible journalist.   Your math seems pretty good as the first sort of informed look at CPD staffing levels.  The problem is that you didn’t make any effort to compare it to prior years.  Are 1100 offices on the street bad or good?  What were the levels (on the street not just employed) 10 years ago?  Is the CPD’s staffing reflective of a trend in other large cities across the country, and if so why?  Asking a cop you know if what he personally experiences is bad and then asking the FOP for comment is not doing your job.  Is there the remotest possibility that the head of the union representing patrol officers is ever going to say there are too many officers on the street?  What a joke, why would you even bother?  Did you even need to make the call to know what he was going to say? 

As for the clearance rates, your assumption that the reductions in detective staffing levels are the reason clearance rates are dropping is probably partially true.  Regarding homicides though, the nature of the crimes have dramatically changed since the early 90s so clearances rates obviously were going to change with them.  The simple fact is that interpersonal homicides have plummeted and thus they have accounted for the huge drop in homicides nation wide leaving the detectives to try to solve the murders with little or no obvious connection between the victim and offender.  This fact more than any staffing reductions in the detective level account for the drop in the clearance rates for homicides (again, nationally, not just in Chicago). 

Ben, you should take a look at New York City for an example.  Their crime has fallen faster than Chicago’s all while they have reduced the number of police officers and their incarceration rates. 

“Daley walks fine line on crime”
Fran Spielman
The Chicago Sun Times
Aug. 4, 2010

“It's tough to make the case that Chicago is a safe place to live and work when three police officers are gunned down in two months, and a 13-year-old who just moved here is shot 22 times, execution-style, in an apparent case of mistaken identity.

That's why Mayor Daley and Police Supt. Jody Weis are walking a tightrope on a crime issue that, polls show, is resonating with the public. 

On the one hand, they're doing everything they possibly can without money -- with the city facing a record, $654.7 million shortfall -- to stop a raging gang war that's terrorizing entire communities.”

Is there really a “raging gang war” Fran?  This statement certainly seems to assume facts that are not in evidence.   Comparing homicide rates from 10 years ago would tend to inform an educated person that the gang wars were “raging” much worse years ago.  Does this mean the cops are doing a better job now than they were then?  Also, why is it that if the city had more money they would be better at responding and able to prevent homicides?  Ten years ago the city had more officers and a booming economy— and more murders.  Does this mean there is some correlation between the number of officers on the street, the city’s budget, and the number of homicides?   In fact, if you just look simplistically at the raw numbers, there actually appears to be some kind of trend that the more officers that the city has on the street & the more flush the city’s coffers are the more murders there are in Chicago.   But this would be an overly simplistic set of assumptions.  In reality, there is very little direct correlation between the number of police officers a city employs and the city’s homicide rate.  I guess the cops and the budget are the problem then.  Maybe we should further reduce the staffing of the CPD more and spend the city into bankruptcy and we can shoot for no homicides in Chicago.  

Throwing Fran A Bone

“In 2009, there were 16 murder victims per 100,000 residents in Chicago. That's at least double the murder rates in Los Angeles and New York at eight and six per 100,000 respectively. When it comes to robbery and aggravated battery, Chicago's rates dwarf those of L.A. and New York.

 "When you talk about per capita, one of the most dangerous cities in the United States is Orlando. And what is Orlando known for?" Weis said, referring to Disney World.

 "Unless you can articulate every demographic possible -- the number of gangs, the number of weapons -- [it's impossible to compare]." 

Unfortunately for Superintendent Weis he is dead wrong on this issue.  Per capita comparisons across similar situated categories are not only proper but also vital to determining best practices as well as many other social science research questions.  Here comparing Chicago to Orlando is ridiculous but comparing Chicago to New York is perfectly proper.  Chicago does have about 3 times the per capita murder rate than New York and about a 60% higher per capita murder rate than Los Angeles.  The comparison between these cities is completely credible and a useful metric to understand how similarly situated cities compare to each other. 


WGN TV  July 21, 2010

“It has already been a long, hot summer of violence. On Friday, Mayor Daley contended the murder of a Chicago policeman was an isolated act.

Just two days later, on Sunday, the death of police officer Michael Bailey, who was assigned to protect Daley, proved that wasn't the case.”

This line might just be one of the worst in all the reporting in Chicago.  For some reason, the media and much of the public are convinced that the murder of an officer is worse than the murder of just about any other person.   This attitude leads to a view among citizens and the press that officers are, or should be, untouchable and invulnerable.  Jon Burge provides all the evidence we need about how dangerous this attitude can be.  These cases just provided a couple more recent examples of the vulnerability and fallibility of police: Fox, Hobbs. 

Also, 2 of the 3 homicides seem to be robbery attempts that went bad and have nothing to do with the fact that officers were targeted.  The third officer that was murdered seems to be at the hands of a deranged or mentally troubled individual.  Maybe closing mental health clinics in not in the police or the public’s best interest Mr. Mayor. 

What should be taken from the fact that all three have occurred in such a short period of time?  Nothing.  I am sorry but all the drama presented by the Chicago press about how dangerous the city is because now the gangs are killing cops is nothing more than reactionary fear baiting from the media.  When individuals resist robberies involving armed assailants violence is a predictable outcome.  I worked in the jewelry industry for 20 years and we were always told to give up anything the robbers wanted to reduce any chance violence would erupt.  This does not seem to be the case in either of the officers’ deaths, both of which seem to have started out as robberies and then end in their deaths.   Does this mean the officers are responsible for their own murders, of course not; however, it does provide evidence that the officers were not targets for homicides but were targets of opportunity to be robbed, something that happens to off-duty officers all the time in the city according to my sources in the CPD. 

Conclusion

Clearly the media lacks either the ability or the desire to do the needed legwork to obtain access to data from the Chicago Police Department to put the day’s events in the necessary context for communities.  At this point, the media is doing a disservice to communities that are experiencing the violence in Chicago.  What would be nice is to track how many jobs have been created and lost in these communities over the last 20 plus years of Mayor Daley’s rule in Chicago and then try to determine if there exists a correlation between jobs lost or lack of jobs created in these communities and street violence.  Maybe also track the money invested in the community schools in the affected neighborhoods and see if the correlation holds; of course we need to make sure that any money invested in local schools resulted in upgrades in the schools that local children attend and not the charter schools that they are not allowed in.  Once this is done, then press the authorities with the results and force new long-term strategies to be proposed by communities and officials.  A return to the SOS style “preventative” policing is not a solution and will lead to a further deterioration of the relationship between these communities and the Chicago Police Department; not to mention further drive the unbelievable expenditures on civil litigation costs including lawyers, settlements, and judgments.  This is a time for serious public discourse, not a time for cheap sensationalist fear mongering.  The media needs to step-up to the plate and produce a real community service by driving a fact-based public discourse on crime and violence in Chicago.  Otherwise, little will change.  Our communities will continue to be plagued by violence while the established media outlets will continue to regurgitate virtually identical inflammatory headlines year after year. 

Probation Cop

Accountability does not only mean that the public must see the perpetrator of misdeeds disciplined for his or her behavior but also any accomplices before or after the fact must also feel the consequences of their actions.  The discipline of the accomplices must also be public so that community members can have faith that the system is responding appropriately to their actions.  Unfortunately, to this day citizens are still denied access to information that would allow us all to inspect the quality of investigations into police misconduct and trace any accountability handed down months and years after the original incident. 

It seems we have learned nothing from the Burge years.  Police accountability must put citizens before officers.  It must put the interests of communities of color before the great blue wall of silence.  The recent city council approved police union contract mandates that certain aspects of citizens complaints, like the actual complaints and any paperwork created from any subsequent investigation, must be kept secret.  Clearly here the city council, authorities within the Chicago Police Department, and within the Fraternal Order of Police (the union representing the majority of patrol officers), prioritize the blue wall of silence over citizen access. 

Code of Silence

City leaders' complaints about a community-based code of silence are hypocritical.  "Do what we say and not what we do" is really what they are saying.  Can anyone say, "Who hired Angelo Torres?"  City officials need to lead by example.  Burge is on trial and still his fellow officers risk perjury charges and breaking immunity deals to hold the wall up. 

In his recent testimony in the Burge federal criminal trial, former Area 2 detective Michael McDermott tried his hardest to walk back testimony he gave during his grand jury testimony in the case.  The interesting part here is that McDermott is testifying under a grant of immunity.  All these years later and McDermott is still holding to his post holding up the great blue wall of silence at great personal risk.  If Burge is convicted, the prosecution has a clear case of perjury because McDermott’s testimony to the grand jury and the criminal court seem to contradict themselves significantly.  Why would he do this given the fact that a grand jury investigation continues into what remains of Burge’s crew?  The answer is simple, holding up the wall means more to McDermott than facing several years in federal prison.  That about says it all doesn’t it?

Target: Teens

Parents and community leaders are going to have to understand that they are part of the problem when it comes to abuse stemming from police activities.  When parents and community leaders relentlessly turn up the pressure on police to be the answer for social ills one of the direct results will be over-policing and abusive practices.  There simply is no way to remove the responsibility of the community in some of the abuse that comes from the hands of police officers.  Now, this does stem from the fact that communities really have no other social institutions to turn to because our political leaders continue to defund them and instead turns their funding to expanding police department. 

In Sunday’s Sun-Times a mother named Peggy Zabicki from the West Lawn community pens a letter to the editor criticizing a recent stop of her teenage child by police.  They saw a young kid with a backpack and decided they wanted to search it.  They used the excuse that they thought he might be a “tagger”.  Zabicki criticizes the police because she believes their actions are prejudice against teenagers.  The simple fact is that when communities demand that police stop crime their actions are obviously going to be repressive.  When law enforcement is tasked with using police tactics to stop crime that equals a warrant to interrupt and intervene in the lives of young adults whenever and wherever they choose.  Is this right?  No, but neither are the community and city leader’s demands that the police are the answer to all the social ills that are the cause of crime and violence in our communities. 

Community members must take action against incompetent local political figures that fail to resist efforts to broaden police responsibilities regarding their response to social problems.  The police are not the answer to chronic unemployment, the horrible state of our education system, or the thievery that goes on in the form of institutional corruption.  Calling the police to get the youth off the corner only perpetuates a system that assures they will have no options but the corner to sustain a living.  Political leaders of our city set up the system because they have decided to make Cook County Jail the new ghetto.  Citizens must resist into falling into the trap of perpetuating a system that was not set up in their interests.  The criminal justice system should be the system of last resort; however, unfortunately our political leaders have created circumstances where it must be the system of first response to almost any social problem.  Citizens must resist the urge to involve the criminal justice system in all but the most urgent of situations.  This simply is a sad but necessary point of resistance. 

Megan Twohey’s article “Doctor? Sexual abuser? Or both.” in the Tribune on Sunday June 20^th shows just how dangerous it is for citizens to blindly trust oversight agencies to do their jobs.  What is the alternative?:  providing citizens with the access they need to connect the dots for themselves and their fellow community members before abusers become repeat abusers, before another women gets victimized because the systems set up by men to regulate men fails.  Some might say it is just working the way it is intended to work. 

“The Illinois Medical Practice Act, Hofer said, does not allow the department to permanently revoke a medical license unless a doctor has been twice convicted of felonies involving controlled substances or public aid offenses.

 

Under the law, other types of felony convictions — such as sex crimes — "may" be grounds for lesser disciplinary action, and the consequences of misdemeanor convictions are not mentioned.”

Is this fact not the height of sexism and complete disregard for the patients of all doctors around our state?  Take this example for a spin:

A doctor who rapes two women in his practice does not lose his license unless he is under the influence of drugs at the time of both assaults.  If he was stoned for just one he is still fit to practice unless he fraudulently over billed for his time on both occasions.  If he was stoned off his ass during one and over billed for the other he is still fit to practice.

I wonder how much it cost the Illinois medical community in campaign donations to allow rapist doctors from losing their licenses?  Only bought and paid for legislators would author such a ridiculously structured law.  How can a society that is so concerned for victims when their plight hits the airwaves care more about financial fraud than repeated sexual assault of our women?

"Minnesota is a rare state that bars felony sex offenders from serving as doctors. State legislators passed the law in 1995 in response to the disclosure that a repeat sex offender was continuing to practice.

 

"The legislature determined it shouldn't be discretionary — that we needed something in place that required the board to take more serious action in cases of convictions involving sexual misconduct," said Ruth Martinez, head of complaint intake at the Minnesota Board of Medical Practice."

It will be interesting to see if during this campaign year our legislators have the intestinal fortitude to take on the medical lobby and right the wrong that Minnesota corrected 15 years ago.  From my perspective I find it hard to believe they will. 

When the department filed a formal complaint against Jafari in October2001, citing the criminal outcome, he argued that the conviction was not grounds for discipline.

 

An administrative judge overruled his motions and moved forward with plans for a formal hearing.

 

But just as the hearing was about to take place in 2003, Jafari participated in a private conference with Dr. Allan Bennett, a member of the medical disciplinary board, who concluded Jafari was credible and that the case should be closed.

 

The full board agreed that the only necessary move was to tell Jafari to always have a chaperone present when examining a female patient.

 

Bennett could not recall the case.

 

"I can assure you that, at least when I was on the board, every effort was made to keep sexual offenders from practicing," he said. "If that wasn't done, then I can only assume that the medical disciplinary board disagreed with the court."

 

Jafari said it was the right decision.

 

"It is important to understand that what could be perceived as an act of sexual misconduct by a non-medical person is in fact a routine, normal and medically necessary procedure for a physician," Jafari said in a written response to questions from a Tribune reporter.

How did I know that this was going to lead to a secret meeting between two men to determine how a man should be disciplined for sexually assaulting women?  This is the quintessential example of everything wrong with our state and country.  What a joke!

"I told him it was upsetting that this doctor was in my surgical suite without my permission or knowledge all the while being a convicted sex offender," she replied, according to notes she took of her conversation. "The investigator said, 'You didn't know anything about any of the other people in the room.”

Yup.  This says it all. 

Jafari, 66, said in a phone interview that he operates his own private surgical practice at 6925 Cermak Road in Berwyn and also works at Grand Avenue Surgical Center in Chicago.

FYI

I’m not positive about this but I’m pretty sure the Illinois Department of Financial and Professional Regulation is worthless.

Will our legislators act?