Chicago Police Hid Mics, Destroyed Dashcams to Block Audio, Records Show

"crmiminally abusive" comes more easily to my mind.

Funny anecdote I heard in a poor part of Santiago. A guy stabbed another guy during a futbol match. When the carabineros arrived they got the victim to a hospital and everything, but then they pinned the guy to the fence and let every other player in the game give him a good punch.

Big cities tend to have similar problems as Chicago. Small towns and rural areas seem to ripe for petty abuses and also generating revenue via excessive traffic stops.

The difference after moving from the North East is glaring.

Recently, there is a mentally unstable person in my neighborhood and he decided to sit on my porch and light pieces of paper on fire one day. I called and they were there in 15 minutes and said they could do what they can to help this guy. The cops seemed geniunly concerned about his and my safety. I was floored by how well this call went.

I live in one of the decent, but not wealthy neighborhoods. Chicago is about 1/3rd horrible ghetto and 1/3rd marginal and 1/3rd decent. Life in those other 2/3rd's is very, very different. If you're outside of the typical "northside" neighborhoods the cops are much tougher and much more paranoid about being hurt or killed. I lived in one of those neighborhoods and there's a completely different vibe there. Cops pull up with 3+ squads at every call, take up defensive positions, hands close to weapons, etc. A dog attacked mine when I lived in Humboldt Park and the cops came out and were cool about it, but clearly on edge as I lived in gang territory. In other neighborhoods, I don't see this edge, or the defensive tactices. So yeah, there's something here about cop safety in marginal neighborhoods. I imagine provoking these guys in these neighborhoods leads to bad outcomes.

Also, not to attack the GP, but there is a Chicago cyclist personality I see frequently. They do dick moves with their bikes, cause accidents, never obey any traffic law, scream at pedestrians, have unbelievable senses of entitlements, kick/punch cars, and constantly pretend to be innocent and are often incredibly confrontational when criticized. I can't imagine cops being nice to these people and the GP sounds like one of these people, which may explain many of his experiences. Chicago cyclists have a bad rep for a reason.

That said, I have next to zero fear of the police and lots of fear in regards to the high criminality and massive gang population here. I've been intimidated and threatened on the train multiple times, car/house robbed, had to walk lady friends to their homes/cars many times not out of courtesy but because there was a known rapist loose or the gang kids were clearly looking to start trouble that night, have been uncomfortably close to a gang shooting at least once, hit 3x by DUI drivers, etc. I suspect Chicago cops are tough because Chicago has so much serious crime. This isn't the suburbs.

Wikipedia: Chicago has more gang members than any other city in the United States: 150,000. The city had 532 murders in 2012.

Chicago tribune: Chicago police officers shot 22 people in 2015, eight of them fatally.

532 vs 8, guys. Oh, 150,000 gang members is 5% of the population. That's right, this is a major city where 1 in 20 are gang members.

That said, the powerful Chicago police union is pretty horrible. It exists to protect the worst of the worst, out of some misplaced sense of pride. I would love to see public sector unions eliminated in the city, if not nationwide. They just make things worse for everyone. Society needs an alternative to the union system in the public sector. I find it bothersome that all the recent ant-police sentiment still has not percolated to the police unions. I suspect this is a political thing where liberals can't attack their own institutions. So expect zero real reform.

FWIW, I am darker skinned and do not pass as "white." I'm typically clocked as a Latino. I've always owned older cars , dress very casually outside of work, and live way below my means. I doubt I was treated in any special way because of status/race. I don't fall into the preferred categories.

They'll show up 5 times a day to question the family of the drug dealer who lives in your basement apartment and can somehow not figure out which unit it is... so you live in constant fear they're gonna come break down your door. They'll ticket and boot every car on a street despite a clearly visible permit on half of them...

But you'll hear gunshots down the block and ... nothing. You'll have an emergency and you won't get a response for an hour.

You can live in Streeterville for example, as rayiner alluded to in another post... but what happens when you go out with friends??? What if they want to go someplace in say... Wrigleyville... some night??? You're walking back to your car, or trying to get a taxi back to the loop, and you cross too close in front of a police officer, or his vehicle. (Basically, the same thing that bbarn was talking about in his post.) Even though it's completely inadvertent, and done with no ill intent, I've seen this very thing go decidedly bad for people in the past. It seems that it didn't go too well for bbarn either.

So if you're asking for guarantees... I think that reasonable people will concede that there are none.

The best advice is to be aware of your surroundings, and be aware that police are extremely dangerous and best avoided. Just do the common sense kind of things... allow police the path if you see them walking on the sidewalk. Don't look directly at an officer. When approached by a police officer, be extremely deferential. And for goodness sake, if you see police abusing power don't try to intercede. Don't let them see you recording or videoing the incident. When you have an opportunity later... just write an anonymous letter to a newspaper with the video or something. Etc etc etc.

Also... not trying to be even more of a dark cloud here, but I think a word of warning is appropriate on this particular point... if you are black and male, and assuming you are professional as you are a hacker news reader... I'm not entirely certain any of this will work for you in any case.

Pick your neighborhood based on other factors.. closeness to the CTA trains, quality of food options, and general cleanliness. I've found these to be pretty good indicators of overall safety/quality of life in a neighborhood. (I won't get into the cause/effect argument, just saying that as a newcomer they are good measuring points)

Just like anywhere else, don't act like an idiot or seek out trouble in rough areas and 99% of your interactions with police will be fine.

You're on HackerNews so presumably you make money and won't be living on the South Side or somewhere like it. If you're living in Lincoln Park, Wicker Park, Streeterville, etc. you will likely never witness a bad police interaction the entire time you live there - unless you go looking for it. Live in some of the more marginal neighborhoods and those you fear will almost assuredly not be the police.

It's like anywhere else - dressed like a young professional, out with other similar friends, not being confrontational and get caught doing a minor infraction? You'll be warned and maybe yelled at. Do the same acting like fools and giving attitude back? Yeah, you might be taught a lesson and spend the night in jail.

I've had plenty of interactions with CPD between myself and my drunk friends in my earlier days. The cops acted just like you would expect and desire them to in all but one situation. That situation was a friend jumping a security gate on the El to photograph some train stuff. He went to jail for the night.

As with everything like this the hyperbole is just nuts. If you're a poor minority living on the South Side my answer may be different, but for the typical Hackernews frequenter Chicago is no different than NYC or LA, and honestly in terms of "living in the city" you are likely to find far safer and wealthy neighborhoods than you will in the "inner city" of any other mid-tier NFL town in the US.

That said it's a big city. If you're used to living in a big city, Chicago is just another one with better than normal public transit. Same problems and concerns as anywhere else. You can find neighborhoods that have similar crime rates to the most wealthy suburbs there are, and neighborhoods with a higher homicide rate than Iraq. The latter gets you the police department in those areas you would expect.

No. It's largely a very safe city and a great place to live in. I've lived here for 16 years (2 in Lakeview, 1 in Uptown, 3 in the West Loop and 10 in Lincoln Square). If I can help answer any questions about the various neighborhoods, you can reach me via jeff@judge.io.

If you're in your mid-20s, the typical places to end up would be Uky Village, Logan Square, Roscoe Village, Lincoln Square, and Uptown.

You wouldn't want to live in Streeterville or Edgewater for reasons beyond the number of police there. If you're seeing lots of police in Wrigleyville, it's because the neighborhood is overrun with drunk overgrown fraternity members. If you actually live in Wrigleyville, there's a good chance you like the police, because Wrigleyville drunks are pretty fucking annoying.

The kinds of police interactions characterized by things like the Laquan McDonald shooting are more or less confined to the south and west sides of the city, where you're not going to move anyways, because nobody is moving there.

There aren't neighborhoods in Chicago that are low-crime and high-police-violence.

I agree with the other commenter on this thread who points out that Chicago is just like every other big city. One of the things that makes Chicago distinctive is (unfortunately) the legacy of segregation and redlining from the 60s and 70s, which gutted whole large areas of the city. There aren't large sections of Manhattan or Brooklyn with virtually no white residents (at least, no area as large as the Austin/Lawndale neighborhoods). It's an extremely unfortunate situation for people that don't have the means to get out of those neighborhoods, and at the same time pretty much entirely shields white people from problems with CPD.

But that part of America is shockingly isolated from the rest of us. Chicago is a great example. There are blocks where on side of an intersection it's gang territory and the other is totally safe.

There are huge swaths of Chicago that are rich, peaceful, and probably the best city living in America. There are also huge swaths of pure poverty and gang warfare.

If you are born on the right side of the tracks, it's a great place. If you aren't, well, good luck.

I guess this bad attitude trickles down from DC.

The prosecutors and the officers they're charging may be drinking buddies, or at least have collaborated professionally before. Prosecutors may also fear other officers being unhelpful in the future to the person who charged the latters' buddy.

The prosecutor may also fear having to open every case that officer was involved in to retrial. The prosecutor, themselves, may have logged those cases as wins.

In the end, the system will never work unless an independent prosecutor, with the power to investigate and bring charges, exists for police crimes.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Camden_Police_Department_%28Ne...

That's a large municipality discarding their entire police organization and creating a new one.

But just as life-destroying are the things that go on in smaller communities, where talking about conspiracy is just as valid, but the stakes, departments and communities are smaller, so it doesn't get as much attention. I know from personal experience that small town cops can be just as awful, and power structures in small towns don't get the same push back as they do in larger places.

I'm pretty sure we are seeing the beginnings of a sea change here.

Citizen surveillance tech has reached the point that the behavior of police can't be ignored any more, and the disconnect between law, policy preferences and "rough justice" as actually practiced is shocking to people who lived comfortable enough lives to not notice before[2].

Prosecutors and especially judges, always slow to change when change makes their jobs harder, will take longer to get used to the notion that wink-and-nod isn't going to work any more. Police unions are going to lose this fight, especially as activists are starting to become savvy to the tactical advantage of splitting Republicans between law and order fears and union busters.

The result, at least hopefully, will be police that, if not actually part of the community again, are not able to function as the biggest gang around with legal cover.[3]

[1] http://www.cbsnews.com/news/chicago-police-abused-detainees-...

[2] Not casting any aspirations there; we all pick and choose where our outrage lands to some extent, I'm just as oblivious to some injustices as other people are to this. It is simply human nature to worry about things closer to one's self.

[3] Not all police, some of them are very good at what they do, etc. At least we can retire the "few bad apples" deflection.

Alrighty, then...

We have a national body. It's called the citizenry. But, sadly, few people are rising up because it isn't happening in their back yard, or to their children.

Sure there will be comment threads on HN or some Facebook liking, but these are weak responses, and without more, change will come very slowly, and in the meantime thousands more will be trampled on, abused, violated or murdered.

The majority of people who are rising up are only the marginalized people who are the primary victims of police abuse and injustice. All you have to do is look on Twitter and look at the color of people who do the most tweeting about police injustice.

There is no way this would or could continue if a significant amount of the privileged population rose up.

I think the selective absence of evidence where it would normally exist is something that a jury (or investigating organization) should consider within the totality of the evidence presented. That way we can go start from a point of innocence and work our way through.

Why are there options to turn the audio off anyway? In the grand scheme of things what you are trying to protect by turning off audio is likely much less important than the criminal behavior that is coming under scrutiny.

Part of the problem is that it becomes the cost of doing business for a city. What should happen is that the individual should have to pay those multi million dollar fines out of pocket. Of course, the people who are suing for money know that they'll get more money if they sue the city.

Key challenge with this strategy is the big latency between paying out damages and consequences for the police officer or even department. The bigger the metro, the bigger the latency. Large metro budgets can temporarily cover for the few million dollar payouts that happen to make the daunting gauntlet all the way through to a final, no-appeal judicial judgement, even a few every 3-5 years over a long, long period of time. There is a natural impedance in metro political circles to "protect" the police unless an incident is sufficiently egregious.

I'm believe this adverse behavior pattern won't stop until a legal concept similar to the corporate veil is established for police officers (all the way up to and including police chiefs). Some kind of legal doctrine that spells out when certain conditions are met, individual officers must be deprived of city and departmental support; their "blue veil" so to speak is "pierced". They can still obtain support from private sources like the union, but they are on as much the same footing as a civilian as can be legally established. As a society we can hash out what those conditions are. Some might argue just destroyed dashcam data is sufficient. Others might argue for a much, much higher bar.

One does not sign away Constitutional rights because they become a police officer.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Presumption_of_innocence#The_f...

While I agree that cameras should be required and intentional tampering a crime, I think behaviors would change much more quickly if laws were put in place to dock pensions and pay across the board to compensate for lawsuits of wrongful death and the like. Suddenly the "blue wall of silence" would become a very vocal supporter of police reform to identify and get rid of bad apples that threaten everybody's pension. Incentives are very powerful tools for changing behavior, much more powerful than blanket force by bodycam laws.

So you make it nearly impossible to break/tamper without trying and its a federal offense to do so. Simple.

I may be off base here, but cops seem to be on patrol for almost their entire shift.

Baloney. The cameras are for the public's benefit.

Imagine your employer (or whatever) came to you and said, "From now on, you're wearing a camera whenever you're working. It's for your benefit; if anyone ever accuses you of slacking off, you'll have the video evidence to prove that you're not."

Would your productivity increase? Almost definitely. Is the camera really for your benefit? Nope.

https://www.google.de/search?q=a320+cockpit+voice+recorder+p...

Is that irony? I never can tell if I use that word right.

Maybe this isn't common in SV, but if you work for a large organization who needs to be able to answer a client when they ask 'what happened at x on y', you better believe things are in place to make it happen.

I don't believe it's unreasonable to expect the same from police.

It's so naive it borders on stupidity. Do you really think "documentation" would change anything? It'd just lead to "Oops, didn't know that was broken sarge, I'll get a spare." "Oops, looks like all the spares are gone. Sarge, can you order some more?" "Oops, forgot to order some spares. Maybe I'll get to it tomorrow."

Chicago is especially corrupt (as far as I know it's the only metropolitan police force with its own CIA-esque black site), but it's absolutely naive to think this can work anywhere. This is just the tip of the spear.

When it comes to Ferguson-type departmental corruption, it shows just how institutionalized the racism is - and how far it extends outside of the departments.

We should likely spend more time on this, as in this light, it doesn't matter what changes are made at a departmental level - there's no path to success on their own.

Change is going to have to be at the elected official level - but those systems are so gerrymandered, and so corrupt that it presents a really difficult problem.

[2] http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2016/01/man-arrested-jail...

In case of [1], that man(and many others) will still be alive if cops behaved professionally rather than behaving like a bunch of _____

In case of [2], why weren't the cops charged with obstruction of justice

There is no one overseeing police behavior, they can get away unless someone with enough time and money takes them to the courts and even then they get too little punishment.

I don't know, but I suspect that Australians are much less likely to shoot at or otherwise attack police officers...