Chicago fires investigator who found cops at fault in shootings
wbez.org
wbez.org
They are consistently able to commit crimes without being prosecuted. They can use their position and influence to target and harass their personal enemies. When they are prosecuted for a crime, the sentencing is consistently far less than a non-LEO offender's.
And there's no more recourse for us. When a police officer shows up, there's nothing you can do, and no way to predict what will happen. If they're in the mood, you can be beaten, pepper sprayed, tazed, bitten, or shot, for any offense no matter how minor or imagined.
So what can we do about it? Record the police.
EDIT: Typo..
I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is the lack of independent, third-party mediators, capable of policing the police and enforcing fair and balanced punishments.
Second, we need to address the corruption, collusions, and abuses of power that come from being involved in the justice system. If you are a member of the court or a law enforcement officer and were, e.g. pulled over for a moving violation, there is a very good chance that revealing your profession will result in your release with no record or punishment.
I have sat in a court while my father was being tried for a felony. Since my family are essentially nobodies, there was no one else in the court prior to proceedings beginning except us and the court staff. We listened as the prosecutor spoke in a familiar tone with the various staff in court, including the judge, about a recent vacation he had taken out of state. He mentioned that he was pulled over for speeding, but once he told the officer who he was he was let go, and he was very proud of it. About an hour later, he was calling my father a "monster with no regard for the law".
Is this for real? Unbelievable.
And yes, it seems that proof of wrongdoing is often not enough. Hopefully the public outrage that these cases ignite can be sustained and channeled productively, towards greater accountability and transparency.
Regardless, that's the day I realized that the police and the courts are their own entity separate from and above the rest of society. Our only hope is to minimize contact.
It's not uncommon to be let off with a warning for speeding if you aren't argumentative, don't try to make bullshit excuses, were not going dangerously fast, aren't in some intentional revenue-generating speed trap, and your record comes back reasonably clean when they run a check on your license.
There was an AskReddit where someone asks cops what makes them decide whether to give a ticket or a warning that gives some interesting insights [1].
I've been let off with no ticket a couple times, and got the ticket a couple times.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/16zweo/cops_of_r...
As I mention below, I could not provide a transcript for this incident, only my account.
Davis’s termination came less than two weeks after top IPRA officials, evaluating Davis’s job performance, accused him of “a clear bias against the police” and called him “the only supervisor at IPRA who resists making requested changes as directed by management in order to reflect the correct finding with respect to OIS,” as officer-involved shootings are known in the agency.
Since its 2007 creation, IPRA has investigated nearly 400 civilian shootings by police and found one to be unjustified.
"Yeah, the integration tests failed 400 times, but in all but one of them, it was the test runner that was the problem."
"Yeah, the integration tests failed 400 times, but, in all but one of them, the failure was indicative of an actual problem with the system".
1 out of 400 could easily mean the police use justified force almost all the time.
Of course then they probably wouldn't be firing investigators, but there you go.
Even in the (in my estimation) relatively small fraction that are in fact truly, expressly legally justified, it's a failure on a different layer of the stack.
I can't imagine a healthy, successful organization of any kind making such an inane and chilling statement:
> The spokesman said there would be no interview and sent this statement: “This is a personnel matter that would be inappropriate to address through the media, though the allegations are baseless and without merit. IPRA is committed to conducting fair, unbiased, objective, thorough and timely investigations of allegations of police misconduct and officer-involved shootings.”
> The performance evaluation covered 19 months and concluded that Davis “displays a complete lack of objectivity combined with a clear bias against the police in spite of his own lengthy police career.”
Vogons?
When you add in all the other police issues over the years, you end up with not a single Chicagoan surprised at this outcome. The state and the city are corrupt beyond belief.
Despite the cost to the tax payer, I'd love to see this guy sue the crap out of everyone involved. Of course, that's a risky move because you know, something could happen to him.
The people who investigate these incidents were appointed to investigate them because City and State agree'd that CPD was unwilling to investigate the misdeeds of their department.
So they setup an Independent review board. Which sounds nice and independent but...(Mayor and CPD friends filled it with former CPD brass or family of former CPD or former consultants to CPD)
Now they are firing investigators because they don't give reports that appease the department.
This is just another feather in the hat of police corruption rolling thru Chicago.
What Chicago needs to do is get managed by IL. And IL needs to realize that the corrupt people are getting voted in by IL citizens.
The real question is when will we start having the political will to question public sector unions? They seem to only make city services more expensive, more corrupt, and in the case of cops, lead to legalized murder.
Decent piece on how this board and the union work to protect bad cops. You just can't expect the police to police themselves.
http://www.wbez.org/news/who-polices-police-chicago-its-incr...
Now a WBEZ investigation raises questions about just how independent the agency is. City records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request show that IPRA’s management now includes six former cops — officials who have spent most of their career in sworn law enforcement. Those include the agency’s top three leaders.
This blanket assumption is probably why you're being down-voted. The easiest way to avoid this is by supporting your statements with as many facts as possible.
A simple google search proved that this is not at all the case, for example, and that Republicans show much stronger support of police unions.
http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2014/12/12/the-gop-and...
This selective support among Republicans suggests that you're addressing the wrong crowd.
In fact, I would go so far as to say that a lack of political opposition in any circumstance, regardless of the party itself, will lead to anti-democratic behavior.
The real issue is that police overwhelmingly enjoy an uncritical view by the voting public such that no politician can afford not to support them. What needs to disappear is the misplaced support for police among the public.
From 1977 to 2003 Republicans were in control of Illinois executive office. 26 years in a row.
From 1972 to 1991, Jon Burge running the show as Chicago police commander.
Are you trying to say that Republican governors had no power to investigate/curtail the evil that was brewing under his leadership?
hehe.
The downvotes are just knee-jerk stupidity because the MSM doesn't report much on union abuse and unions largely get a free pass in the US for political reasons. Democrats won't go after them as they more or less pay for Democratic campaigns.
You aren't helping yourself.
Is America that polarized? Or, are the people with more complex views (i.e., having both liberal and conservative viewpoints) just less likely to speak out?
America is that polarized, and when people with more nuanced views speak up, they tend to get shouted down immediately by the "side" that sees some aspect of "the other side"'s views in the nuance, drowning them out in the noise.
Want to make a nuanced point in a discussion about gun control? You're probably from Kenya, too. Want to make a subtle distinction in a debate about investment banks, or energy policy? You must hate poor people, or the planet, or...
Net, we (or at least I) tend not to get involved in political discussions, as I'm almost invariably going to have to spend more time arguing about how I'm not actually a filthy lib'ral or whatever, than about the point I'd wanted to make in the first place, so fuck it. You guys have fun shouting yourselves hoarse and slapping yourselves on the back for how hateful you can be towards random strangers on the internet.
"Why should I have to pay for a fire department? My house isn't on fire!" Yeah, that guy needs to move to Somalia. Not so he can experience what that degree of government-free state is actually like, but rather so the rest of us don't have to put up with that kind of idiocy.
I'm going to pass on getting into another Freedom discussion, seeing as you're already off to referring to certain ideas as "idiocy". Hardly the platform for a decent, logical debate on the topic.
The most "libertarian" example of a community funded fire service I've ever heard of is the one where you pay "dues" to the fire department, and they'll come put out the fire if your house ever catches. If you don't, they'll come up to your property line and make sure the fire doesn't spread, but otherwise just stand there, watching your shit burn.
This actually happens, and I have exactly zero sympathy for the people who don't pay in.
That's what I'm talking about when I say "idiocy": people who claim to be Libertarian, but whose attitude is more, "Fuck you, I've got mine!" punctuated by, "Oh, shit! Someone expend community resources to help me with this!" You don't get to have it both ways; either you contribute meaningfully to the upkeep of the society whose membership you wish to benefit from, or you don't get to benefit from participation in that society.
EDIT: Sorry, I guess, if my tone is dismissive or offensive. I'm just sick to death of people walking around, talking a "Taxes Я theft!" position, but who expect to benefit from the things that those taxes pay for.
I'm not sure how you'd handle delinquency in paying those dues, but it would probably be somehow legally actionable.
EDIT: It's probably somewhat moot, anyway, as the overwhelming majority of these dues-based fire brigades exist in predominantly rural areas, where party walls aren't typically a thing.
Even if someone subscribes to say "85%" of "most liberal beliefs and ideologies" they're still a liberal/Democrat and will be held to believe 100% of the "commonplace beliefs".
This is why all Republicans are blanket-washed as religious nutcase, global warming denying bigots. While all the Liberals are caricatures of 1984's Thought Police.
In my experience it's more that people with complex viewpoints get some combination of shouted down by zealots on either side or sick of arguing with ideologues who aren't capable of having rational discussion with an open mind.
Basically the "us against them" message has been sold the members of both parties and prevents intelligent discourse.
Often the media enforces that.
All cycles, top donors EVER are dominated by unions giving to democrats. Its 100% a partisan issue.
I also think accused criminals should have an organization that advocates for them. We can call them public defenders. And so on.
The problem isn't that there is a police union, or even that it's an effective or powerful one, it's that the union should not be in the business of overseeing misconduct investigations, except in a clearly understood adversarial role as an advocate for the accused.
You can throw out insults to liberals and insert your preconceived bias against public sector unions all you want if it serves your political agenda, but at the end of the day nobody rational is arguing in favor of this system, liberals especially so.
The performance evaluation covered 19 months and concluded that Davis “displays a complete lack of objectivity combined with a clear bias against the police in spite of his own lengthy police career.”
That is a serpent choking down its own tail.
First, a chief of police was interviewed on CBS News a while back. He said there are thousands upon thousands of police interactions with citizens every day but all anyone ever hears about is the one bad one that happened one time.
Second, and this might sound off-topic but I hope you get my point. I was helping a guy move, a few months back, along with one of his friends who's a rookie cop. This took place over several days. Each day, we rode in a truck a coule of miles and, along the way, he would occasionally say, "Expired plates. Expired plates." cause we couldn't go a mile without him finding one. And not just by a month or so but, in one case it was almost a year.
Which brought up racial profiling, as you could imagine. He said, "There is no race indicator on a radar gun." And "When I see something go wrong and I light it up, I can't tell who I'm pulling over, much less what race they are, until I get out of the car. And I don't care. You could look at my ticketing and arrests for the few months I've been on the job and say I do racial profiling cause most of them are [insert what you know it is] cause, from what I can tell, most of them do the things that get them tickets or arrested and put in jail."
I think of that every time I see an article, here on HN, and the comments by people trying to blame the cops for everything as if they're against us.
EDIT: As I pointed out, right away, the first two commenters entirely missed my point.
And even that analogy is flawed, because it's unambiguous that at least some of these "bad cop" interactions involve deliberate malfeasance on the part of the cop. When was the last time the pilot intentionally crashed their plane?
It turns out, some cops are bad actors. They're the ones we should be hearing about. And we should also be hearing about it when their departments pull shit like TFA: firing the investigator who says their shoots were bad, for not altering his findings to suit their narrative.
Germanwings not long ago.
Only with proper independent review panels can justice be served against a bad cop. I'm not necessarily "anti-cop", but I know the importance of a robust cop investigation unit.
There's no reason to be loyal to corrupt and dangerous indiviuals that are supposed to be trusted public servants.
Did you even read my post?
The fact remains: cops (and cop supporters) are proud and that's not necessarily a bad thing. I think if people portrayed the arguments and problems with cops in a way that cops (and cop supporters) can keep their pride... life is going to be a lot better.
At the end of the day, Cops have more pride in their work than other government workers (compared to... say... Motor Vehicle Administrations or TSA Airport scanners). When you push on Cops, they push back because of their pride.
But its not necessarily a bad thing. You just gotta keep the pride in mind when you propose police reform. Otherwise, it becomes very difficult to get the individual officers to reform with the law.
I am not the one who brought up race.
But in any case, Police pride is a real thing and you need to account for it in your arguments. Otherwise, actual police reform becomes impossible.
I don't think the police actually are this way, not most of them. But if they were, then the answer would be to start over from a clean slate, not try to work around their delicate feelings.
There's been a drive-by shooting in Baltimore a few weeks ago, but Officer Morale (from the protests / etc. etc.) is so low that none of the officers wanted to do anything about it. Anthony Batts was fired for it, but a change in leadership doesn't change the fundamental morale problem going on with the Baltimore City Police Department.
Officer morale in Baltimore is so low that nobody wanted to respond to a drive-by shooting? Anywhere else, if your morale is so low that you don't feel like doing your job, you get fired and they find new people who do feel like doing their job. Did any Baltimore police get fired for failing to respond to this drive-by shooting? If not, why not?
What recruiting pool do you imagine we get new officers from? And how do you imagine that having a force completely made of inexperienced cops will improve things?
More likely, some of them are prideful and the rest go along. Start disciplining them and you'll get rid of the bad ones and fix the rest. For the example of the Baltimore shooting, no need to fire the whole department, but every officer who was on duty and refused to respond should be fired instantaneously.
At no point did I say that. Hacker News doesn't lend itself to discussion very well, and if you want to stuff words in my mouth, I will refuse to partake in the discussion.
> For the example of the Baltimore shooting, no need to fire the whole department, but every officer who was on duty and refused to respond should be fired instantaneously.
You clearly have awesome leadership skills. You should run for Police Sheriff, clearly you know more about running a police department than everyone else.
Now as to the actual discussion, you said that if we don't keep pride in mind, it will be difficult to get officers to reform. You further presented the example of the Baltimore drive-by which the police refused to respond to after their pride had been hurt. That, to me, sounds like you're saying that if we hurt police pride they will turn on us by failing to obey us and by failing to protect us. Is that not what you meant?
As for my "awesome leadership skills," are you saying that firing police officers who refuse to respond to an incident because they have hurt feelings due to protests is the wrong action to take? If I understand that correctly, please elaborate. In any other job, refusing to do perform a critical duty required by your job without a very good reason is generally a firing offense. Why is that not the case for the police, and what action do you suggest should be taken?
If this is your level of maturity, then I shall have no part in the rest of this conversation. Your "awesome leadership skills" can't even comprehend the concept behind "morale" anyway, I'm not sure where to even start a discussion with you.
There are plenty of people who would be very grateful for the kinds of money police officers can make in a typical city. I seriously don't think there would be a problem.
In any other organization, people who didn't do their jobs would be disciplined or fired. Why are the police different?
I'm just trying to fathom a situation in which another type of employee could use 'pride' as an excuse for failing to do the job they are tasked to do in a way that is not injurious to their customers.
I think there are good arguments in support of the police in the way they effectuate their job responsibilities, but "pride" is, in my opinion, not a terribly good one.
It's left as an exercise for the reader to determine which is which.
Keeping that in mind, and educating them of the viewpoint is more important than yelling at them or breaking them down.
If they don't believe those things, fire them and get cops who will do their jobs.
Your solution to an uptick of 48% more murders is to fire all the cops. Break the Police pride down, punish the cops. That's totally how you get people to risk their lives and patrol the West Districts of Baltimore.
Absolutely brilliant. I wonder why no one has implemented this outstanding idea before. /sarcasm
Let me give you a hint: If you Fire a Cop, they'll just work in another district. There are _plenty_ of safe districts looking for experienced officers, and there's almost no reason why an officer has to keep working in West Baltimore aside from pride.
They can very easily jump to another richer district, one with fewer murders and higher-educated populace. And frankly, the smarter cops tend to do that. I think officers prefer to work in safe places and hand out speeding tickets all day... rather than taking on armed drug dealers in the worst parts of Baltimore.
So offer some alternatives instead of just knocking everyone else down.
As stated before, my solution is to create robust independent police review boards. It'd be something like New York City's model with an independent "Civilian Complaint Review Board", complete with subpoena power against officers.
http://www.nyc.gov/html/ccrb/html/home/home.shtml
Anyway, Chicago's review board has indications of weakness, and the article above is simply a note of what is going on in that agency. Maybe the review board needs to hire more non-cops and more lawyers from the ACLU.
The correct action depends a lot on the politics of the Chicago review board are. If the review board is appointed by the direct election, then the leaders need to be voted out and reformed.
If the review board is appointed by the local mayor / city counsel, then we should organize political protests and bring up the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority as an actual issue during Chicago elections.
If you don't live in the city of Chicago, then of course the article posted here doesn't apply to you. They don't apply to me either, but if it were happening in my city, that's how I'd start.
I didn't advocate firing anybody. I think you're confusing me with other participants in this thread. That's pretty ironic, coming from someone who said elsewhere in the discussion, "if you want to stuff words in my mouth, I will refuse to partake in the discussion." [1]
EDIT: I also don't think the up-thread proposal was to fire everyone. Just the bad actors. And, really, do you want someone who's malicious and has a power trip walking around with a gun and the authority to use it?
There's no good reason that reform should be restricted by the need to avoid making cops feel indignant. In exchange for cops obeying the law, we offer nothing whatsoever, including respect for their pride. It's not a negotiation.
That is, in edge cases like a bit of swerving, 10 over the limit, newly expired tags, etc; police will look at the car and what they can tell about who is driving it and where they are to determine if they pull over or not.
A cop told me this directly. I don't remember his exact conditions – but they included things like a young guy driving a real nice car or a car that seem like maybe it was his mother's or a really beat up car. You're a lot less likely to get pulled over if you're driving a mid-priced sedan.
---
In America police kill about 1000 people per year. There's no hard number because there are no official statistics kept – that's telling in itself.
Thousands and thousands of police interactions each day, and each day about three of those ends up with somebody dead. The police in this country are undertrained and underpaid. The stupidity of the populace drives them to be statistics driven, and the environment attracts hot heads who want power to the career. Once on the job the complete lack of negative feedback from internal investigations and the courts gives them god complexes and their culture becomes a cesspool of corruption and us vs. them mentality.
I don't think that's how "criminal justice" is supposed to work.
These are things no engineer would hear of but you see statements like yours on HN all the time.
Let me put it this way: is it your position that in every single one of those thousand-odd cases, the person who was shot deserved it? If not, how many of them did?
Police should be masters at de-escalation. Instead, because they are not trained and motivated, they often create the situations which result in shootings. Not universally, but often. The people who shoot at the police _do_ have a reasonable belief that they'll be killed if they don't try to defend themselves. That is people who have committed crimes end up being more violent because they fear police brutality. Police in turn are quicker to turn to force in fear of their own safety.
This vicious should be and needs to be terminated by police learning how best to minimize the violent tendencies of petty criminals and the mentally ill. Don't get me wrong, the weapons they use are valuable and important tools, but they are so often used because the authority wants to use them.
I've known more than one person who before signing up, said openly that they were joining the armed services because they "wanted to shoot people". It's easy to find police on public media who clearly have the attitude that the people they work with on a daily basis are the enemy.
It's easy to look at the cops as the bad guys. "Fuck the police!" but that's falling for the same line of reasoning that the bad cops do.
You have to recognize that it's a systematic problem. The real world is complex – Americans really have to rid themselves of the Christian "good vs. evil" narrative we try to apply to every situation.
And it turns out that hostage situations in police shootings are indeed pretty damned rare.
However, there are also problems with the ways in which cops are help responsible for their actions. This allows the bad and not-so-good cops to keep being cops.
The article is pointing out a problem with how this accountability is implemented in Chicago.
So what is your point exactly?
Could you clarify what that point is exactly? As written, you seem to be saying that identifying bad actors from good actors is extremely difficult due to other factors. I agree with that if that is the point you are making.
I think there is something else here too, though?
You are aware this is an article where the cops fired someone specifically because he said cops were at fault in numerous incidents?
This is basically a case of the police firing the auditor who found their mistakes because "he found too many".