L Day wrote:I just think the cops should be as accountable as anyone when they pull the trigger. Nobody should be above the law.
Holy crap! Where did the Fox News/Rush Limbaugh Larry go?!? This Larry is sane. It's kinda scary.
A good friend's dad is a Chicago cop, and he's a great guy - calm and smart. (as opposed to a 'good guy' in the frat/cop/mafia style) I seriously don't know how he's managed a 20+ year career surrounded by some of the well-armed, well-organized psychotic scum who make up a substantial minority of Chicago police officers.
Growing up in Chicago, I had no real fear of gang members. They were generally sane - they didn't care about me and I could predict their behavior well enough to avoid any problems. Gang members, drug dealers, skinheads and such all have an internal logic, and by understanding it, you could communicate with them to avoid and resolve conflicts without any real problems. Cops, on the other hand, were a serious danger. I'd guess that about 30% of cops you'd run into on the street were the 'bad apples' who seemed to be 'having a bad day' every day. They're often unpredictable, violent and there's not much you can do to work with their internal logic to resolve problems.
There's a combination of factors that has led to the current situation. Keep in mind, though, that the 'current situation' isn't a degradation of the situation in Chicago, it's just that enough of these cases have been caught on security cameras that the press has finally started doing their jobs and we're being made aware of what a lot of poor, non-white people have known was going on for decades.
Remember, this is the same Chicago Police Department that literally assassinated several leaders of the Black Panthers in 1969. (It was staged as a 'raid', but the police shot their way in through the door and simply shot everyone in the apartment.) Of course, we all know about the police riots at the 1968 Democratic convention. Also, from 1972 to 1991, Jon Burge used torture techniques (electrocution, beating and suffocation, including on a 13 year old boy) that he learned during his service in Viet Nam. (Gosh, I wonder if any of the 'war on terror' torturers are going to come home to the US and start torturing people here? hmmm? maybe torture is just a bad idea?) He tortured false confessions out of several people in murder cases, resulting in them being on death row for a while (and, of course, allowing the actual murders to go free)
Also, the Chicago PD isn't much worse than the other two big cities in the US, NY (Abner Louima, Sean Bell, Amadou Diallo, etc) and LA (King, Rampart, etc.)
"Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?" This problem has existed for more than 2000 years. The latin quote means "who watches the watchmen". The Romans realized that the people who enforce laws are hard to control. Let's face it, we're probably not going to send Bush, Cheney or Rumsfeld to prison despite their crimes, we're probably not going to bring charges against the Blackwater, CIA, NSA or USMil people who have committed murder, torture or kidnapping, and few or none of the cops across America who torture and kill people will be charged, let alone fired.
