Laquan McDonald
November 25, 2015 7:34 AM   Subscribe

For the first time in 35 years, an Chicago police officer has been charged with first-degree murder for an on-duty fatality, in this case, that of 17 year old Laquan McDonald. Last night, the city of Chicago released the dash-cam footage that had been kept out of the public eye for more than a year, showing Mr. McDonald being shot 16 times by a Chicago police officer. A second video, which was taken by a security camera at a nearby Burger King, was allegedly deleted by the police.

Chicago protests (photos, The Daily Beast)

What Police Said About The Killing Of Laquan McDonald Before The Video Showed What Really Happened: The video directly contradicts the account provided to the press after McDonald’s death. McDonald does not “lunge” at the police or do anything threatening. It also shows Van Dyke firing repeatedly at McDonald after he is on the ground and motionless.

Secondhand Oppression: I watch these videos because I need to know what happened to the fullest extent that what happened can be known. I can leave my opponents no quarter. Racism is too fluid to be handled gently. Any space you leave it the system fills with opportunities for destruction. When you pray for the bombings in Paris, racism seeks to manipulate that sentiment with self-preservation: Why aren’t your praying for my people? Like God cannot handle all prayers. Like prayer is a hotline or a soup kitchen line. Racism takes that calamity – a horrendous and immeasurably sad act of cowardice – and makes new victims fight with old victims, with long-standing victims, creating new victims and building walls between them when their strength lies in connecting the dots of our seemingly disparate assailants’ behaviors, not in prioritizing our respective victimhood.

Shaun King: Death of Laquan McDonald at the hands of Chicago Officer Jason Van Dyke is modern day lynching: To be honest, we aren't even clear on how many unarmed African-Americans have been killed by police this year. What we do know is that killing of unarmed African-Americans at the hands of police has replaced lynching in 2015.

"McDonald was a ward of the state at the time of his death, according to a spokeswoman with the Illinois Department of Children and Family Services. A few days before he was killed, DCFS gave him over to the custody of a relative, she said."

"McDonald's family, which received a $5 million settlement from the city, [did] not want the video released."
posted by roomthreeseventeen (307 comments total) 51 users marked this as a favorite
 
I understand when people tell me they can't stand to watch a video like this. But that's why we have to watch. This is real. This is horrible. This is what's happening. Variations of this happen nearly every day. The very least you can do is to refuse to squeeze your eyes tight shut and look away. The very least you can do is to witness. And then let that inform your understanding of America at this moment and motivate what you're going to try and do to fix it.
posted by DirtyOldTown at 7:43 AM on November 25, 2015 [27 favorites]


From the What Police Said About The Killing Of Laquan McDonald Before The Video Showed What Really Happened link:
"He’s got a 100-yard stare. He’s staring blankly," [Fraternal Order of Police spokesman Pat] Camden said of the teen. "[He] walked up to a car and stabbed the tire of the car and kept walking."

Officers remained in their car and followed McDonald as he walked south on Pulaski Road. More officers arrived and police tried to box the teen in with two squad cars, Camden said. McDonald punctured one of the squad car’s front passenger-side tires and damaged the front windshield, police and Camden said.

Officers got out of their car and began approaching McDonald, again telling him to drop the knife, Camden said. The boy allegedly lunged at police, and one of the officers opened fire.
McDonald was shot in the chest and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital, where he was pronounced dead at 10:42 p.m.
If it weren't for the fact that a kid is dead, the level of distortion is almost humorous. It's completely made up. And I still can't completely wrap my head around the phenomenon of police officers choosing to lie so blatantly to protect murderers and psychopaths within their ranks. I would think that decent cops would want these criminals to be prosecuted and removed from the force. But time and again they choose to double down and obfuscate. Could it be as simple as every cop secretly believes that they also might end up shooting someone 16 times in the middle of the road, and would want the same protection extended to them? Or is there more to it than that, that I'm just not seeing?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:44 AM on November 25, 2015 [72 favorites]


This is a real turning point for the movement because now the focus isn't on "did the guy deserve it and is the cop guilty of murder"--that's obvious even to most people who sympathize with the police, but "what, if anything, can or should be done about the police and mayors unchecked ability AND willingness to cover up police murders?"

I'm guessing, but this feels like it is now finally going to have to be acknowledged as a national issue, and could even impact the presidential race now that Bernie has started working more with BLM, and will have no problem calling for Rahm to step down.

RIP. Shout out to Burger King.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:45 AM on November 25, 2015 [14 favorites]


And I still can't completely wrap my head around the phenomenon of police officers choosing to lie so blatantly to protect murderers and psychopaths within their ranks.

They are very, very used to it being utterly unquestioned.
posted by Artw at 7:47 AM on November 25, 2015 [27 favorites]


Also thanks for including info about Laquan in the post. Poor kid. He needed help obviously and there was nothing for him.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 7:48 AM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


Where are the charges for the officers who conspired to cover it up for a year? The response by the city is Van Dyke was just "one bad apple", where there was clearly an organized cover up from the first moments afterwards right up to the highest level of the city's legal team and maybe Rahm himself.

When it can be pinned on one officer and not systemic problems, these shootings can always be whitewashed away. The officers who tampered with the scene, shooed witnesses away, deleted incriminating evidence, etc, should all be charged as accomplices after the fact, or this will just happen again and again.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:49 AM on November 25, 2015 [118 favorites]


They are very, very used to it being utterly unquestioned.

That's a given. My point is that if the guy who sat in the cubicle next to me murdered a person during work hours and our bosses decided not to question it, and indeed continued to let my coworker carry a firearm into stressful situations, I would be pretty upset and would not to work with that person (and likely my bosses) until it was addressed. My puzzlement has to do with legitimately decent cops ("decent" here meaning "not murderers") who seem to be complicit in these cover-ups. Siege mentality?
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 7:53 AM on November 25, 2015 [14 favorites]


Horrible culture, massive racism.
posted by Artw at 7:55 AM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


T.D. Strange: "Where are the charges for the officers who conspired to cover it up for a year? "

Yeah, and while I have generally liked Anita Alvarez (cook county state's attorney), the fact that she took THIRTEEN MONTHS to bring charges and only did so when the video was about to be release stinks like a dead skunk. I'd have a bit more faith in her office (and her story about why it took her so long to charge) if she'd announced Tuesday what charges she intended to pursue against the cops who participated in the destruction of evidence, obstruction of justice, and outright and repeated lying for over a year. But this just seems like an ass-covering last-second scramble to have slightly less-terrible PR, not the actions of an office that's super-committed to rooting out cop corruption.

The only reason this has come out at all is that an unnamed city employee who'd seen the video tipped the press that it flatly contradicted the ENTIRE POLICE ACCOUNT, and a single freelance journalist spent six months fighting for its release. That journalist, btw, was barred from the press conference releasing the video because he isn't "credentialed" by a major organization.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:55 AM on November 25, 2015 [127 favorites]


boycott cop culture
posted by philip-random at 7:58 AM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


I am sorry I voted for Alvarez. You have to expect in Cook County those backed for office are political but you hope they are not just political hacks. She has proved to be the hackiest of hacks.

Mary Mitchell at the Sun-Times had a column recently about Laquan McDonald. He had a very sad and short life. RIP and I hope that cop rots in jail and all the other cops on the scene that deleted what they thought was all the evidence lose their jobs immediately and their pensions. Fucking gangsters is what they are.
posted by readery at 8:02 AM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


it has all the elements of a cop making the wrong decision in a genuinely ambiguous circumstance

Kid never approached the cops, one officer emerges from the passenger side door and immediately begins shooting. 16 shots, 13 of which were after the kid was immobile on the ground.

Sorry, but that's not ambiguous.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:03 AM on November 25, 2015 [93 favorites]


He's not going to get first degree murder. There's just no way. I'm not sure what the state's attorney is thinking.

She's thinking that if she overcharges, he's likely to walk. It's the back side of the ongoing cover up.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:03 AM on November 25, 2015 [28 favorites]


It amazes me how incompetent the cop cover-up was. They had the chutzpah to seize footage from a third party and delete it but neglected to do the same with their own dash cam footage. Evil and dumb.
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 8:04 AM on November 25, 2015


but it has all the elements of a cop making the wrong decision in a genuinely ambiguous circumstance

I do not believe that a jury will think the subsequent 15 shots (after the first, where Laquan was already on the ground) are ambiguous.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:04 AM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


Juries make stupid decisions all the time, particularly when cops are involved. I am no longer surprised at anything a jury does.
posted by Justinian at 8:06 AM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


It's worth noting that the Illinois murder statue doesn't require premeditation like some other states do:

A person commits First Degree Murder when:
(a) they kill an individual without lawful justification if, in performing the acts which cause the death:
(1) they either intend to kill or do great bodily harm to that individual or another, or know that such acts will cause death to that individual or another; or
(2) they know that such acts create a strong probability of death or great bodily harm to that individual or another; or
(3) they are committing, or attempting to commit, a forcible felony other than second degree murder.


So murder 1 may not be inappropriate, the video and 16 shots fired sure look like intent to kill.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:07 AM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


Confiscating third-party security cam footage seems to be one of CPD's favorite hobbies (along with virulent racism). I wouldn't be surprised if it's unofficial policy.
posted by theodolite at 8:08 AM on November 25, 2015 [15 favorites]


I've been pretty disappointed in how this has played out (the delays, the circling of wagons, etc.) but the cherry on top of my disappointment sundae is the mayor's press conference last night, which pretty successfully shifted the local news media's coverage away from the government's actions leading up to the shooting and in the aftermath and caused everyone to focus on the scary (mostly black) protesters instead.
posted by slmorri at 8:08 AM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


You actually think that this will be a jury trial?
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:08 AM on November 25, 2015


Six seconds.

He was out of his car for six seconds before he started shooting. Emptying his clip took two and a half times as long as it took for him to decide that this person was so dangerous that he deserved to die.

Every cop who was on scene who didn't fucking arrest that asshole should be fired for sheer incompetence.
posted by Etrigan at 8:09 AM on November 25, 2015 [42 favorites]


I do not believe that a jury will think the subsequent 15 shots (after the first, where Laquan was already on the ground) are ambiguous.

The radio yesterday reported that the officer's lawyers are complaining the video's release will make it difficult for him to get a fair trial, and that it doesn't show the full story, which telegraphs that they know full well it shows him committing unambiguous murder.
posted by Gelatin at 8:09 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I already posted this in another thread but here's what the police chief said about the situation:
"At the end of the day, the Chicago Police Department is trained for, and we're world leaders in, mass demonstrations. We're prepared to facilitate people's first amendment right to free speech, but we will be intolerant of criminal behavior here in the city of Chicago."
Which makes me absolutely livid that someone so high up the chain can be so deliberately obtuse or utterly fucking delusional about police in Chicago. Leaders in handling mass demonstrations? Maybe if it's beating the ever loving shit out of the protesters. The best thing you can say about the Chicago PD and mass protests is that they at least stopped killing people at them. The cops are still sadistic fucks at them.
posted by Talez at 8:10 AM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


If it weren't for the fact that a kid is dead, the level of distortion is almost humorous.

I mean, the Unarmed Black Youth Is A Terrifying Menace To People With Guns here could very easily be swapped out, one-for-one, with the stories that got People With Guns acquitted of the killings of Black Youths from Trayvon to Michael Brown.
posted by shakespeherian at 8:10 AM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


If cops deleted the Burger King video, they should be charged with accessory after the fact.
posted by andoatnp at 8:11 AM on November 25, 2015 [41 favorites]


And I still can't completely wrap my head around the phenomenon of police officers choosing to lie so blatantly to protect murderers and psychopaths within their ranks. I would think that decent cops would want these criminals to be prosecuted and removed from the force.

Case in point: Serpico. He blew the whistle on blatant corruption and wrongdoing in the NYPD, winding up being hung out to dry in an ambush that nearly killed him. The message is clear: toe the line or you will be dealt with accordingly. Keep your head down, don't ask too many questions and you'll stand a good chance of nice retirement at a relatively young age. If you want to play Boy Scout, it won't end well.
posted by dr_dank at 8:12 AM on November 25, 2015 [15 favorites]


Confiscating third-party security cam footage seems to be one of CPD's favorite hobbies

Wikipedia says only two of the five police cruiser dash cams are known to exist and that neither of the videos contain audio, even though all the cars are equipped with cams that should be working and should be recording audio.

Hmm...
posted by Noisy Pink Bubbles at 8:15 AM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


She's thinking that if she overcharges, he's likely to walk. It's the back side of the ongoing cover up.

Given Ms Alvarez's previous conduct I would not be surprised.
posted by Talez at 8:19 AM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


(Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates: " And I still can't completely wrap my head around the phenomenon of police officers choosing to lie so blatantly to protect murderers and psychopaths within their ranks."

Despite their training it doesn't appear that police officers are any better eye witnesses than the average person. And when something bad happens the ego wins out over memory every time. By the time a couple days goes by the officer is honestly convinced the victim must have "lunged" towards them or something because they wouldn't have shot someone who wasn't a threat.

I've seen it in traffic court too where what I had perceived (as a nearby pedestrian) as a minor chirping of tires the police officer made out to be a long smoky burn out.

Just like tech support where you have to actively fight against thinking every user is an idiot there must be a certain amount of "everyone is guilty because I constantly deal with guilty people" colouring their actions. Mixed with a little "they may be innocent today but they have done something wrong".
posted by Mitheral at 8:21 AM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]




He's not going to get first degree murder. There's just no way. I'm not sure what the state's attorney is thinking.

Alvarez had another cop shooting case (Rekia Boyd) tossed by the judge because she didn't go for murder, but rather involuntary manslaughter.
posted by hwyengr at 8:22 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Juries make stupid decisions all the time, particularly when cops are involved. I am no longer surprised at anything a jury does.

They'll do a Rodney King and show the footage again and again until the jury are desensitized to it, bringing out expert witnesses to point out micro actions by the dead kid are obvious danger signals to an experienced cop. And you can't trust one bullet to end that danger. Or two or whatever.
posted by fearfulsymmetry at 8:23 AM on November 25, 2015




Police arrested Malcolm claiming that he threw a smoke bomb. Dozens and DOZENS of witnesses saw that Malcolm did no such thing, and was standing on the other side of the street talking with elders when the police surrounded him and snatched him up. Many believe that Malcolm was targeted as political payback for BYP 100's high profile refusal to meet with the city around the Laquan McDonald video release.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:26 AM on November 25, 2015 [16 favorites]


When it can be pinned on one officer and not systemic problems, these shootings can always be whitewashed away. The officers who tampered with the scene, shooed witnesses away, deleted incriminating evidence, etc, should all be charged as accomplices after the fact, or this will just happen again and again.

In an ideal world, every single person who lied to the public and therefore participated in a cover-up should be singled out in some way. Arrested, reprimanded, fired, etc. Especially the long-time spokesperson for the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) union, who blatantly lied repeatedly to the public about what had happened.
posted by zarq at 8:27 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Many believe that Malcolm was targeted as political payback for BYP 100's high profile refusal to meet with the city around the Laquan McDonald video release.

Leaders in mass demonstrations, ladies and gentlemen. Fuck the Chicago PD.
posted by Talez at 8:29 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Damon Young on The Slow Death of Black Joy.

This piece really spoke to me. I watch the news from my country in 2015 and it really is just utterly exhausting and demoralizing.
posted by TwoStride at 8:29 AM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


That poor kid. His poor family.
posted by rtha at 8:31 AM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


I would like this to be a turning point. But how many turning points have we seen? Remember when Tamir Rice was shot, right? How could it be okay to shoot a child in cold blood like that? What about Rekia Boyd, also a Chicago murder? How could it be okay for an off-duty cop to fire into a group like that?

If it is a turning point, I will celebrate it as a miracle as surely as if someone brought tablets down from the mountain. But I am more afraid that it will be waved away as a "genuinely ambiguous circumstance", etc.

I have dealt with allegedly liberal whites saying, yesterday, that the people who shot up the Jamar Clark protest in Minneapolis were understandably afraid of the protesters who were trying to herd them away from the main group, and that it was reasonable to fire on them. People will say any goddamn thing at all if it can be used to justify a white person shooting a Black one, and no amount of circumstance or cognitive dissonance will dissuade them.
posted by Frowner at 8:34 AM on November 25, 2015 [42 favorites]


Etrigan: "Every cop who was on scene who didn't fucking arrest that asshole should be fired for sheer incompetence."

The part that might make me the angriest, in the systemic sickness way, is that other cops on the scene TOLD THE DUDE TO STOP SHOOTING AND NOT TO RELOAD, but those same cops PARTICIPATED IN THE LIES AND COVERUP. All seven of them. Not one had the cojones to come forward with the truth.

Noisy Pink Bubbles: "Wikipedia says only two of the five police cruiser dash cams are known to exist and that neither of the videos contain audio, even though all the cars are equipped with cams that should be working and should be recording audio."

Some state politics blogs have commenters saying that they work with police departments in IL and that the cameras "mysteriously break" by the hundreds every time there's a case where the footage is released and cops are caught in wrongdoing.

Also the hacky parts of local news are trying to make me feel bad about all the Chicago cops who are going to be missing Thanksgiving because of the potential violence in the city in the aftermath of the video release, to which I say BOO FUCKING HOO, maybe you should take a little fucking responsibility for the fact that your union exists solely to cover up police wrongdoing and that it's running fundraisers for this guy's bail as we speak.

It's pretty gross. They're barely covering the MURDER OF A CHILD BY COPS but really focused on the sad human interest story of cops having to work on Thanksgiving because of nasty protesters who don't respect America. And I get it, they're hacky local news, they're all about a human interest angle, and they don't really have the structure or courage to show the fucking video or report on cop murder, but maybe in that case they could just IGNORE THE STORY instead of making it about the poor cops having to work on Thanksgiving, cry me a fuckin' river.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:35 AM on November 25, 2015 [50 favorites]


I realize this proposing a technological solution to a social problem but it seems like there ought to be some way to make it very, very difficult for police to destroy video evidence like this. For example, cameras that automatically share video with each other over wireless connections, that automatically uplink it to internet servers, that have to get sent out of state to be dumped and reset once they fill, etc.
posted by LastOfHisKind at 8:40 AM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


Always remember that Laquan McDonald was still alive when paramedics arrived on the scene.

Always remember that none of the cops at the scene went to him to aid him after he was shot 16 times despite him obviously being completely incapacitated.

Always remember that while there may, in fact, be good cops, there were no good cops there that day.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 8:45 AM on November 25, 2015 [105 favorites]


I would think that decent cops would want these criminals to be prosecuted and removed from the force.

Not sure why anyone, at this point, would bother to posit that these decent cops even exist.
posted by poffin boffin at 8:47 AM on November 25, 2015 [14 favorites]


And I get it, they're hacky local news, they're all about a human interest angle, and they don't really have the structure or courage to show the fucking video or report on cop murder, but maybe in that case they could just IGNORE THE STORY instead of making it about the poor cops having to work on Thanksgiving, cry me a fuckin' river.

Don't worry, there will be plenty of time to ignore the stories of the police slowdown in response.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:50 AM on November 25, 2015


Not sure why anyone, at this point, would bother to posit that these decent cops even exist.

Because I know police officers who are decent, honorable people.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 8:50 AM on November 25, 2015 [18 favorites]


only two of the five police cruiser dash cams are known to exist

It is interesting, though, that two of them survived. Incompetence on the part of the destruction of evidence, or was someone sabotaging the cover up? The optimist in me wants to believe the latter, it is a tiny sliver of hope.
posted by Bovine Love at 8:53 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


NPR this morning reported that Burger King has video of the police officer erasing the video of the shooting.
posted by gingerbeer at 8:55 AM on November 25, 2015 [74 favorites]


Because I know police officers who are decent, honorable people.

Then why are they always silent?
posted by Artw at 8:57 AM on November 25, 2015 [21 favorites]


All of CPD needs to be arrested on suspicion of obstruction of justice. I will personally take up the slack on tailgating in the meantime.
posted by PMdixon at 8:58 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I mean, where are the statements from police unions across the country denouncing what Chicago PD did here?
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 8:59 AM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


It'd look pretty bad for the other depts to loudly complain they bungled the coverup, if that's what you mean.
posted by PMdixon at 9:01 AM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Shame on the honor of the badge.
posted by buzzman at 9:01 AM on November 25, 2015


This REALLY doesn't matter to me in any discussion of McDonald's murder, but it does speak to the general systematic cover-up and other bullshit that continues to happen:

Does anyone know if the claim that is being reported everywhere about PCP being in McDonald's system has been confirmed by anyone other than the police union or a police person at a press conference? The autopsy tested for ethanol, benzoylecgonine (cocaine), and opiates (negative on all three), but I've not seen any other sort of toxicology talk other than from the same people who said he was charging at an officer when he was shot.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 9:02 AM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


NPR this morning reported that Burger King has video of the police officer erasing the video of the shooting.

Not "the" police officer. Several of them.
posted by theodolite at 9:03 AM on November 25, 2015 [13 favorites]


Anita Alvarez is disgusting and a horrible State's Attorney. And I am sick of my city's corruption on all levels. I hope that this provokes any change at all.
posted by agregoli at 9:03 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


This really should go further up the chain than it appears to be going at the moment. There is a strong, not particularly complicated case to be made for both Alvarez and Emanuel (nevermind the Chief of Police or the cops who tampered with evidence) being forced to resign over what looks like a brazen and sloppy cover-up. Accountability can feel meaningless when it doesn't bring a kid back to life, but it would be SOMETHING.
posted by StopMakingSense at 9:03 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Then why are they always silent?

That was the question in my first comment, the second comment of the thread.
posted by (Arsenio) Hall and (Warren) Oates at 9:04 AM on November 25, 2015


Because I know police officers who are decent, honorable people.

As do I, but then I'd bet cash money that they know police officers who are dirty and don't speak up about it. Maybe they feel they can't, but that suggests that the number of dirty cops far outweighs the number of clean ones.

Sometimes this situation feels to me like MacReady's speech in the middle of John Carpenter's The Thing, when he addresses the assembled men, some of whom are probably assimilated already, and says that he knows some of them must be human, because if they were all Things they would just attack him on the spot.
posted by Gelatin at 9:05 AM on November 25, 2015 [14 favorites]


Because I know police officers who are decent, honorable people.

You know police officers who you think are decent, honorable people. Repeated evidence shows, though, that officers as a class of people are either complicit in indecent, dishonorable behavior, or in the cover-up thereof.

Many of the worst people in human history have nonetheless been able to compartmentalize the terrible shit they do, and go home and put on a pleasant demeanor for friends and family. That doesn't absolve them of their crimes.
posted by tocts at 9:06 AM on November 25, 2015 [28 favorites]


My experience with Chicago cops has been pretty much 50/50 and I've learned to be very wary. If you want to see how the bad cops speak among themselves read the Second City Cop blog. It is full of anonymous comments mostly bellyaching about work, but at times like these it becomes a cesspool of racism. I will not link to it and will not even read it myself right now, read it if you dare. Then wash out your eyes.
posted by readery at 9:07 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


That was the question in my first comment, the second comment of the thread.

Well, they're your mates. Ask them.
posted by Artw at 9:09 AM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


My understanding is that police who are basically decent people are pressured into silence by their peers. There have been many cases of discrimination against black and female officers, for example, and it's very easy for police administration to really fuck with someone who makes trouble. I mean, consider Frank Serpico if you want a famous case - and that was just over drugs, not white supremacy. I imagine that there are some decent cops but that they are socialized into cop culture and they know that if they speak up they will be punished, possibly violently. I think that reflects moral weakness on their part, but I also know that it's tough to make a living and culture can be powerful. I think they should all quit, and I think it's a failing not to do so, but I think that decent people who mistakenly choose to become cops get trapped into an abusive culture of violence and racism that obscures these moral issues.

My personal suspicion is that there is a de facto white supremacist organization within the police, that it is informally structured through police fraternal associations, and that at least some of these murders are not just murders of opportunity.

Bob Kroll, the head of the Minneapolis police union, is associated with an off-duty cop club with members who are overt advocates for white supremacist violence.

When people say that these murders are lynchings, I find myself considering that lynchings were planned, often pretty carefully. I would not be surprised at all if there were elements of spree killing to these cop murders, and that some of them were planned - or rather, that people informally agreed that they'd kill someone if the opportunity arose. There's too many of these killings and they have persisted too long after national outcry for them always to be the product of racist panic and bad training.
posted by Frowner at 9:12 AM on November 25, 2015 [49 favorites]


Also the hacky parts of local news are trying to make me feel bad about all the Chicago cops who are going to be missing Thanksgiving because of the potential violence in the city in the aftermath of the video release, to which I say BOO FUCKING HOO, maybe you should take a little fucking responsibility for the fact that your union exists solely to cover up police wrongdoing and that it's running fundraisers for this guy's bail as we speak.

It's pretty gross. They're barely covering the MURDER OF A CHILD BY COPS but really focused on the sad human interest story of cops having to work on Thanksgiving because of nasty protesters who don't respect America. And I get it, they're hacky local news, they're all about a human interest angle, and they don't really have the structure or courage to show the fucking video or report on cop murder, but maybe in that case they could just IGNORE THE STORY instead of making it about the poor cops having to work on Thanksgiving, cry me a fuckin' river.


Chicago released the video at 5:30 pm the Tuesday before Thanksgiving. They knew what they were doing, they're hoping that most of the outrage gets forgotten as people break their routines to hang out with family and don't pay attention to the news for a few days.
posted by DynamiteToast at 9:14 AM on November 25, 2015 [26 favorites]


Well, the US police forces do trace their lineage directly to slave-catching patrols; even when there is no slavery and minorities have, on paper, the same rights as white homeowners, cultural transmission casts a long shadow. Perhaps the only thing that can be done is to disband them and replace them with a new organisation, making absolutely sure that the old force's culture, both overt and implicit, does not make it across; sort of the way the Royal Ulster Constabulary (a similar sectarian force) was disbanded and replaced with the non-sectarian Police Service of Northern Ireland.
posted by acb at 9:14 AM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


Some government official on NPR described the shooting of black protestors by white supremacists as "the result of an altercation" this morning. Is there any phrase more Orwellian?
posted by muddgirl at 9:19 AM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Well, the US police forces do trace their lineage directly to slave-catching patrols

How does it go again? Eeny, meeny, miney, moe catch a cracker by the toe? No that doesn't sound right.

Racism is pretty much America's limbic system.
posted by Talez at 9:20 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


About fifteen years ago I was in a show band with a New York City police officer. We were all a bit nervous but he was a really decent human.

I had a long chat with him about the state of the force. He'd come in after the Serpico scandals and the department had been pretty clean... but over the years it had slowly eroded, and now his generation was retiring and he was frightened. He said at one point, "I'm really glad that my girls have shown no interest in police work, because I don't know what I'd do if they wanted to become New York City police officers."

His opinion was that if there wasn't a radical sweep of a police department every generation then it would rot, and I've never seen any evidence to contradict that.

And honestly? I still believe that the New York City police are more professional and more easygoing than other American police forces. (What I hear about the LA cops, e.g., doesn't bear repeating... :-( )

But still, they often feel like an occupying force - particularly when they refuse to obey instructions from the mayor!

Some years ago my wife and I spent a summer in Berlin. One day we saw a kid, perhaps nine, who was crying, obviously lost. He saw two police officers and immediately made a beeline for them. The police officers looked very concerned and one of them got on one knee and put his hand on the boy's shoulder to talk to him, who immediately calmed down. It was like something out of a 1950s Hollywood movie, and I thought, "Any New York City kid would panic if a cop reached for them..."
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:22 AM on November 25, 2015 [52 favorites]


At the end of the day, the Chicago Police Department is trained for, and we're world leaders in, mass demonstrations.

And here's a 2012 photo of a certain one of those friendly, world-leading mass-demonstration protectors!
posted by theodolite at 9:23 AM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


And honestly? I still believe that the New York City police are more professional and more easygoing than other American police forces. (What I hear about the LA cops, e.g., doesn't bear repeating... :-( )

NYPD Cops Return to Restaurant to Delete Video After Making Aggressive Arrests


This article is from yesterday.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:25 AM on November 25, 2015 [15 favorites]


> My understanding is that police who are basically decent people are pressured into silence by their peers.

Yeah, this is the part about how the one bad apple spoils the whole barrel. "One bad apple..." is not an isolated thing you can remove and then YAY everything is okay. It infects the whole. That's the point of that saying, and it amuses/enrages me when people - especially people in power, especially people with guns, in power - use it to brush aside criticism of the institutions they are in charge of.
posted by rtha at 9:29 AM on November 25, 2015 [14 favorites]


This is more a barrel of bad apples that allegedly gets the odd good one tossed into it.
posted by Artw at 9:31 AM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


>> And honestly? I still believe that the New York City police are more professional and more easygoing than other American police forces. (What I hear about the LA cops, e.g., doesn't bear repeating... :-( )

> NYPD Cops Return to Restaurant to Delete Video After Making Aggressive Arrests

> This article is from yesterday.

Read it already today. I still believe that NYPD cops are more professional than other police forces. That means that I think NYPD is very bad, and the others are worse.

I've lived in New York City for 30 years. I've seen cops take a bribe with my own eyes. I have also on other occasions been morally certain that cops were being bribed to ignore egregious violations like the cocaine club/unlicensed bar that operated all night next door. I've seen them beat down innocent people. They've been at worst surly and threatening to me, British accent guy wearing a jacket and polysyllables. I've seen some real competence (NYPD detectives are actual "detectives"!) but a whole lot of comedy level incompetence.

I have no illusions about the corruption of NYPD - I simply think they are not as bad as most other American police forces, because I think they're even worse stinking cesspits of evil.
posted by lupus_yonderboy at 9:36 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


And honestly? I still believe that the New York City police are more professional and more easygoing than other American police forces.

I've had a bunch of interactions with Seattle PD. In only one of them did they get grouchy and snarky. That was the worst of it. Most of those interactions were everything you'd want from police: patience, restraint, compassion, even humor.

But I'm a white dude. And a clean-cut white dude with reflexive patience with cops at that because of my background. Pretty much everything I read about Seattle PD tells a very different story about how they interact with people who aren't like me.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:36 AM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


The only [Chicago] cop I know was a racist, sexist, homophobic piece of human garbage before he ever got hired onto the force. He's the kind of guy I would immediately pass over during the interview process. So, there's that.
posted by shakespeherian at 9:37 AM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Question: From the standpoint of wanting to ensure a fair trial, why do videos like this get released? Wouldn't this make it pretty much impossible to get an unbiased jury? Doesn't it help the defense argue that the defendant can't get a fair trial?

Mostly I just don't understand the practicalities of how things like this are managed. They withheld the tape this far and decided to press charges (thankfully). Why wouldn't they hang onto it until the trial? Or maybe show it to a small group of journalists, community leaders, etc, but not put it out into the media?

I'm glad it's out for any number of reasons, but I also want this to lead to convictions.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:41 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


If you want to see how the bad cops speak among themselves read the Second City Cop blog. It is full of anonymous comments mostly bellyaching about work, but at times like these it becomes a cesspool of racism.

I've seen links to cop blogs posted here a few times in the past and the overt racism, violent imagery, and general fascist tone of much of the commentary made me sick to my stomach.

I think a thorough expose of those websites could make for a pretty compelling segment on one of the ubiquitous network TV news magazine shows (Dateline, 60 Minutes, 48 Hours, etc.) but I've never seen so much as a blip about it in any of the mainstream media.
posted by Atom Eyes at 9:42 AM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


How Chicago tried to cover up a police execution: “When it was first reported it was a typical police shooting story,” Kalven said, where police claim self-defense and announce an investigation, and “at that point the story disappears.” And, typically, a year or 18 months later, the Independent Police Review Authority confirms the self-defense claim, and “by then no one remembers the initial incident.”
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:42 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


They withheld the tape this far and decided to press charges (thankfully). Why wouldn't they hang onto it until the trial?

A judge, in response to a FOIA request, forced them to disclose it. They did not choose to disclose it. They only pressed charges just before they were forced to disclose.
posted by Bovine Love at 9:45 AM on November 25, 2015 [13 favorites]


From the standpoint of wanting to ensure a fair trial, why do videos like this get released?

If the video isn't released, there IS NO TRIAL. We've seen this over and over again. If activists didnt fight for a court order demanding the release of a video that purportedly showed no criminal activity in the first place, the prosecutors office would not be shamed into pressing charges.
posted by muddgirl at 9:46 AM on November 25, 2015 [25 favorites]


A judge, in response to a FOIA request, forced them to disclose it

This is actually not the full story. There were many, many FOIA requests that were denied. Someone had to file a FOIA lawsuit to get the video released.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 9:48 AM on November 25, 2015 [19 favorites]


Thanks to Civil Asset Forfeiture laws, police have seized more property than criminals. Nice work if you can get your gang backed by the government. Plus they sell you all their excess military hardware, doubly sweet!
posted by fifteen schnitzengruben is my limit at 9:52 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


If the video isn't released, there IS NO TRIAL. We've seen this over and over again.

Good point. I guess my question would be more valid if charges in cases like this were a more reliable thing than they are.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 9:53 AM on November 25, 2015


Everyone who worked to get this video released is a real hero.
posted by drezdn at 10:01 AM on November 25, 2015 [29 favorites]


Question: From the standpoint of wanting to ensure a fair trial, why do videos like this get released? Wouldn't this make it pretty much impossible to get an unbiased jury? Doesn't it help the defense argue that the defendant can't get a fair trial?

Prejudicial means it wouldn't be shown to the jury because it doesn't meet standards of evidence. A dash cam from a police cruiser? Good luck getting that evidence suppressed at trial.
posted by Talez at 10:02 AM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


I was at the protest last night. I got to hear Malcolm London speak just before the arrest, it was beautiful and angry and hopeful. He said "don't let them tell us we don't love each other, don't let them tell us we don't love this city"
If you want to support black youth in chicago donating to his bond fund would be a real good choice. The young leaders are incredibly important to this movement.chicagobond.org
posted by velebita at 10:03 AM on November 25, 2015 [25 favorites]


I have no illusions about the corruption of NYPD - I simply think they are not as bad as most other American police forces, because I think they're even worse stinking cesspits of evil.

Not really sure how this squares with the litany of offenses from NYPD that you've witnessed firsthand.

I mean at some point we're talking about which orange is the orangest of all when we're both only looking at a limited selection, but still.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:07 AM on November 25, 2015


Everyone who worked to get this video released is a real hero.

Absolutely. A thousand times over.
posted by Artw at 10:12 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


scaryblackdeath: "From the standpoint of wanting to ensure a fair trial, why do videos like this get released? Wouldn't this make it pretty much impossible to get an unbiased jury? Doesn't it help the defense argue that the defendant can't get a fair trial?"

It does help the defense make that argument, but I'm not sure it's a legit argument here; this isn't a particularly biased piece of evidence, it's merely a video of a thing that happened, where cops did A BAD THING. Their problem isn't so much that the evidence creates bias as that the evidence shows the bad thing.

In a lot of well-run jurisdictions, it's routine to clear police video for release within 24 hours to 1 week after a contentious incident such as this, as it's not biasing evidence per se, it's just evidence. The only exception is when there's a SPECIFIC investigational end that's served by keeping the video secret (typically you have a witness on the video who hasn't been publicly identified, or details in the video evidence that point to an unknown suspect and you don't want those details released to the general public). It's also fairly typical to request a judge's sign-off on the release of a video where the crime involves a minor (as perp or victim), but that's typically overcaution rather than a legal requirement. There is literally no investigatory interest that's served by keeping this video secret, and the judge made that point, that the police and the city were obsfucating by insisting it was part of an "ongoing investigation" and were abusing that privilege.

And, yeah, Emmanuel and Alvarez have known what's in this video for at least 13 months. There's absolutely no excuse for it to have taken this long to bring charges. The video only came out because a city employee tipped the press that the video, which the city was hiding, contradicted the story the police and city were telling. The charges have pretty clearly only been brought against the cop because the video is being released; if the judge had ruled the video could remain secret, there wouldn't be any charges. It doesn't take 13 months to bring charges in a case like this, especially not in Cook County. It's hard to be concerned about a biased jury when it's pretty clear the city and county and police intended for there never to be a trial of any sort.

Emmanuel got the city council to pay McDonald's family $5 million EVEN THOUGH THEY HADN'T FILED A LAWSUIT after he saw the video, because he thought it was so bad they should pre-emptively pay the family off to the tune of $5 million to try to keep that video covered up. City leaders had no intention of going after this cop or doing anything about this murder, and they did everything in their power to hide this video and prevent its release.

I would sort-of like to know who the city employee was who tipped the press, so we could send that guy free beer for life, but I get that'd be pretty bad and dangerous for him, so instead I'll just hope he's basking in the warm glow of being THE ONLY GUY IN CHICAGO WHO DID THE RIGHT THING.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:14 AM on November 25, 2015 [91 favorites]


This is the twitter feed of the journalist who filed the successful lawsuit.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:14 AM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


If you want to support black youth in chicago donating to his bond fund would be a real good choice. The young leaders are incredibly important to this movement.

It is not fair to say that the young leaders in Chicago are EVERYTHING to this movement, but it often feels that way from my adjacently-outside perspective. This is probably because of my social media entry-point but it's also because the actual protests that are most effective have them as their leaders. These are incredible young people doing important work.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:14 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


If that's what she's doing, it seems like she is willing to risk a riot to save her job.
posted by drezdn at 10:21 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


If that's what she's doing, it seems like she is willing to risk a riot to save her job.

She wouldn't be the first government official to make that sort of calculation.
posted by scaryblackdeath at 10:23 AM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


Emmanuel got the city council to pay McDonald's family $5 million EVEN THOUGH THEY HADN'T FILED A LAWSUIT after he saw the video...

As a local follower, I know you probably know this and were speaking about Emmanual's reality rather than the one he claims, but just for those that don't know, as of his press conference yesterday, the mayor claimed he had not yet seen the dashboard camera video before its release. I think this is most definitely a lie, and if it is not, he is instead grossly incompetent.
posted by MCMikeNamara at 10:37 AM on November 25, 2015 [13 favorites]


internet fraud detective squad, station number 9: "First degree murder in Illinois doesn't require intent, but second degree murder is first degree murder WITH an unreasonable belief that you were defending yourself or someone else."

UNLESS the victim is attempting to withdraw from the assailant, in which case the use of force justification is forbidden and the murder MAY NOT be charged as second-degree murder but is murder in the first degree (720 ILCS 5/7-4). The video clearly shows the child walking AWAY from the police and being shot in the back.

The few following sections deal with the use of force by police officers and pretty clearly this doesn't fall into any of those exceptions either.

I don't want to carry water for Alvarez, but most of my attorney friends who practice crim law here think the proper charge is first-degree murder. The fact that none of the other police fired suggests he can't pass the "reasonable belief" test for 2nd degree, is a lot of what I'm hearing.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:37 AM on November 25, 2015 [23 favorites]


I don't know what makes me madder:
-- That the police and politicians of Chicago worked to cover up an out of control police officer at a corruption level that makes "Chicago politics" sound ethical by comparison

or

-- Laquan is the first time they've been caught doing it.

It's 2015, but every day it sounds more like we're living in 1965 America.
posted by dw at 10:40 AM on November 25, 2015


Megyn Kelly: It’s not ‘appropriate’ for black protester to stare at Chicago cop: “You think that’s fine?” she asked guest Richard Fowler. “You have no problem with this?”

“This is his First Amendment right,” he replied.

“It’s not a question of what his constitutional rights are,” Kelly said. “It’s a question of what’s appropriate.”

posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:43 AM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


Related: The city of Fullerton agreed Monday to a $4.9 million settlement for the father of Kelly Thomas, a homeless, mentally ill man who died four years ago after a violent encounter with Fullerton police.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:45 AM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


“It’s not a question of what his constitutional rights are,” Kelly said. “It’s a question of what’s appropriate.”

Now that is racism that they would have understood back in 1850 - that it's insolent to look at your superiors as if you were their equals, and that the mere accusation of "insolence" justifies punishment.

I know this all should come as no surprise, and if I weren't white I guess it wouldn't surprise me, but this past year or so just has me reeling at how many white people think the foulest kind of racist hatred is completely normal and acceptable. The shooting at the protest has this fresh in my mind.
posted by Frowner at 10:50 AM on November 25, 2015 [73 favorites]


The reason we know anything about this case at all is because of a whistleblower. Go back and read the media accounts from when this happened, they were all too happy to let an execution take place. The original FOIAs were rejected and independent journalists had to sue the city to get the tape released. The powers that be are still trying to put the focus on the justifiable protests rather than what is going to change to stop this from ever happening again. That in itself means they're incompetent and need to go. From the bottom to the top. All of them. This was a coverup and they're all guilty.
posted by mike_bling at 10:55 AM on November 25, 2015 [17 favorites]


From this article,

At least 18 citizen complaints have been filed against Van Dyke in his 14-year career, but he was never disciplined, according to a University of Chicago database. Eight complaints alleged excessive force, two involving the use of a firearm in addition to the McDonald shooting.

"We don't have all of Van Dyke's complaints but the complaints of, the misconduct complaints from Van Dyke that we do have in our data tool show by and large excessive force and racial slurs. And he has largely operated with impunity and under a code of silence with the same huddle of officers again and again," said Alison Flowers, U of C Invisible Institute


I've never heard of the Invisible Institute before, but am glad I stumbled across this. There is very important work going on there.
posted by Fig at 10:55 AM on November 25, 2015 [13 favorites]


How the media blew reporting the Chicago cop’s shooting of a teen: Camden is essential to understanding the journalism aspect of the debacle because he’s often been the main source of information at police shootings. No surprise, the head of the city agency that is supposed to investigate police shootings has in the past voiced chagrin that a union spokesman can “shape the narrative,” as Kalven puts it, before the agency has a chance to do any actual work.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 11:00 AM on November 25, 2015


Mostly I just don't understand the practicalities of how things like this are managed. They withheld the tape this far and decided to press charges (thankfully). Why wouldn't they hang onto it until the trial? Or maybe show it to a small group of journalists, community leaders, etc, but not put it out into the media?

Well, it's one side of a free press. Canada actually has some pretty strict media black-out laws regarding coverage of crime before (and during) a trial. It seems to work pretty good for them. On the other hand, the cynic in me would say that if this tape wasn't released, there would be no trial. Maybe a plea bargain to some non-felony conviction. Maybe.

I don't mean to criticize this question, but why is this question coming up when the police are the defendants, but generally not so much when non-police are the defendants.
posted by el io at 11:07 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


When people say that these murders are lynchings, I find myself considering that lynchings were planned, often pretty carefully.

I have spent a lot of years studying lynchings in the past, and I would say this isn't exactly true. What is true is that the racist *kill the n* impulse was so pervasive, wide-ranging and knee-jerk quick that just about any transgression by a black man would bring it out.

For instance, I recently did some research on a 1902 murder of a biracial woman by a biracial man in Duluth MN. He killed her by stabbing her several times in the presence of others, after stalking her and abusing her for weeks. He stabbed her and stumbled into the street, and just about *immediately* surrendered to the police officer who arrived on the scene. But because there was "talk of a lynching" he was pushed into the police box for his own protection until the police wagon could arrive to take him to jail. In another case in the same town, at around the same time period, a trio of black men beat on a stranger white guy (probably a case of mistaken identity) and took off running, chased by a police officer and a *mob of white youth* who sought to lynch them.

Now, no lynching occurs in either of these instances. In the first, it's because the police intervenes and protects the man. (He was later hung for the murder—the only black man to be legally executed in MN history, actually.) The second is because the black men escaped.

The reaction is instantaneous, and I think the only reason a lot of famous lynchings were planned is because they had been foiled the first time around in the heat of the moment and now needed a real mob to overcome the jail and the possible opposition of armed police protecting their victim. A lot of lynchings happened on the word of accusation and happened fast, because the victim could be caught and murdered right away. Contemporary newspapers from 1870-1920s are full of accounts of this sort, where a black man is accused of a crime and murdered in the night by a quickly gathered group of murderous white men.

What this tells me, and what the present cases tell me, is that there is a pervasive trigger-finger of racist violence within society then and now and the police that reacts not only from that initial racist fear but also to a sense of They Are My Enemy and I am a Soldier for The People (who are most definitely not black people). Sometimes I think that's conscious, and sometimes I think it's not, because it's so pervasive in cop culture that they don't even think of it as racist.

Regular people can't get away with lynching, so our culture has essentially commissioned the police as our legal lynch mobs. Watch how pervasive that defensive racist talk is out there in the world. It's all about twisting all over themselves to justify how what's happened is okay. Because the police are only doing what the dominant society secretly wants. It's only when they have to see it on camera that a growing portion of that dominant society is being forced to confront what they've created. Even when the crime is on video, there are twisty lies told about how we can't believe our own eyes.

The collective psychology of it is horrible, but a direct legacy of our past. It's going to be hell to get it out, and I'm really afraid of the white supremacist shootings, because they *feel supported* by that mainstream undercurrent of crap.

In the past, anytime black people have stood up and said ENOUGH, there has a been a violent backlash. Then grudging movement toward some semblance of justice, enough to placate the oppressed, because they believe the promises. If the agents (racist police) ever become unable to act for the racist majority*, then who will become the lynchers?

*I am sickened to say it, but I do think that the majority of white people, who for the time being are the people served by the police, are racist. They don't always know it, and they don't always act it out, but the widespread and bizarre defense of these police murders is making me kind of depressed about our prospects. I don't want to believe that the majority of white people are racist, but when I stick my head out and listen, I hear an awful lot of it from people who I used to think knew better.
posted by RedEmma at 11:07 AM on November 25, 2015 [62 favorites]


By the way, I am almost convinced that those white supremacist shooters in Minneapolis were acting as agents for the police. I mean, maybe not directly (like they might not know any Mpls cops except online or whatever), but they clearly thought of themselves as second-line.

And the police reaction to the shooting, passively doing nothing--they are showing where their allegiance is, and *a large proportion of the white public supports it*. Hell, even the victim's family seems to be a victim of this idea that "we are bringing it on ourselves."

Basically, I'm feeling like we're fucked. We can demonstrate all we want, but this is so deep it's not going to go just because the authorities have hearings and a few representative bad apples go to jail.
posted by RedEmma at 11:17 AM on November 25, 2015 [15 favorites]


I am concerned about the toxicology report. I asked a couple of people that are more up to date on street drugs than I am if PCP is still a thing and got a negative response. Is it in something else that 17 year olds are in to? I only know PCP as the go-to when describing super scary drugs that make someone appear inhuman. Is it in the street version of Ecstasy?
In other words, I'd like to see an independent toxicology report.
posted by readery at 11:23 AM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


Considering the fact that many (most?) city police departments obtain a good amount of weaponry from the U.S. government via military surplus "bake sales", why has there been no push for mandatory federal oversight of any and all investigations into police shootings?
posted by Atom Eyes at 11:26 AM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


internet fraud detective squad, station number 9: "The text of the second degree murder statue says this:
at the time of the killing he or she believes the circumstances to be such that, if they existed, would justify or exonerate the killing under the principles stated in Article 7 of this Code, but his or her belief is unreasonable.
"

Yes, but if you refer to Article 7, the police officer's unreasonable beliefs about the child's behavior STILL don't justify the use of deadly force -- and police officer's use of deadly force during arrest is specifically subject to REASONABLE belief by the statute, whereas regular citizens may get away with unreasonable belief.

Plus the fact that the kid is turned away and obviously trying to avoid -- not engage -- the police PROBABLY takes it out of the second-degree murder possibility anyway, but I'd have to check case law. I've texted a former Cook County prosecutor to ask his thoughts, I'll let you know if he responds.

Fig: "At least 18 citizen complaints have been filed against Van Dyke in his 14-year career, but he was never disciplined, according to a University of Chicago database. Eight complaints alleged excessive force, two involving the use of a firearm in addition to the McDonald shooting."

I don't know a WHOLE lot about the citizen police review board in Chicago (we don't have one in Peoria), but I do know they're forbidden from looking at any prior instances of wrongdoing and must examine each instance as if it's fresh and new and has never happened before. So basically this dude has been dropping N-words and roughing up suspects for years, and every single time someone made a complaint, the civilian review board had to treat it as if it was his first offense, no matter how many complaints came forward. That's how you end up with something like 11 guys with 500 complaints among them in the past 3 years, and only 5 of those incidents have ever been disciplined. Every single time, every incident is treated as a first offense by an officer with no prior record of complaints.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 11:27 AM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


I only know PCP as the go-to when describing super scary drugs that make someone appear inhuman.

I had the exact same concerns about the supposed PCP usage. I don't really travel in circles that are connected to what's available and what's in vogue as far as drugs go. Nevertheless, I've heard stories about PCP throughout my life, and 99% of the time those stories are in the context of a police officer explaining how a perp had superhuman strength and was uncontrollable -- and that includes more than one DARE presentation when I was in high school.

So, to me, "He was on PCP!" always sounds like an ever-so-slightly more subtle version of "He was reaching for his waistband!".
posted by tocts at 11:31 AM on November 25, 2015 [25 favorites]


way back upthread:
And I still can't completely wrap my head around the phenomenon of police officers choosing to lie so blatantly to protect murderers and psychopaths within their ranks.

They are very, very used to it being utterly unquestioned.


This is a common thing called Blue Wall of Silence, or 'cop culture' or 'brotherhood', to elaborate on what tocts said. (I believe the military has its own version.)

Also, on whistleblowing (from Wiki):

The low number of officers coming forward may have to do with the understanding that things happen in the heat of the moment that some officers would rather keep personal. Another reason officers may hesitate to go against the blue code may be that challenging the blue code would mean challenging long-standing traditions and feelings of brotherhood within the institution. The fear of consequences may play a large role as well. These consequences can include being shunned, losing friends, and losing back-up, as well as receiving physical threats or having one's own misconduct exposed.

I'm not a cop, but growing up I had a friend whose father was, an a fallen officer on top of that, so my friend was like royalty among them. While I found the protectiveness sort of touching, it had its downside (for her). My friend & her sisters hung with all kinds of scuzzbags like speed dealers who could use them as a shield. Once when we were out being stupid drunken high teens, my friend got pulled over for speeding and was obviously high. What was originally a safety/DUI check turned into a social visit with no repercussions. It was suddenly "Oh, you're Officer X's daughter! How are you? Take care" etc. Not even a simple "let's get you sobered up" or "let's get you a taxi" but more like"Hey have a great night out partying" when she could've been clearly endangering people on the road. When I was young & naive, I found this touching, since her dad had died I could see them being protective of her. Yet in retrospect it's obvious nothing would've happened to her regardless. That's just not the code.

See also domestic violence within police families- the tendency is to shield the cop even when it's obvious there is abuse. Sure, you'd think that folks of law & order would want to root out the baddies, but nope, doesn't work that way at all. And yes, to add the paramilitarization of police on top of that, you get a pretty frightening machine.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:49 AM on November 25, 2015 [10 favorites]


PCP turns you into The Terminator, apparently. Yeah, it sounds somewhat suspect.
posted by Artw at 11:49 AM on November 25, 2015


Do people even use PCP anymore? I thought that was a relic scare-drug of the late 70s.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:58 AM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's 2015, but every day it sounds more like we're living in 1965 America.
posted by dw at 10:40 AM on November 25 [+] [!]


The one good thing about reliving 1965 is that we might get another 1968.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 12:02 PM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


A lot of good people were assassinated in 1968, and then we got Richard Nixon as president. No thanks.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 12:04 PM on November 25, 2015 [12 favorites]


Basically, I'm feeling like we're fucked. We can demonstrate all we want, but this is so deep

The SFPD used to be super-corrupt* and had a major reform campaign in the 70s and later the repercussions of the Delores Huerta case seemed to diminish brutality. Maybe I just don't feel it because I'm white, but the SFPD really changed its behavior at protests because of that case.


*In the book "Season of the Witch" an investigator said it was worse than Chicago. Granted, the assassination of Milk & Moscone seems to have partially been the fallout of that campaign (cops cheered when they got the news), but still, I'd like to naively hope that change is possible.
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 12:05 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Good news: the aggravated battery charges against activist Malcolm London were dropped.
posted by burden at 12:07 PM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


Yeah, 1968 leads directly to Ronald Reagan and "making America great again".
posted by Tyrant King Porn Dragon at 12:08 PM on November 25, 2015


As a Chicagoan and the daughter/niece/cousin/friend to several Chicago cops, I am disgusted but not surprised. I was wondering when Chicago would have to own up to its own demons.
posted by bgal81 at 12:16 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I do not believe that a jury will think the subsequent 15 shots (after the first, where Laquan was already on the ground) are ambiguous.

Metafilter: an ambiguous 15 shots, in the back.
posted by Sebmojo at 12:19 PM on November 25, 2015


In case there was any question about whether or not it was the release of the video that prompted the prosecution of Van Dyke, consider this editorial from the Chicago Tribune, "400 days? Really, Alvarez? Really, McCarthy? Really, Rahm?":
Tuesday marked 400 days since the shooting took place on Oct. 20, 2014.

Yes, there are overlapping jurisdictional issues — the Independent Police Review Authority, the Cook County state’s attorney’s office and the FBI all were involved — but come on. There was no mystery here, no dead-end leads to pursue, no ambiguity about who fired the shots. Just a dead kid with 16 bullet holes in him, a limited number of witnesses and a purportedly damning video.

Day by day, week by week, month by month, what happened here? Who was pursuing justice and the truth and what were they doing? Who were they talking to? With whom were they meeting? What were they trying to figure out for 400 days?
What possible information could the Cook County State Attorney's office know on day 400 that they did not know on day 100? It's so transparent that it's laughable.
posted by mhum at 12:26 PM on November 25, 2015 [14 favorites]


The independent body that folks are claiming said that the BK video was deleted says it wasn't deleted.
posted by Ironmouth at 12:27 PM on November 25, 2015


A friend of mine, who happens to be a police officer, commented that the she watched the video and agreed that Van Dyke should have been arrested. A few minutes later, another police officer commented that videos always look bad but he wasn't entirely convinced. That's our problem right there.
posted by Silvertree at 12:38 PM on November 25, 2015


I was wondering when Chicago would have to own up to its own demons

Let's not get ahead of ourselves.
posted by rhizome at 12:38 PM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


The independent body that folks are claiming said that the BK video was deleted says it wasn't deleted.

Link, please?
posted by Atom Eyes at 12:41 PM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


That's not what they said; they've said there's no credible evidence that police tampered with it to make the missing 86 minutes disappear.

It sounds like 86 minutes are missing but forensically there isn't evidence that shows it was tampered with vs. malfunctioning, or whatever evidence there is isn't strong enough for a court of law (claim two groups who've been participating in the cover-up so I'd wait for outside forensic examination of the tape before accepting it as fact).
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:51 PM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Can I just also say, the media coverage of this has been atrocious? Just popped onto google news and the top headline about it is something to the effect of "Police warned of gang violence in wake of video". Earlier today, it was something like "Chicago protests mostly avoid violence". "Mostly", as if it's the protests that are the problem.

This is such weaselly, pro-cop bullshit. The headline should have been, "Community shows admirable restraint in the midst of police brutality and government corruption". Instead we get, "No riots yet, but they're totally coming, and it's all the black peoples' fault!".
posted by tocts at 12:51 PM on November 25, 2015 [35 favorites]




And all those poor cops working on Thanksgiving, when the triggering incident had absolutely nothing to do with cops! /sarcasm
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:00 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


In this NPR story, Craig Futterman, "one of the lawyers who fought for the tape's release (and) founder of the Civil Rights and Police Accountability Project at University of Chicago" says:

"The irony is, though, that the Burger King surveillance video was running while the officer erased them. And so there's a videotape of the officer erasing the video."

I've not seen that assertion referred to in other coverage.
posted by Andrew Galarneau at 1:01 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


And all those poor cops working on Thanksgiving, when the triggering incident had absolutely nothing to do with cops! /sarcasm

Nonsense like that is just one of the many reasons I no longer watch the news. (The race-baiting shit about ~potential riots~ being the other.) Cops work on Thanksgiving anyway!!!! They'll probably get holiday pay and take home more than they would otherwise. It's not like the City shuts down.
posted by bgal81 at 1:04 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Why on earth do we have a system that incentivizes district attorneys to “overcharge” when they want to pass the buck on something that might make them unpopular? Why is a jury not allowed to convict of second-degree murder even if the DA shoots for first-degree murder?

I’m not saying that we should let juries decide all the infractions that a defendant may be guilty of, but there’s got to be a way to avoid this.
posted by savetheclocktower at 1:05 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Yeah, isn't an unsolicited settlement called something else ... a bribe, maybe?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 1:06 PM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Why is a jury not allowed to convict of second-degree murder even if the DA shoots for first-degree murder?

Criminal law and how defendants end up guilty is extremely complex. The government needs to prove every element as specified by the statute beyond a reasonable doubt and then run it through a filter of appellate court decisions to make sure the law is interpreted correctly. When you're on a jury you're given crash courses on most of this stuff through jury instructions and they still get it wrong a bit. To give juries the ability to decide the crime is sheer lunacy.
posted by Talez at 1:13 PM on November 25, 2015


Cops work on Thanksgiving anyway!!!!

Hell, I'm working on thanksgiving, and it would probably take me from 3-5 hours or more to make what a cop will make in one.
posted by drezdn at 1:14 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


What possible information could the Cook County State Attorney's office know on day 400 that they did not know on day 100? It's so transparent that it's laughable.

The delay is due to the difficult legal analysis of (1) whether or not the officer was immune from prosecution (a very thorny question and one you don't want to get wrong.) and (2) if the officer was not immune, what is the best charge to lay, either second or first degree murder. Immunity is a very powerful defense, as it allows the person to get away completely. Therefore, the Cook County State's Attorney's office is going to be damn sure that they will make the charges stick. Prosecutors, especially in high-profile cases want to make sure that they have a good chance of getting a conviction. If they don't, they fear they will increase the likelihood of other crimes.

This stuff goes really slow, even for regular murders. Let's look at some statistics.

In 2011, there were 433 total murders in the City of Chicago. Of those 433, only 128 were cleared (see page 11) within a year. That doesn't mean that no suspects were known, but that it took that long for all cases, including ones where the police believed there was a murderer known to them. Those numbers are part of a longer trend of declining clearance rates (See page 12.)

In fact, murder is the slowest crime to prosecute. Median days from arrest to sentencing in the US in 2010 was 505 days.

In Chicago, there is an exceptionally low clearance rate for murder and the process is very slow, for a number of factors.

And investigations of deadly force take a long time, despite the fact that the DA knows who fired the fatal shots. In an excellent study of Philadelphia deadly force, in cases that were declined for prosecution by the DA, the average length of time of criminal investigation was 253 days! (page 90 of report).

Having done several of these cases, they usually take a long time. Generally, the officer is advised to invoke their Fifth Amendment Rights in every single shooting. That is usually what slows the case down. Only once have I advised an officer to speak to investigators and that was when a dash-cam video showed unequivocally that a person who was getting medical attention pulled out a large-caliber handgun and pointed it at three officers. That case was cleared remarkably quickly. Others took 2 years or more for clearance. 400 days is nothing.
posted by Ironmouth at 1:14 PM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


Why is a jury not allowed to convict of second-degree murder even if the DA shoots for first-degree murder?

Criminal law and how defendants end up guilty is extremely complex. The government needs to prove every element as specified by the statute beyond a reasonable doubt and then run it through a filter of appellate court decisions to make sure the law is interpreted correctly. When you're on a jury you're given crash courses on most of this stuff through jury instructions and they still get it wrong a bit. To give juries the ability to decide the crime is sheer lunacy.


Actually, many DA's and State's Attorneys charge lesser included offenses to allow juries a fall back. It is a trade off, however, because you can get a jury that doesn't want to convict for the main offense when they should and they use the lesser-included offense to avoid doing what they should.
posted by Ironmouth at 1:18 PM on November 25, 2015


400 days is nothing.

And extremely conveniently timed to charge the officer the morning they knew the video was about to go public.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 1:19 PM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


> To give juries the ability to decide the crime is sheer lunacy.

Yeah, that’s the lunacy I’m trying to avoid. There has to be a way to remove the incentive for the DA to overcharge without giving juries the reins. Surely with crimes like murder or manslaughter, where there’s a spectrum from first degree to second degree to whatever, we can let a jury decide which burden the prosecution has met.

Or else we let the judge decide.
posted by savetheclocktower at 1:20 PM on November 25, 2015


Actually, many DA's and State's Attorneys charge lesser included offenses to allow juries a fall back. It is a trade off, however, because you can get a jury that doesn't want to convict for the main offense when they should and they use the lesser-included offense to avoid doing what they should.

Yes and the judge would go over each of those charges in the jury instructions. For you to charge murder 1 and the jury come back involuntary manslaughter which you didn't charge? Nope nope nope.
posted by Talez at 1:21 PM on November 25, 2015


“It’s not a question of what his constitutional rights are,” Kelly said. “It’s a question of what’s appropriate.”


Megyn Kelly is a straight-up fascist.
posted by TheWhiteSkull at 1:22 PM on November 25, 2015 [15 favorites]


Some government official on NPR described the shooting of black protestors by white supremacists as "the result of an altercation" this morning. Is there any phrase more Orwellian?

What really got me was the amount of coverage that left out who was doing the shooting for as long as possible. 'Five shot at Black Lives Matter Protest' - like the victims just magically ended up with bullets in their bodies. I was going through it yesterday morning, and it seemed like most mainstream American accounts waited until paragraph three to mention that, oh yeah, they were shot by Counter Protesters . . . who we should be careful not to label as White Supremacists until we know all the facts.

I drove down to Minneapolis last night to be in Chicago - a place where I do know cops, mostly retired, and most of them are Black. They're the people who first taught me to not trust cops - and the first to point out that I'm going to get less shit for my actions because I'm white. And, in some ways I do get why they'd feel like they needed to make sure they stayed on the force, but I don't know how someone can be part of an organization that hates them for decades.
posted by dinty_moore at 1:33 PM on November 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


And, yeah, Emmanuel and Alvarez have known what's in this video for at least 13 months. There's absolutely no excuse for it to have taken this long to bring charges. The video only came out because a city employee tipped the press that the video, which the city was hiding, contradicted the story the police and city were telling. The charges have pretty clearly only been brought against the cop because the video is being released; if the judge had ruled the video could remain secret, there wouldn't be any charges. It doesn't take 13 months to bring charges in a case like this, especially not in Cook County. It's hard to be concerned about a biased jury when it's pretty clear the city and county and police intended for there never to be a trial of any sort.

Emmanuel got the city council to pay McDonald's family $5 million EVEN THOUGH THEY HADN'T FILED A LAWSUIT after he saw the video, because he thought it was so bad they should pre-emptively pay the family off to the tune of $5 million to try to keep that video covered up. City leaders had no intention of going after this cop or doing anything about this murder, and they did everything in their power to hide this video and prevent its release..."

posted by Eyebrows McGee at 1:14 PM on November 25 [47 favorites +] [!]


From the news conference, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in his own words: "We have to get to a place where men in this community, certain parts of this city, see police in uniform as mentors, leaders in the church."

*RAGERAGERAGE*
posted by Neneh at 1:40 PM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


Dante Servin
posted by Max Power at 1:41 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Boyd case is further evidence of these charges being less about building an airtight case, and more about trying to prevent the Second Great Chicago Fire while at the same time looking to fatally undermine the foundation of the case.
posted by NoxAeternum at 1:48 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Racheal Maddow, in her show last night, has been the only major news journalist I've seen who was unequivocal about the shooters being white supremacist, and connected to 4chan, where they apparently bragged that they were armed and in the way to the protests. (In reference to the MN shooting of protesters.)
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 1:58 PM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


From the news conference, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in his own words: "We have to get to a place where men in this community, certain parts of this city, see police in uniform as mentors, leaders in the church."

How about we get to a place where they're not murdering 17 year olds in cold blood and work our way up from there.
posted by zarq at 2:04 PM on November 25, 2015 [29 favorites]


I am seeing some pretty in-depth conversations on state legal and politics blogs about the technical aspects of choosing the charges here and what case law applies; some of it is over my head since I have never been a criminal lawyer and I don't feel competent enough to accurately summarize it (especially since as it gets more and more technical, it's harder for me to evaluate the accuracy of the legal arguments), but I will keep my eyes open for a good article or blog post summarizing the majority and minority opinions of lawyers on the issues in the instant case and post it here if I see one. (Some of these are down to the point of analyzing specific judges and specific prosecutors in the CCSA's office and how you might tailor your strategy with the judge in mind, etc.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 2:05 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


From the news conference, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emmanuel in his own words: "We have to get to a place where men in this community, certain parts of this city, see police in uniform as mentors, leaders in the church."

How about we get to a place where they're not murdering 17 year olds in cold blood and work our way up from there.


If this were virtually any other mayor but Rahn Emmanuel, I'd say that he might mean "We" as in "Those of us who are police in uniform and who command and supervise them", because that's what he goddamn well should mean.
posted by Etrigan at 2:06 PM on November 25, 2015


This is sickening. According to the article readery linked above, Laquan McDonald was betrayed, starting at the age of two, by an entire series of people and systems who were supposed to be supporting and protecting him. (Among other things, he was apparently sexually abused in two different foster homes, to exactly zero response by child services.) He should have had an entire adulthood in front of him to go get the happiness that was taken away from him. Instead, one more system did the same thing, and this policeman decided that he didn't really count as one of the people police are intended to protect and serve, and his life is just over, and everybody has to stand around talking about what potential he might have had instead of getting to see what he was going to do. Horrible.
posted by ostro at 2:10 PM on November 25, 2015 [17 favorites]


Today in Toronto a policeman who is charged with second degree murder took the stand in his own defence.

On July 23, 2013 he shot and hit 8 times, an 18 year old who was armed with a knife and behaving irrationally.
( either on drugs or crazy)

The shooting shocked the city, though race played no part

On August 19 2013 the policeman was charged with second degree murder.

An exterior view ( video) of that night is here. The audio is disturbing.

More shocking is the security video No audio. Black and white. Very disturbing.

The similarities are eerie. But there is no racial angle. The defence has just begun today.
You will see a similar defense.

Though what happened here in Toronto . I don't know. Bad decision obviously. But murder? I am not sure.

Adrenaline ,fear these are not conducive to good judgement.
posted by yyz at 2:13 PM on November 25, 2015


Murder charges are routinely brought against people who acted out of fear, adrenaline, and bad judgment. That probably covers most murders. Why should this be treated differently?
posted by gingerbeer at 2:21 PM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


400 days is nothing.

And extremely conveniently timed to charge the officer the morning they knew the video was about to go public.


It is a rare moment indeed when a prosecutor puts out the primary piece of evidence in a First-Degree Murder before charging occurs. The prosecutor may even have felt rushed to charge before they were ready by litigation regarding the tape.

The other issue is this, charging decisions go longer when the prosecutor knows the defendant will have a defense that would excuse the defendant completely and that defendant will be fully represented in the case. This is the key basis for injustice in our criminal justice system--the lack of competent and well-funded attorneys for all our criminal defendants.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:21 PM on November 25, 2015


I am seeing some pretty in-depth conversations on state legal and politics blogs about the technical aspects of choosing the charges here and what case law applies; some of it is over my head since I have never been a criminal lawyer and I don't feel competent enough to accurately summarize it (especially since as it gets more and more technical, it's harder for me to evaluate the accuracy of the legal arguments), but I will keep my eyes open for a good article or blog post summarizing the majority and minority opinions of lawyers on the issues in the instant case and post it here if I see one. (Some of these are down to the point of analyzing specific judges and specific prosecutors in the CCSA's office and how you might tailor your strategy with the judge in mind, etc.)

I have done pre-declension criminal defense in a police-involved homicide. The case was declined for prosecution, rightly, as the victim pulled a large-caliber firearm on officers providing medical assistance to him. It is a complicated area of law, as the defense of justification is a powerful one, depending on the facts of the case. Since justification is a complete defense, it makes these charging decisions quite complicated. Some state laws, (Missouri, for example) hold that a successful justification defense bars suit in such a case.

These are very complex and vexing legal issues. I have not examined any of the facts of this case, so I don't want to comment on the factual nature. However, the fact that first-degree murder charges were laid indicates that the State's Attorney thinks they have a good case. As the FBI has been involved in the case since a few weeks after the shooting, this could indicate that the evidence is considered strong in the matter.

To give folks some perspective, these are the applicable statutes in Illinois:
(720 ILCS 5/7-5) (from Ch. 38, par. 7-5)
Sec. 7-5. Peace officer's use of force in making arrest. (a) A peace officer, or any person whom he has summoned or directed to assist him, need not retreat or desist from efforts to make a lawful arrest because of resistance or threatened resistance to the arrest. He is justified in the use of any force which he reasonably believes to be necessary to effect the arrest and of any force which he reasonably believes to be necessary to defend himself or another from bodily harm while making the arrest. However, he is justified in using force likely to cause death or great bodily harm only when he reasonably believes that such force is necessary to prevent death or great bodily harm to himself or such other person, or when he reasonably believes both that:
(1) Such force is necessary to prevent the arrest from being defeated by resistance or escape; and
(2) The person to be arrested has committed or attempted a forcible felony which involves the infliction or threatened infliction of great bodily harm or is attempting to escape by use of a deadly weapon, or otherwise indicates that he will endanger human life or inflict great bodily harm unless arrested without delay.
(b) A peace officer making an arrest pursuant to an invalid warrant is justified in the use of any force which he would be justified in using if the warrant were valid, unless he knows that the warrant is invalid.
(Source: P.A. 84-1426.)

(720 ILCS 5/7-7) (from Ch. 38, par. 7-7)
Sec. 7-7. Private person's use of force in resisting arrest. A person is not authorized to use force to resist an arrest which he knows is being made either by a peace officer or by a private person summoned and directed by a peace officer to make the arrest, even if he believes that the arrest is unlawful and the arrest in fact is unlawful.
(Source: P.A. 86-1475.)

(720 ILCS 5/7-8) (from Ch. 38, par. 7-8)
Sec. 7-8. Force likely to cause death or great bodily harm.
(a) Force which is likely to cause death or great bodily harm, within the meaning of Sections 7-5 and 7-6 includes:
(1) The firing of a firearm in the direction of the person to be arrested, even though no intent exists to kill or inflict great bodily harm; and
(2) The firing of a firearm at a vehicle in which the person to be arrested is riding.
(b) A peace officer's discharge of a firearm using ammunition designed to disable or control an individual without creating the likelihood of death or great bodily harm shall not be considered force likely to cause death or great bodily harm within the meaning of Sections 7-5 and 7-6.
(Source: P.A. 90-138, eff. 1-1-98.)

(720 ILCS 5/7-9) (from Ch. 38, par. 7-9)
Sec. 7-9. Use of force to prevent escape.
(a) A peace officer or other person who has an arrested person in his custody is justified in the use of such force to prevent the escape of the arrested person from custody as he would be justified in using if he were arresting such person.
(b) A guard or other peace officer is justified in the use of force, including force likely to cause death or great bodily harm, which he reasonably believes to be necessary to prevent the escape from a penal institution of a person whom the officer reasonably believes to be lawfully detained in such institution under sentence for an offense or awaiting trial or commitment for an offense.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:32 PM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


Though what happened here in Toronto . I don't know. Bad decision obviously. But murder? I am not sure.

I would buy that if Forcillo had stopped firing after the first 3 shots. A guy holding up a knife started walking towards the door of the bus. Maybe he's going to come down the steps and come at them, maybe not.

But those 3 shots dropped Yasim immediately. He was on the floor of the bus, incapacitated, and no longer a threat. 5 seconds pass, Yasim twitches a little and then Forcillo fires 3 more times. I can be persuaded the first 3 shots were justified. You cannot in any way convince me the next 3 were.

Similarly with MacDonald, maybe, *MAYBE*, you can convince me Van Dyke truly believed there was a threat that needed to be neutralized. But he did that long before he fired the 16th round. He wasn't trying to neutralize a threat, he intended to kill somebody.
posted by HighLife at 2:33 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


It is a rare moment indeed when a prosecutor puts out the primary piece of evidence in a First-Degree Murder before charging occurs. The prosecutor may even have felt rushed to charge before they were ready by litigation regarding the tape.

Given this particular prosecutor's background, I would imagine that she had no intent of filing charges until the ruling forced her hand.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:33 PM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


Murder charges are routinely brought against people who acted out of fear, adrenaline, and bad judgment. That probably covers most murders. Why should this be treated differently?

Fear can mean the difference between an unlawful homicide and a justified one.

In the case of that Toronto police officer I don't think he woke up saying I'll shoot someone this shift.
He made an awful decision, a tragic one.
But I don't think the level of premeditation is there or could be there given the circumstances.

I'm not sure what the proper charge would be.
Manslaughter perhaps?
posted by yyz at 2:34 PM on November 25, 2015


But I don't think the level of premeditation is there or could be there given the circumstances.

Premediation can take place in a single second. It is not what most folks think it is. You do not have to wake up wanting to harm another person. You have to have had a chance to make a decision to not engage in the act.
posted by Ironmouth at 2:36 PM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


Similarly with MacDonald, maybe, *MAYBE*, you can convince me Van Dyke truly believed there was a threat that needed to be neutralized. But he did that long before he fired the 16th round.

My understanding of the law here (or at least "policy," which tends to carry the same force) is that if the first round is justified, they all are.
posted by rhizome at 2:53 PM on November 25, 2015



You have to have had a chance to make a decision to not engage in the act.

But if you were trained by the state , to react, and to react quickly and not to hesitate in response to an action or perceived threat , what then?

Is it the training that is at fault?
posted by yyz at 2:59 PM on November 25, 2015


The independent body that folks are claiming said that the BK video was deleted says it wasn't deleted.

Ironmouth, I guess you must have missed Atom Eyes' comment but I'd also like to see some kind of support for this statement.

Prosecutors, especially in high-profile cases want to make sure that they have a good chance of getting a conviction. If they don't, they fear they will increase the likelihood of other crimes.

Are you really claiming that the prosecutor is taking a long time here because they're worried about police officers going out and murdering people if they are not sufficiently afraid of the law themselves? That's a fairly dire view of the police force, don't you think?

In 2011, there were 433 total murders in the City of Chicago. Of those 433, only 128 were cleared (see page 11) within a year. That doesn't mean that no suspects were known, but that it took that long for all cases, including ones where the police believed there was a murderer known to them.

"it took that long for all cases"? Of course, it means no such thing. As I'm sure you realize, different cases take different amounts of time and while I don't have any hard statistics on this, I'm going to go out on a limb and guess that cases in which the person known by name and is on video committing the act tend to get cleared a bit quicker than others.

In fact, murder is the slowest crime to prosecute. Median days from arrest to sentencing in the US in 2010 was 505 days.

The 400 days in question here are between the act and charges being brought. The 505 days in that statistic are between arrest and sentencing. As you're obviously very familiar with the criminal justice system, I'm sure you're aware that these two are completely different things and so I'm unsure why you would make such an apples and oranges comparison.

And investigations of deadly force take a long time, despite the fact that the DA knows who fired the fatal shots. In an excellent study of Philadelphia deadly force, in cases that were declined for prosecution by the DA, the average length of time of criminal investigation was 253 days! (page 90 of report).

I was initially going to ask what the relevance of this statistic was supposed to be. Since the premise that you're arguing against here is that DAs are loathe to charge police officers, the fact that they also take a long time to do so in Philadelphia seems neither here nor there unless we're supposed to be taking it as a given that Philadelphia is immune to these kinds of problems. Is that what you're going for here?

Having now actually looked at the report, though, I think a bigger question would be: why did you choose to cite only the number for 2007 (253 days) rather than, say, the 2013 number which was only 115 days?
posted by nicolas.bray at 3:12 PM on November 25, 2015 [25 favorites]


Juries make stupid decisions all the time, particularly when cops are involved. I am no longer surprised at anything a jury does.

Juries make extremely rational decisions because they all have to live the with the rest of the police force and all of the other forces of the state.

I'D BE FUCKING TERRIFIED TO BE ON A POLICE SHOOTING JURY.

I'd rather put away a mobster. At least they would have to sneak around to threaten or harm me or my family members.

[this is one of the few upsides of being a resident alien in America! I'm not eligible.]
posted by srboisvert at 3:21 PM on November 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


Last Night In Chicago: a journalist gives a first person account of the events of the BYP protest last night.
posted by NoxAeternum at 3:22 PM on November 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


We are supposed to trust the police with defense of our loved ones, our lives, and property. We do not want to be a lawless nation, home or abroad. A lot of things are coming back to haunt us, and it has only barely begun. Black lives matter. The way of life we believe in matters, what we were taught in school as children, about the nature of our nation, and its relation to freedom for all, and the law, matters. Selective, reckless murder by the police, betrays everything we expect and hold dear. Black lives matter.
posted by Oyéah at 3:25 PM on November 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


In Chicago, there is an exceptionally low clearance rate for murder and the process is very slow, for a number of factors.

Rahm Emanuel Blames Chicago Crime Increase On Backlash Against Police Brutality

'Tiny Dancer' turns out to be a fucking amoral monster.
posted by srboisvert at 3:34 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Chicago teens wrestle with pain of Laquan McDonald case. Reported by Linda Lutton, who you might remember from the This American Life episode on Harper High School.
posted by hydrophonic at 3:37 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Right... in some twisted irony, the people charged with serving and protecting civilized society are continuously showing themselves to be uncivilized brutes. Do the police, and these murderous situations in particular, really need any more apologists at this point? That's not a rhetorical question; honestly try to account for how much societal support exists to prop up this clearly flawed system or simply to convince people there aren't flaws to correct. It's maddening.

For example, why does it seem like every local news station fits squarely in the pocket of the police force when it comes to the former not being able to criticize or report any wrongdoing of the latter? While it's only mildly disgusting as an isolated incident, seeing it time and again across the country is tragic, and likely feeding into the blind mythos of police being paragons of justice by default or the definition of their occupation.

But how many times do you see the phrase "officer-involved shooting" as a euphemism for someone unnecessarily shot or killed by the police? (If you weren't aware, that's totally what those headlines translate into, by the way.) Like all of those cops who are 'afraid for their lives' or don't know how to navigate this brave new world of not killing everyone have simply never heard of non-lethal force or, you know, quitting your fucking job or being fired for gross incompetence.
posted by Johann Georg Faust at 3:52 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]




President Obama: Like many Americans, I was deeply disturbed by the footage of the fatal shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. This Thanksgiving, I ask everybody to keep those who’ve suffered tragic loss in our thoughts and prayers, and to be thankful for the overwhelming majority of men and women in uniform who protect our communities with honor. And I’m personally grateful to the people of my hometown for keeping protests peaceful.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 4:08 PM on November 25, 2015


Slate has an interview with former Cook County prosecutor and challenger for Cook County states attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx has been a major critic of Alvarez, and lays the mishandling of this case at her feet.
posted by NoxAeternum at 4:23 PM on November 25, 2015


For example, why does it seem like every local news station fits squarely in the pocket of the police force when it comes to the former not being able to criticize or report any wrongdoing of the latter?

Cops won't call 'em on the juicy "human interest" stories if they criticize said cops. Plus retaliation and other uncomfortable outcomes.
posted by telstar at 4:45 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I don't know about you, but I supposedly live in a "first world country." In most other first world countries, it is extremely rare for police to kill suspects who aren't actively pointing a gun at people. A knife wielding maniac no matter his size is easily handled by, you know, actual professionals who are supposed to keep the peace, with non-lethal force. Especially if there is more than one "peace officer" dealing with a bad situation.
posted by RedEmma at 5:20 PM on November 25, 2015 [15 favorites]


Right now, wandering around a US city like a crazy guy with a knife in your hand, and refusing to freeze or put the knife down, will get you shot in the interest of public safety, whatever race you are.
Cops do not want to go hand-to-hand with a guy who has a knife, irrespective of what you see on TV.

What they need is a strong shift towards non-lethal weapons like tasers so that a citizen who is off his meds and temporarily acting scary does not have to end up dead like this. They could have tased him from 10 feet away, and he'd probably be fine now.
posted by w0mbat at 5:33 PM on November 25, 2015


Or, you know, could stop shooting him once he fell down. That would seem like the minimum, to me. Like, a really really low bar to set. If they don't have a projectile weapon, stop shooting them when they fall down.
posted by Bovine Love at 5:39 PM on November 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


They could have tased him from 10 feet away, and he'd probably be fine now.

Alternatively, they might have raised him ten times in the genitals until his heart stopped, and he'd still be dead.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 5:49 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Cops do not want to go hand-to-hand with a guy who has a knife, irrespective of what you see on TV.

I don't think anybody is suggesting this.

What they need is a strong shift towards non-lethal weapons like tasers

Funnily enough! CPD was waiting for officers with Tasers when Van Dyke showed up.
posted by rhizome at 6:04 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]




I would like this to be a turning point. But how many turning points have we seen? Remember when Tamir Rice was shot, right? How could it be okay to shoot a child in cold blood like that?

Shoot a child, and then tackle and handcuff his sister as she tried to help him, as he lay bleeding to death.

I'd like this to be a turning point, too, but America's capacity for knee-jerk authority worship and depravity feel bottomless.
posted by ryanshepard at 6:16 PM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


How normal peace officers *should* deal with knife-wielding maniacs.

I have argued with my American law enforcement friends about this. They have *no answer* when I ask them about de-escalation and moving away from a person who is not actively pointing a gun at them. it is simply *not in the culture* or expectation, and it is rampant. People--people you would other wise perceive as normal everyday people--cannot even conceive of a law enforcement culture where shooting is not a primary go-to when dealing with a dangerous perp. It's messed up, and I believe it is deeply about a visceral dehumanization of black men in particular.
posted by RedEmma at 7:06 PM on November 25, 2015 [25 favorites]


Aren't police trained in ways to physically restrain a suspect? I don't know the right terms, but grips, holds, even tazing. Why are cops so eager to escalate to the highest defense immediately? The guy had a 3-inch knife! If you know how to physically defend yourself from an unarmed attacker (which this guy basically was) then this should never have gotten to a shooting. Cops who rely solely on their weapons are chickenshit IMHO.
posted by bendy at 7:26 PM on November 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


Slate has an interview with former Cook County prosecutor and challenger for Cook County states attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx has been a major critic of Alvarez, and lays the mishandling of this case at her feet.

Kim Foxx is a badass, and Alvarez is a 'tough-on-crime' (except police crime, natch) piece of shit. If there's one positive consequence of all this, I hope it's that this gives Foxx the momentum to unseat her. (Though public pressure mounting to the point that Rahm is forced to resign would be incredible)
posted by goodnight to the rock n roll era at 7:44 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Aren't police trained in ways to physically restrain a suspect?

They're discouraged from going up to a suspect and wrestling the knife away from them, but sort of.

It's impressed on them that an assailant with a knife within 21 feet can quickly stab an officer before the officer can ready and fire a holstered fire arm and also that someone with bullets in them can still keep moving around.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tueller_Drill

They either use this information as guidance stay more than 21 feet from the suspect (or in their car) and use non-lethal techniques as per uk policing or as this murderer did in approaching within 21 feet and then opening fire.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/05/us/police-start-to-reconsider-longstanding-rules-on-using-force.html
posted by sebastienbailard at 8:58 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even if they think they shouldn't get within a certain distance of the suspect, what's wrong with tazing? Not that anyone should be tazed, but if the officer feels threatened why not go for the tazer instead of the gun?

(Like Johannes Mehserle!)
posted by bendy at 9:18 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I always watch these videos, not out of gory curiosity, but to witness. My dad was briefly a cop. His partner was my childhood hero, this wonderful black* man who would carry me on his shoulders and run his lights for me when he visited. It breaks my heart to see the profession my dad and Sam took so seriously be so tainted. Time and time again.

*I recently stopped using African-American when a Haitian friend of mine mentioned how much it pissed her off. I was five or so, so I have no idea how Sam self-identifies.
posted by Ruki at 9:29 PM on November 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Right now, wandering around a US city like a crazy guy with a knife in your hand, and refusing to freeze or put the knife down, will get you shot in the interest of public safety, whatever race you are.
Cops do not want to go hand-to-hand with a guy who has a knife, irrespective of what you see on TV.

What they need is a strong shift towards non-lethal weapons like tasers so that a citizen who is off his meds and temporarily acting scary does not have to end up dead like this. They could have tased him from 10 feet away, and he'd probably be fine now.
posted by w0mbat at 5:33 PM on November 25 [+] [!]


The first paragraph of your comment, particularly the part I've bolded, is incorrect. As a rule unstable white men wandering in public with weapons get talked to by the police, not shot or tased.

For another example, beyond the ones in that alternet article, consider the Oath Keeper guys who keep showing up at BLM protests open carrying and wearing pseudo-military armor and outfits, and who keep not getting shot by the police. For another, another example, consider the white supremacists who fired on protesters in Minneapolis two nights ago after having spent several days hanging around the protest carrying guns.

I hope that helps. This really is a matter of white supremacist police tactics, rather than colorblind ones.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 9:35 PM on November 25, 2015 [33 favorites]


Yeah, when Dallas had a black lives matter rally, all the open carry loonies showed up and were vaguely menacing and wearing confederate colors. The cops were way more interested in "policing" the black activists. I never saw a one of them roll up on the dixieboys and suggest that maybe carry long guns in downtown Dallas was a bit of a provocation, but I guaran-goddamn-tee you that if the BLAactivists had been carrying long rifles marching thru town, there would have been police action.
posted by SecretAgentSockpuppet at 9:43 PM on November 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


When I was 15, I was put into the back of a cop car for the first and only time in my life. A bunch of my older guy friends went to a nearby small airport to steal runway lights. 21 years later, I am appalled at how fucking stupid and dangerous that was. My female friend and I were left with the cars, because girls. A police car inevitably pulled up. I lied and said the guys were playing manhunt, and the officers waited down the street for an hour waiting for the guys to come back, while we sat there as bait. Eventually, the cops said they would have to take us to the station for our parents to pick us up. So kind they were to these two white girls. As we drove down the street, I saw the guys in the woods. I told the cops, because the guys abandoned us so fuck them. They were clever enough to say that they were playing manhunt, so since our whitey white white stories checked out, we were all allowed to go on our merry ways. But if we weren't all white? 36 year old me is horrified that we weren't all arrested, because we damn well should have been. And yeah, this was before 9/11, but white people can can pretty do much anything without fear of getting shot by the police in this country.
posted by Ruki at 10:08 PM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


More video.
posted by slmorri at 10:28 PM on November 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


If you're white, use this atrocity as a test to determine if you or the people around you are racists. Wanting to "know more before judging", or thinking "crazy guys with knives" are legit excuses for what happened here--that's simply racism. There is literally nothing in this video, or the video of other victims like Walter Scott, that can change what you see. These are openly racist state-sanctioned murders.

People espousing the detestable bullshit looking to excuse these executions should, if they consider themselves "decent" people, reconsider their self-assessment and look within themselves. I assure you they are wrong about being "decent".

If there was such a thing as a good cop, they would be working to fix things from within. That's what we're always told, right?

"Want to do something about the awful [fill in gov't service]? Get elected to the [fill in gov't service] board. Put time in with [fill in gov't service citizen's committee]!"

If you're "good and honorable" and want to change police forces from corrupt thugs to something citizens can assume are there to help...where are you?
posted by maxwelton at 11:09 PM on November 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


The thing that shocked me most apart from the brutal killing itself is that after the shooting all the officers (on one video there are 10 or so) just hang around. Nobody even walks to the kid to check on him, talk with him, nothing. They just leave him to die. It really does look as if they do not consider him to be a human being who lies there, dying. Even if he were a dangerous suspect (which he very obviously was not), once he was shot the danger was gone and they should have provided emergency support and stay with him.

This, along with the police response to the white supremacist shooting at the BLM gathering, where they actively refused to help and said "this is what you wanted" is enourmously shocking. It drives home that it are not just a few bad cops, that it's not stress+fear+adrenaline. All the cops at the scene here did absolutely nothing. And I haven't read a lot of criticising about that in the news either, as if people think that that is totally normal. Even if they were under the misguided impression that this was a justified shooting and therefore did not stop it (which seems incredibly unlikely, but let's say that that's what they're saying), what's the excuse/reason for not immediately running to the victim and providing first aid?
posted by blub at 2:20 AM on November 26, 2015 [20 favorites]


what's the excuse/reason for not immediately running to the victim and providing first aid?

It's not their job.
posted by rhizome at 2:35 AM on November 26, 2015


It's impressed on them that an assailant with a knife within 21 feet...

Will the '21 Foot' Defense Work for the Chicago Cop Who Shot Laquan McDonald?
posted by rhizome at 2:46 AM on November 26, 2015


Yeah, when Dallas had a black lives matter rally, all the open carry loonies showed up and were vaguely menacing and wearing confederate colors. The cops were way more interested in "policing" the black activists. I never saw a one of them roll up on the dixieboys and suggest that maybe carry long guns in downtown Dallas was a bit of a provocation, but I guaran-goddamn-tee you that if the BLAactivists had been carrying long rifles marching thru town, there would have been police action.

If you are a white conservative (and superextraultra bonus points if you are also a Christian man), you can walk around with a loaded semi-automatic--probably modded for full-auto in many cases--weapon with a mask on denying Muslims and PoC their right to free expression of religion, right to peaceably assemble, or petition for a governmental redress of grievances. In most of those cases, the people in power won't raise a finger. Hell, they'll even suppress vital information and help you fearmonger and spread lies. They'll "consider" calling it a hate crime, they'll see your white supremacist video and refuse to warn your target, they'll let you stalk peaceable citizens with your weapons ready to fire at a moment's notice. Even though you're much more likely to be the cause of a mass shooting or other large-scale attack than somebody fleeing actual terrorists, they'll call you a patriot or a defender of rights or maybe a protester. If they can be arsed to arrest you (which in most cases they aren't), maybe you'll be called a supremacist or "disturbed" or something, but in any case you'll almost always be taken peacefully and alive. You have to kill a lot of people to be called a terrorist, but it doesn't count if you wave a flag of terrorist traitors, even if you kill nine innocent parishioners in a church that fought against those traitors and their descendants for almost two centuries.
posted by zombieflanders at 4:28 AM on November 26, 2015 [28 favorites]


Having now actually looked at the report, though, I think a bigger question would be: why did you choose to cite only the number for 2007 (253 days) rather than, say, the 2013 number which was only 115 days?

This is an interesting question for Ironmouth that may clarify the odd, and at times to me confusing, claims he may or may not be trying to make in his arguments here. Would you mind answering it, Ironmouth?
posted by mediareport at 6:32 AM on November 26, 2015


but let's say that that's what they're saying), what's the excuse/reason for not immediately running to the victim and providing first aid?

Remember the thread about the trend in China of hitting accident victims multiple times to avoid lawsuits?
posted by RobotVoodooPower at 6:43 AM on November 26, 2015 [2 favorites]


If you're following the BLM Minneapolis thing, according to the Twitter police fired a bunch of marker rounds at random last night, and there was either a gunshot or fireworks down the block. There were shots the night before last night, and the night before that was the actual shooting.

I have to say, this all scares the hell out of me, even though I've been going down there from time to time. It seems like the cops really want a mass shooting on site, and I'm afraid that if someone really dangerous came by, they would just stay in the station.

Mark my words, just in case: if people get killed, blame it on police escalation at the site.
posted by Frowner at 7:09 AM on November 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


probably modded for full-auto in many cases

I sincerely doubt this; it is (almost always) a felony to do so.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 7:35 AM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


And I have a definitive answer from someone that knows drugs and knows drugs around LeClaire Courts the old public housing just to the west of where Laquan was shot. 'Leaf' which is basically PCP is pretty popular there as it is cheap and available, especially with the younger crowd.
Not that my suspicions of conspiracy are entirely allayed, but I thought I should pass on knowledge. My person with direct knowledge had a roommate last summer who was partial to leaf and while not becoming violent became entirely incapable of human communication.

Poor kid.

And the more I think about this the more I think that there are at least ten cops that should be charged with covering up that crime and all jailed besides being stripped of jobs and pensions. That is the only way to move forward. Ms Alvarez? Mayor Emanuel? Show a bit of spine.
posted by readery at 7:41 AM on November 26, 2015 [4 favorites]


The independent body that folks are claiming said that the BK video was deleted says it wasn't deleted.

Would you mind answering it, Ironmouth?


Foundation please, counselor.
posted by T.D. Strange at 8:20 AM on November 26, 2015


I sincerely doubt this; it is (almost always) a felony to do so.

How often do the police inspect the rifles of white men to make sure they're not modded for full-auto?
posted by ymgve at 11:32 AM on November 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


That being said, I doubt the majority of their rifles are modded, but I think it's more an "it's too expensive" issue and less about legality.
posted by ymgve at 11:49 AM on November 26, 2015


It is expensive because it is illegal. There are very few registered (and therefore legal) receivers and drop-in parts relative to the demand for them, so the ones that exist are very expensive. You could do it cheaply and illegally. I think very few people do so.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 1:00 PM on November 26, 2015


So, this PCP rumor, though. The autopsy report was FOIA'ed and, as was referred to upthread, toxicology came up empty.

http://invisible.institute/news/autopsy-of-laquan-mcdonald

I'm not buying the "he was on PCP!" thing.
posted by jeanmari at 1:16 PM on November 26, 2015 [15 favorites]


It's a weird thing because it's not mentioned at all, so did they not test, or is it somewhere else? The Chi Trib got it in like May and they're the ones who said PCP, so they have some other source of info, either clinical output or a human source.
posted by rhizome at 1:40 PM on November 26, 2015


Therefore, the Cook County State's Attorney's office is going to be damn sure that they will make the charges stick. Prosecutors, especially in high-profile cases want to make sure that they have a good chance of getting a conviction. If they don't, they fear they will increase the likelihood of other crimes.

This stuff goes really slow, even for regular murders. Let's look at some statistics.


Since Ironmouth has come and weighed in on this patience please issue I'll repost what I put up as a quote from my friend Amy post-Ferguson, in no small part because she was responding to that sort of sentiment on Facebook from folks that included other lawyers and prosecutors (as opposed to her, who has defended capital cases)
It'd be nice if every person charged with murder had the benefit of thorough investigation by the police and the prosecutor before being charged. But our adversarial system doesn't give that benefit to citizens, even those who vehemently claim self-defense in their voluntary statements to the police. I know, I've represented those battered women who killed and were immediately charged, jailed, held, had to make bond, lost their jobs, only for the machinery to spit out a not guilty. If the system is a good one, it should work the same way for everyone.
Another defense attorney chimed in, agreeing, "With my client armed, the deceased not, and eyewitnesses, I don't recall prosecutors ever mulling for weeks over whether to charge my guys."

The apologia brigade was undeterred, with another person saying "How about if we allow the process to play out and find the facts" so my friend added:
Unless police officers have a specific statutory privilege that entitles them to more investigation when their conduct (actus reus) demonstrates a provable murder case (with all the inferences which the govt. enjoys from the use of a deadly weapon in that prosecution), then the process is not playing out in a regular manner. Self-defense is an affirmative defense that must be raised by the defendant. The officer here is being treated differently from any other person who shot and killed someone. Put more bluntly, if you shot someone 6'2", 290 lbs., Linda you'd be charged with murder. (In which case, you should call me.) And I would raise your self-defense claim and the jury would assess these facts. You would not be given the benefit of the doubt in the charging and the investigation in my experience. The machinery of the executive would begin to work almost immediately to gather facts and evidence to prove your guilt. And we have an adversarial system, and that's a part of it. This officer is being treated like he's in the France, with an inquisitorial system. Both have strengths and weaknesses. If many of my clients had enjoyed the depth of objective, even suspect-oriented investigation that this officer is getting, I would have never been appointed, fewer tax dollars would have been spent, juries wouldn't have been in service for days, etc.
As far as why the discrepancy - other than "because cop" - I cannot address the assertion that the delay is specifically due to this belief that qualified immunity is so strong as to make it necessary to determine because it's something "you don't want to get wrong," but Amy above is unequivocal about the fact that charges are brought against people who are going to raise other defenses which may be strong. I guess we could read between the lines that the prosecutor doesn't want to get it wrong because the cops as an institution are punitive to varying degrees when they feel crossed, but I don't think that's what's being implied here.

The 505 days statistic is one I am in fact delighted to look at. You link an article, but the source the article mentions is here[pdf]. There's lots of other good tidbits there, like this one.

Persons convicted of murder were the least likely to have pleaded guilty (61%) and the most likely to have been convicted in a trial (39%).

The table on page 24 backs this up, showing that murder went to trial 39% of the time, compared to 6% for the rest of the cases. So the fact that sentencing happened after 505 days is proof for all intents and purposes that cases were not filed after a full year; in fact, given typical time to schedule and conduct a murder trial it would seem nearly certain that those cases were almost all filed very shortly after arrest, as my friend above asserts is typical. "The average murder defendant will face trial in about two years, officials from the state's attorney's office said."

At absolute best case for your assertion this number is irrelevant for the purposes of determining how long it takes charges to be filed. The full section in the report says The median time from arrest to sentencing for all felony convictions was 265 days. The median days from arrest to sentencing was longest for murder (505 days) With a drop from 94% plead out to 61% - over six times as many trials - the additional 240 days could mean that there were no sentences within that period of time that represented jury trials. Certainly the 2014 era quote indicating a 730 day delay before even getting to trial would indicate that's probably the case.

But thanks - you've inspired me to approach her to collaborate on a research project to look at and classify prosecutions and times to compare this issue. Would be nice to have concrete numbers, though the sample set of charged officers is so small it might make it tough to have an meaningful comparison.
posted by phearlez at 6:23 PM on November 26, 2015 [22 favorites]






What a shitty story, tmotat. I'm donating.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 8:43 PM on November 26, 2015 [5 favorites]


The independent body that folks are claiming said that the BK video was deleted says it wasn't deleted.

Would you mind answering it, Ironmouth?

Foundation please, counselor.


T.D. Strange
, you've combined two different threads. The question people are asking Ironmouth to answer is why he chose to cite data from 2007 when substantially more recent data (which appear to undermine the claim he is making) are available. That question has not yet been answered. The second line you quoted does not refer in any way to the first line you quoted. I'm going to assume that you made the error in good faith.
posted by decathecting at 1:33 AM on November 27, 2015


As far as I can tell, he hasn't produced any evidence to support his claim that the Burger King video was not in fact deleted either. If we're asking him to support his unfounded arguments, I was trying to add that one to the list.
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:10 AM on November 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


The Corrupt System That Killed Laquan McDonald. [SL Atlantic]
posted by tocts at 1:59 PM on November 27, 2015 [3 favorites]




“People--people you would other wise perceive as normal everyday people--cannot even conceive of a law enforcement culture where shooting is not a primary go-to when dealing with a dangerous perp.”

Well, in the shot in the dark that everything I post won’t be eliminated, since actually having experience in these matters and living in Chicago is an entirely useless perspective in contrast to emotional platitudes, there are several factors in police shootings in the U.S.

First off, there’s what the union tells you to say or do. Secondly, if you’re involved in a shooting, that is, even if you were there as a cop, if you give input either way – whether you shot or not – you’re now potentially an accessory because if it was a reasonable use of force, why didn’t you shoot? If it wasn’t, why didn’t you stop it? You’re a cop after all, not a citizen. And if you take the fifth, and the prosecutor doesn’t grant you immunity (thus compelling you to testify) there’s no investigation. If you help the kid on the ground, give him first aid, and he dies, well it’s on you. Are you a doctor or nurse or paramedic? No? Just a cop? You can be sued. In fact if a cop touched him it could be construed as taking him into custody/restraint where they would be more liable for treating him.
(I know there’s court cases but A. IANAL, and B. act of pure optimism in the first place to post as “Smedleyman”)

Additionally (as per the Supreme Court) the police in the U.S. have no constitutional duty to protect a person. If I recall there was a situation a few years ago in New York where there was a guy on drugs walking around with a knife who was tacked by an MMA fighter. The police sat by and watched.

It’s doctrine. It’s all there to limit liability, not respond to the real world.

I’m sorry if anyone gets offended, but it’s the way it is in the U.S and in Chicago. It’s how the legislature, city council, and administration runs the department. I’m not arguing a point, I’m illustrating a reality. If I describe the series of laws instituted by the minority White government in South Africa under Aparteid, it’s not an endorsement of racism.

The details of this particular shooting don’t matter in the slightest.
In Chicago, and Cook County, there’s absolutely no transparency when it comes to policing. So any argument regarding any shooting put forth by the authorities is suspect. And there can be no good police officers as long as the system is a black book. As I mentioned (probably get deleted again) the CPD could have the best, most honest cops in the world and this, or any hypothetical shooting here in particular, could be completely justified and it would be suspect because they cover up by rote.

I forget the quote but someone said with a good system of checks and balances you could have a government staffed completely by devils and it would still run honestly and benefit the people.

My point is, in Chicago, in policing, (and a lot of the U.S.) it’s the opposite.

If you are a white conservative (and superextraultra bonus points if you are also a Christian man), you can walk around with a loaded semi-automatic-...
&

If you're "good and honorable" and want to change police forces from corrupt thugs to something citizens can assume are there to help...where are you?


Um...y'all do know the city is one of the Democratic strongholds in the U.S., right? All the mayors of Chicago for the past 80 years been Democrats? Rahm Emanuel was part of Obama's administration? Can't have a Republican in office, they're evil. Can't vote green, it'll split the vote. Can't vote socialist (also evil). Nope, gotta keep pushing Democrats. That'll work.
*sigh*

I watched the video of the U.K. police swarming the guy with the machete. Excellent. Well done. Rahm promised to put 1,000 more police officers on the street.
He did that by breaking up the (successful) anti-gang task forces, took cops working desk jobs and made them patrol a beat. Voila! "New" police officers.


If we're talking about policing in general in the U.S. we can't conflate systemic problems with any particular shooting or any particular political ideology (beyond the status-quo "business as usual" politicians) otherwise the purpose gets diluted.

If we're talking about a particular shooting, this particular one, I think it's obvious it was egregious but the same "why couldn't he shoot the knife out of his hand?" level of discourse is tiresome.

The use of force is governed by non-real world rules dictated by a number of political, business and labor interests who while they are in competition are all mutually interested in avoiding liability (and public relations problems).

As long as that's the structure there isn't going to be any change.

The city council not wanting to release the video because they fear riots, that's the worst kind of unconscious racism. And it makes the problem even worse by destroying trust.
Thus far it's been pretty peaceful and pretty successful. The protests. If we can get people out on election days, that'd be even better.
posted by Smedleyman at 7:36 PM on November 27, 2015 [2 favorites]


If you help the kid on the ground, give him first aid, and he dies, well it’s on you. Are you a doctor or nurse or paramedic? No? Just a cop? You can be sued. In fact if a cop touched him it could be construed as taking him into custody/restraint where they would be more liable for treating him.

This is not true in Illinois (and many other jurisdictions). (Illinois 745 ILCS 49/Sec. 70) Good Samaritan Act exempts all law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs and first responders from civil liability when providing emergency care.
posted by JackFlash at 9:03 PM on November 27, 2015 [6 favorites]


Smedleyman, I'm not sure what your "experience of these matters" is, but you're wrong on at least three points of law. The first is what JackFlash pointed out about police immunity from liability for trying to save someone's life--and that's not even taking into account the broad, judicially-created immunity from prosecution and personal civil liability that law enforcement already enjoys.

The second error is about taking someone into custody. It's been the law for thirty years that using deadly force against someone is a seizure. Tennessee v. Garner, 471 U.S. 1, 7 (1985). A suspect who has been shot by police and is dying and therefore no longer capable of freedom of movement or choosing to walk away from police has been seized. And so all of the constitutional and statutory requirements about how police have to treat seized suspects apply, regardless of whether any officer touches him again after he's been shot 16 times by an officer.

Finally, you say that police don't have to protect a person. I assume you're referring to DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Soc. Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989). That case has really nothing to do with this situation. Shooting a child 16 times has nothing to do with whether police have a constitutional duty to investigate a particular civilian-on-civilian crime. DeShaney does not endorse watching your coworkers kill children. And even if there was some law that did permit that, there is no legal doctrine requiring police officers to let teenagers die instead of trying to help, and we have every moral right to expect police (and indeed, decent human beings) looking at a dying child to do more than the bare minimum they're required to do. They should do it because they should be good people, not based on whether or not they can be sued for choosing not to.

(IAAL, IANYL, TINLA)

I'm also not sure why you thought your comment would be "eliminated" because people would get "offended." I couldn't really figure out what the point was you were trying to make (or, in your words, what the "reality" was that you were trying to "illustrate"), but most of us are aware that police violence is supposed to be governed by a variety of different political and legal forces, and that both politics and corruption can make police forces more dangerous. And (as far as I have read--please correct me if I've missed a tangent about how real life should be more like a Chuck Norris movie) no one here has suggested that police should have shot the knife out of his hand. A lot of us are just also saying that the individual police officers involved here--both the killer and the eyewitness officers--have also made individual decisions to do bad things and to allow and assist as bad things are done by their fellow officers. All of that behavior was bad regardless of who the mayor is.

If I'm understanding you correctly, you seem to be implying (and again, correct me if I'm wrong--I really fear that I may not have understood your comment) that politics controls things in Chicago. And you have a point: politicians have done bad things and have failed to do good things. But any one or two decent, honest officers could have tried to save Laquan McDonald's life that night, either by trying to stop the shooting or by trying to give him medical treatment afterwards. The fact that no one did makes me suspect that this is not just a problem of politics, that it would be an awfully big coincidence if it just so happened that every officer on scene that night was corrupt and racist and lazy, while every other officer in the city is a great public servant held hostage in a sick political system. That's just not plausible. There may be a problem with politics. But there is also a serious problem that Chicago has even a single officer on the force who would stand around uselessly watching a kid bleed out after one of their coworkers shot him, because it didn't occur to them to do anything different. Much less that it appears most or all of them would do so. That's not a political problem; that's a fundamental lack of humanity in each and every one of the individual people who chose not to try to save this child's life, and to tolerate and endorse the behavior of those who killed him.
posted by decathecting at 10:01 PM on November 27, 2015 [17 favorites]


Illinois lawyer, who spent five years supervising a police department, here: Smedleyman, you are talking completely out of your ass and are ignorant of both law and police procedure. Like just about everything you said was wrong (as decathecting so clearly pointed out so I won't repeat).

Also if there is a Democrat in Illinois ignorant of the profoundly ingrained racism of the party, especially in Chicago, I have yet to meet them. Republicans in Illinois are worse and a quick survey of the past five years will show their statehouse caucus voting against even the most minor attempts to make the state less racist. Not sure what your point is. Democrats can be terrible people too. Chicago is hella racist, particularly in housing and policing. This is news to no one who lives here. State level party affiliations in Illinois have a lot less to do with social issues in general and more to do with state and local fiscal issues around tax rates; there are lots of racist Democrats because the party test is about spending on social programs and Springfield control of school funding, not attitudes towards immigration or urban police policy or housing segregation. (In fact there are functionally two Democratic parties at the state level in Illinois, and the two only get along uneasily, and the old white dude wing of the party, which relies a great deal on union support, controls a lot more of the money than the younger liberal wing does, creating some intense conflicts such as when I was uninvited from some future union-hosted political events by a local union-member municipal mayor because I refused to agree with him that immigrants were ruining Illinois and both of us lodged a complaint about the other with the county party chairman and it escalated from there.)

Chicago's a great city that deals with some aspects of racism really well. Policing is not one of them.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 4:49 AM on November 28, 2015 [11 favorites]


Not sure what your point is
And so I'm the one talking out of my ass, sure thing Eyebrows.

Republicans in Illinois are worse
And that helps, how? I vote green. Most of the state is in lockstep.

such as when I was uninvited from some future union-hosted political events by a local union-member municipal mayor because I refused to agree with him that immigrants were ruining Illinois
And I disagree with your position - how?

“Smedleyman, you are talking completely out of your ass and are ignorant of both law and police procedure.”

Ok, explain it to me.

Policing has institutional/structural racism and police are trained/socialized to see black communities as war zones and behave like occupying forces.
There's more focus on firearm training and qualification, vastly more, than de-escalation, verbal judo, and dealing with the mentally ill.
posted by Smedleyman at 10:59 AM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


> Ok, explain it to me.

decathecting did. It's there above Eyebrows' comment, as she pointed out. If you don't want to engage with the substance of it, or acknowledge that you may be mistaken about things you said, then okay, but there's no reason to pretend it isn't right there in writing.
posted by rtha at 11:12 AM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


“Good Samaritan Act exempts all law enforcement officers, firefighters, EMTs and first responders from civil liability when providing emergency care.”

Yes, but they’re not compelled to render aid. Same thing with testimony. A cop could come forward and testify but nothing compels them. A cop can render aid. But, all agencies that give advice, the department, the union (FOP), insurance, etc. tell them not to. Tactically, by giving first aid you place yourself and your sidearm (rules about taking that off as well) close to someone that (ostensibly) tried to harm you. And there are blood borne pathogens (got training?) and if you don’t have the training AND equipment for that and you get hepatitis you’re not covered because you put yourself at risk yadda yadda.
Again, I’m not saying it’s right, it’s what the party line is.
From an insurance, et.al. perspective, you can render aid and risk something going wrong and being liable, or you can do nothing, call the EMTs and have a plausible excuse in court.
Not about “should” or “can.”

“I assume you're referring to DeShaney v. Winnebago County Dept. of Soc. Services, 489 U.S. 189 (1989). That case has really nothing to do with this situation.”


That is an illustration of a general idea concerning police behavior, culture and mindset. The disconnect between that and the real world. Not an attempt to apply it to this particular situation as some sort of excuse and I think it’s unfair to imply that’s what I’m doing. Particularly when it’s connected to an example where a civilian tackled a knife wielding man and the police did not give him any help.

I’m not the best writer in the world, but I think it’s pretty clear that demonstrates an overall mindset in policing and doesn’t somehow exempt the Chicago police in this example. In fact, in any fair reading it’s completely opposite in that: “This is how/why the Chicago police in this instance do not react, because many police have the same perspective and the same behavior set in their heads.“

“I'm also not sure why you thought your comment would be "eliminated" because people would get "offended."”
Happens a lot to me.

“They should do it because they should be good people, not based on whether or not they can be sued for choosing not to.”


Unquestionably.

“no one here has suggested that police should have shot the knife out of his hand.”


It’s been bandied about in other threads regarding similar topics. Most discussions are the same. He could have/should have/ yadda yadda armchair quarterbacking to justify some other perspective.
I think the video speaks for itself. It is brutal. But all shootings are brutal and that in and of itself shouldn't be the focus. There's so much that is so wrong that is more important in preventing something like this from happening again that needs to be focused on.

“A lot of us are just also saying that the individual police officers involved here--both the killer and the eyewitness officers--have also made individual decisions to do bad things and to allow and assist as bad things are done by their fellow officers.”

My experience regarding this is in close quarter combat. I’ve shot at people. I’ve been shot, stabbed, burned, had bones broken, etc. I’ve trained warfighters, government agents, I’ve also trained law enforcement and trained people who train law enforcement.
I know what the trainers are telling them to do and what the union and higher ups are telling them that countermands that training. What’s practical and lifesaving often doesn’t make it into the program.

So where did those bad decisions come from? Did they completely blow off all their training? Or are the bad decisions the result of an institutional problem. It can be both.

But the point is HOW Van Dyke reacted, HOW the other officers reacted (or failed to) is a result of training and indoctrination, not some sort of inherent evil DNA inside anyone who becomes a police officer.


“But there is also a serious problem that Chicago has even a single officer on the force who would stand around uselessly watching a kid bleed out after one of their coworkers shot him, because it didn't occur to them to do anything different.”

So what is the problem then? You seem to be saying the problem is every single officer that showed up IS in fact, “corrupt and racist and lazy.” Ok – why?
Is it because they all got together and said “Let’s have one guy shoot this kid 16 times then we’ll all stand there and do nothing and watch him die contrary to all our training because we’re all racist and evil Moo-Hoo-Ha haa! Even though if even one guy here says anything about it our entire conspiracy falls and we go to jail. But forget all that...”

Or is their behavior the result of how they’ve been indoctrinated? As I’m saying.

WHY didn’t it occur to them to do anything different? Is it because each cop, before they joined the force, had a fundamental lack of humanity and willingness to tolerate and endorse the behavior of those who kill young men?

Gee, that’s a mighty big flaw in the hiring process, dontcha think? And the training.

So what are we saying - police are told to render aid because there’s a good Samaritan law sheltering them? And so that’s what happens because everyone does the right thing.

But police in particular are somehow inherently evil. What, is it in their blood? Are they born that way?

Or is it that their training is at odds with the law and reality in exactly the way I’ve been saying or trying (and obviously failing) to say.

Police officers are expected to shoot if they lose control of a situation. That’s a general statement of how it is, it doesn’t excuse Van Dyke (in fact it's a further indictment, he had plenty of back up and took the initiative to shoot)

If you take any organization and remove transparency from tactics and accountability for mistakes, you’re going to have serious problems no matter the quality of person you hire.

There’s a difference between institutional racism and single incidents. A single shooting can be attributed to a given bad cop or bad group, precinct, etc. A pattern, of which this is part, is a sign of institutional racism for which the existing power structure is responsible from the mayor on down.

The unions are political as well. I don’t have a problem with any union defending its membership from anything, that’s their job. Much like I understand a defense attorney’s job is to protect the rights of (say) an accused child murderer. But the unions resist police reforms. Always have. They resisted affirmative action in the 80s. Fought against transparency after the Jon Burge thing in Chicago, they support the same elements in departments that support the code of silence. And lack of accountability kills.

“But any one or two decent, honest officers could have tried to save Laquan McDonald's life that night,

This would be the only thing I really disagree with. Not in the pedantic sense of a specific cop could have tried to save Laquan McDonald in this exact case.
But that one or two – or any number – of decent, honest officers can make a difference in changing the apparatus while working within the system.

There’s no number of cops that will give better probation services or change the system of incarceration that focuses on race. A good cop isn’t going to change how municipalities use poor people to make money off of court fees and fines. A good cop won’t change legislatures criminalizing sleeping under a bridge or being in a park at night or panhandling or the entire farce that is the drug war. A good cop can’t change services for the mentally ill or change the policies that produce racial profiling.

No one has taken the political step of enforcing the 4th amendment and requiring police officers to document proof of consent to search, so blacks and Latinos are disproportionately likely to be searched during a stop (in Chicago at least).

The district attorneys office, which works with police officers, is the body that tries cases against them. Instead of an independent body. That’s a political and civic structural issue not a police issue.

All these things create a dysfunctional police force regardless of how good or bad the individual police are.

Regarding my quote above - the concept is, you could have devils being police officers and with a proper system the devils wouldn't harm anyone.

We don't have a proper system. That's not a political problem?

I’m talking in terms of what we are compelling police to do, not how they are doing it.

The latter point is obviously ceded here. Unless you’re a prick and think I’m ok with 16 shots into a kid.

Heaping all kinds of laws on the books and scaling up the force and range of what police do then putting them through a few days of training to address bias (implicit or otherwise) then handing them guns and intensive regular training on that, then expecting to lessen the odds they’ll open fire in response to a situation is farcical.
posted by Smedleyman at 11:25 AM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


I don't know anyone who teaches people empty their weapons into anyone who's prone.
Tueller’s rule was mentioned above. At the distances here the focus should be on weapon retention and teamwork. I know how many lawyers get into knife fights. Common situation really. And anyone who needs a gun in that situation is a big pussy, sure. But under stress and adrenaline it’s very easy to empty your gun. And that’s a good excuse if you’re not a trained police officer.

Makes it all the worse for Van Dyke. Also, Jeff Cooper outlined a tactical awareness system (color coded for your convenience – white, yellow, orange, red) that augments Tueller’s work.
Essentially, your state of mind and reaction time change how much time you have to react to a advancing/knife wielding opponent.
No help there for Van Dyke, he wasn’t the first on the scene. Apparently he showed up in a ‘red’ state of mind.

Also, typically your accuracy is reduced in that state of mind. I forget the specific stats, but it’s about 3 to 1 in the 2 foot range. That is, 3 shots fired for 1 bullet striking the target (the Mozambique/Failure Drill is designed to put two in the torso to slow someone down enough so you can make an accurate head shot)
Again, really damaging to Van Dyke’s case (IANAL) because either he lost his head or he methodically put 16 rounds into someone. From the autopsy, looks like only two rounds hit McDonald while he was standing.

From what I’ve read, the only thing that went right here (tactically speaking) is that after Van Dyke reloaded and prepared to continue to fire one of the officers on scene told him to cease fire.
I don't know how much of that is scary black man bias on Van Dyke's part. But there's a lot of segregation in Chicago and a not a lot of stock placed into community centered values. That trust works and benefits both ways. Or would anyway, if there were political will for it.

If you don't want to engage with the substance of it...

Yeah, that's my M.O. Enjoy the selective perception thing.

There are court cases on the public duty doctrine. I don’t think they’d apply (in defense) to this specifically, but, again, generally speaking, avoiding liability is drilled into people’s heads.
Explain to me how the FOP doesn’t oppose changes and transparency.
Explain to me how police are procedurally compelled to render first aid to someone they shoot.
Explain to me where police procedure addresses how the DA handles police cases.
Explain to me who keeps Independent Police Review Authority's data, 'cos its not the IPRA, that's transparency?
Explain to me where the "new" police in Chicago came from.

Most importantly - explain to me how it’s all not political.

I was listening to WBEZ (local NPR) a few days ago and Malcolm X London, a poet, was on and interviewed about his activist poetry. Well, turns out he was charged with slugging a cop.

Aldermen demanded his release from jail and he was cut loose from bond court because the DA dropped the charges. The FOP is pissed of course, and (IANAL) looks like they have a point.
Not a moral one, but a legal one. IDK. Besides the point.

The point being, a lot of people showed up for his court case which put pressure on the politicians. So away he went.
And that looks like that settles that no?

The judge though asked why there wasn’t a packed courtroom for the next case – an 11 year old girl who was accidentally shot in a drive by

Where's the aldermen on that? Where's the protest? The outrage?

If Rahm hadn’t shuffled the gang units, if Ceasefire hadn’t been defunded, more gun control, less drugs, more schools, less whatever, etc. etc.
It’s not just a police racism problem, it's a systemic failure. And people get inured to that. Because it's a persistent danger, it gets ignored.

And while dramatic events like this are important to get some movement on an issue, it's important to focus on the underlying reasons things happen and maintain pressure and not allow politicians to scapegoat or play the crowd by doing things like letting London walk.
(I have no dog in the fight whether he walks or not, but it's not going to fix anything)

Chicago is deeply flawed. Our people though, do many things right. And the protests themselves are one of them.

“They understand that this is an issue not about one police officer but the system of policing and accountability and power,”

It's too easy to just try to score rhetorical points on something like this and walk away feeling self-righteous. We can't let politicians lay this off on some bad cops or cops in general and play the blue vs. black game and walk off.

Only a systemic change in how we expect our laws to be enforced is going to do that. That will allow for policy changes in policing which means training will better reflect desired and realistic street outcomes.

About it for me. I'm not ignoring anything. Ahmana go eat leftover turkey.
posted by Smedleyman at 1:01 PM on November 28, 2015 [1 favorite]


The FOP is pissed of course, and (IANAL) looks like they have a point.

That message is nothing more than a paean to extrajudicial authority and it sounds like the judge called bullshit on that action. It also sounds like you would know that "battery of a police officer" can come from as little as pulling away, so, "slugging a cop," might be a bit of the ol' assertion-in-advance-of-facts.

Where's the aldermen on that?

I'm not sure what your overall point(s) is/are, but this one here is a wholly off-topic bid for distraction.
posted by rhizome at 2:07 PM on November 28, 2015 [2 favorites]


"slugging a cop," might be a bit of the ol' assertion-in-advance-of-facts.”

Imprecise language, yeah. But it’s what I’ve heard by word of mouth. Black eye on the cop. Again, what happened, what London did or didn’t do is not important at all. What’s important is people packed the courtroom for that. Alderman stood up and made speeches. The system got rolling. But everybody got up and left for the next case of the 11 year old that was caught in a crossfire. The media just split.

“Why don’t we have every single press person in the room for this case? For an 11-year-old child?” Judge Chiampas demanded. “Why aren’t there people protesting outside for this case?”

Only place I’ve seen that story was in a hyperlocal paper and all subsequent news on it linked back.

“I'm not sure what your overall point(s) is/are,”


It’s not clear that politicians are happy to ignore systemic failures requiring lasting change and real change in favor of grabbing headlines in more spectacular cases?
Actual murders go unsolved because people don’t trust the police.

People don’t trust the police because they’re the last point of failure in a large social system that fails daily and politicians don’t want to risk changing the status quo.

A shooting is bad yes. A 17 year old kid shot 14 times on the ground (16 in all for pedants beanplating) is bad yes. ALSO what’s bad is the system that failed this kid in particular and young black men generally – the system of social services (not only the justice system but schools, medical, child rearing, etc. etc. Look, I’ll post it again: More than police bullets killed Laquan McDonald)

Pretty much expanding on T.D. Strange’s comment: “When it can be pinned on one officer and not systemic problems, these shootings can always be whitewashed away.” Explaining the banality of all shootings re:roomthreeseventeen’s link and that the unseen horror of it is the apparatus that created the situation.

And opening up the “who’s doing the whitewashing” and “how is it whitewashed” can of worms and expanding on Eyebrows McGee’s “the fact that your union exists solely to cover up police wrongdoing” and what police are TOLD not what the law is.

Social and political institutions set the context for individual and group behavior and are supposed to provide resources to that end. How people act is mostly shaped by the group structure they are in. If the structure is fucked up – you get fucked up people.

The only way I can think that concept isn’t connecting in anyone’s head is that explaining how this is fucked up and is SOP is somehow defending Van Dyke or police shootings. Yeah, I’m not doing that.
But because while it might feel good, I’m just not knee jerk kicking the police in the pelotas.

Bouncing btwn addressing issues and threadjacking. I don't want to do the latter so I'll split.
posted by Smedleyman at 3:11 PM on November 28, 2015


Burger King manager says he has testified before a grand jury:
A Burger King manager who accuses Chicago police of erasing surveillance video in the case of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager shot 16 times last year by a white officer, says he has testified before a federal grand jury investigating the shooting.

Jay Darshane told the Chicago Tribune the FBI also took the restaurant video recorder containing all of its surveillance images.

The Chicago police chief and the Cook County state’s attorney say no one tampered with the Burger King video.
posted by XMLicious at 3:53 AM on November 29, 2015 [1 favorite]


I wonder how you reform a department this big. One of the perennial problems in school reform is that there are just SO. MANY. teachers; it's basically impossible to hire nothing but the top 5% of people to teach or whatever. Or if you're trying to reform a single failed district, you're looking at around 1,000 credentialed teachers for 10,000 students, and where are you going to find 1,000 superstars on short notice all at once?

Chicago has 12,000+ cops, is arguably in need of more, and policing requires institutional knowledge and memory of the communities you serve -- you can't just drop in 12,000 randos who aren't from Chicago all at once, unless you want your cops to spend most of their time being lost for six months. But it's been corrupt and violent and racist for 50, 60 years now, and has resisted all attempts at traditional reform. So what do you do? How do you reform an institution so large? Has it been done successfully elsewhere?

(I mean, I spent five years working to reform a department of 28 officers, working with a top-notch chief committed to reform and with extensive training in non-violent policing, who was trusted and liked by his officers, and it was STILL a PAIN IN THE FUCKING ASS that was going to require turning over almost every employee in the entire department just because of the profound institutional resistance to doing things differently. I can't even imagine how you come at 12,000 officers with such an ingrained culture of brutality.)
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 7:40 AM on November 29, 2015 [6 favorites]


Mod note: One deleted; how about not introducing unrelated super-grisly stuff here.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 1:19 PM on November 29, 2015


That's not a political problem; that's a fundamental lack of humanity in each and every one of the individual people who chose not to try to save this child's life, and to tolerate and endorse the behavior of those who killed him.

I read a story the other day about Nikita Krushchev, who was giving an anti-Stalin speech.1 Someone in the audience shouted out "You were there at the time - why didn't you say anything!"

Kruschev thundered out "WHO SAID THAT?!"

Nobody answered.

"You see?" Kruschev continued, "That's why."

1 The story is presumably apocryphal, but he did actually make a famous anti-Stalin speech, with consequences that are still with us.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:37 PM on November 29, 2015 [7 favorites]


Smedleyman: "“Why don’t we have every single press person in the room for this case? For an 11-year-old child?” Judge Chiampas demanded. “Why aren’t there people protesting outside for this case?”"

Oh my friggin' god. Why didn't she just say "What about black-on-black crime? #AllLivesMatter" while she was at it?

Anyways, in case there are still doubts, the reason is: because the person who shot that 11-year-old child is not a representative of the state and hence (theoretically) subject to democratic action. When police are able to kill black people with impunity, they're not doing it as random citizens. They're doing it in the name of The People (tm) and hence the way to get them to stop doing it is to change the attitudes of The People to make it Not Okay for the police to keep doing that.
posted by mhum at 10:32 AM on November 30, 2015 [10 favorites]


Eyebrows McGee: Chicago has 12,000+ cops, is arguably in need of more, and policing requires institutional knowledge and memory of the communities you serve -- you can't just drop in 12,000 randos who aren't from Chicago all at once, unless you want your cops to spend most of their time being lost for six months. But it's been corrupt and violent and racist for 50, 60 years now, and has resisted all attempts at traditional reform. So what do you do? How do you reform an institution so large? Has it been done successfully elsewhere?

Sort of. A major revamp and reformation was done to the NYPD in the 90's with mixed results.

In 1993, the NYPD's Internal Affairs department was ordered to report on corruption in the department by Commissioner Ray Kelly. The report was eye opening. Cops had robbed a bank. They were stealing credit cards and other items from suspects. Etc. Under Kelly's successor William Bratton, IA was transformed, expanded, streamlined and ordered to crack down on corruption. They did so.

Bratton did something revolutionary with the NYPD. He decentralized it, placing more responsibility and power with individual precinct commanders. Commanders could act more unilaterally, to directly address the needs of their individual neighborhoods and crack down on corruption within their precincts. After all, the commanders knew their home turf better than an outsider. In an attempt to increase accountability, Bratton also introduced CompStat, an automated tracking system that monitored the time, type and location of crimes reported by each precinct. Commanders then were required to meet with Bratton each month, where they and their departments were rewarded for decreases in crime rates, and alternatively offered advice and support where for problem areas.

Precinct Commanders also worked hand in hand with IA, helping them to root out corruption. From 1994-2009, NYPD's IA made over 2000 arrests of police officers. Approximately 119 a year.

This had a profound effect on crime rates. It also greatly increased police morale. They had been given a freer rein, but felt someone in the Department beyond their precinct commanders were taking an active role.

However, there were other concerns. Police officers became overzealous, overly aggressive and sometimes abused their power with suspects. Officers fabricated statistics to keep up their numbers. They lied in court. Etc. The current incarnation of the NYPD still has serious racist and sexism problems that were never resolved, and an argument can be made that lying, coverups and fraud are a fundamental part of the NYPD's culture.

So the system put in place by Bratton, which had been designed to force cops to take more responsibility for their actions and departments, combat / reduce corruption and eliminate bad cops, wound up both failing and succeeding. Solving problems while creating new ones.

It's a fascinating topic. You can read more about the NYPD IA's history since 1993 here and a case study on Bratton's legacy here.
posted by zarq at 11:12 AM on November 30, 2015 [2 favorites]


A student of the University of Illinois at Chicago (UIC) has been arrested in connection with an online threat of gun violence at the University of Chicago (U of C). A commenter on a video on WorldStar Hip Hop stated that they would kill white male students and staff on the U of C quad at 10 AM Monday in retaliation for the shooting of Laquan McDonald. All U of C classes and events for Monday were cancelled in response to the threat.
posted by J.K. Seazer at 11:24 AM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


There are two big problems with data-driven police reform. First is the question of what statistics to privilege. Second is the fact that by using specific statistics, you are encouraging police to focus on specifically those statistics, without regard for whether there's any underlying relationships between the statistics and community benefit. You don't win the data-driven game by benefiting the community. You run the data-driven game by using whatever means available to you to deliver the statistics that benefit you. This is to say, data-driven police reforms like CompStat are best understood as an invitation to "juke the stats" (to use The Wire's term for this process).

The only way data-driven policing would result in police becoming a positive rather than a negative influence on the communities subject to policing is if you could somehow arrange the model such that attempts to tamper with the statistics would themselves result in community benefit. This is a diabolically hard problem in practice. If I were asked to arrange for something like this, I'd place independently gathered and analyzed community ratings of individual police officers at the center of it, and I would ensure that the boards in charge of gathering and analyzing these ratings have firing privileges over police, no questions asked. Moreover, members of this board would have to be subject to community-initiated recall and replacement at any time, in order to undermine attempts by police to capture the board. Moreover moreover, the board would have to be relatively local. Something like "The West Oakland Community Police Oversight Board," equipped with the power to fire cops, would be able to rein in police terrorism in West Oakland, but something like "The Oakland Community Police Oversight Board" would quickly fall under control of the better-organized and better-supported people who live in the hills, who would for the most part prefer police terrorism in West Oakland continue.

If this system — which will never be implemented, because police understand what meaningful reform would do to their racket, and have politically powerful guilds that quite effectively suppress even the most moderate attempts to break up their racket — were actually implemented, the way for individual police to juke the stats would involve getting individual community members to like them, and thereby deliver higher ratings — sort of like how Uber drivers are incentivized to get customers to like them. Even cops who were dead set on playing the stats (which is to say, even rational cops) would in this scenario tend to serve the community rather than terrorize it.

tl;dr: data-driven policing only works if it's a tool to make police subject to community control. As implemented in the real world, data-driven policing is less about good policing and more about generating figures to make bad policing look good.
posted by You Can't Tip a Buick at 11:37 AM on November 30, 2015 [3 favorites]


CompStat tracks two categories of crime based on the federal Uniform Crime Reports standard: Violent Crimes and Property Crimes. The UCR divides those two as follows: Aggravated assault, forcible rape, murder, and robbery are classified as violent while arson, burglary, larceny-theft, and motor vehicle theft are classified as property crimes. It then subdivides them into: simple assault, curfew offenses and loitering, embezzlement, forgery and counterfeiting, disorderly conduct, driving under the influence, drug offenses, fraud, gambling, liquor offenses, offenses against the family, prostitution, public drunkenness, runaways, sex offenses, stolen property, vandalism, vagrancy, and weapons offenses. Compstat also tracks the number of shooting incidents and shooting victims. It tracks gun arrests (not just weapons offenses) as well as general summons and arrest activity. (via)

The categories are very specific, and can provide a clear picture of crime trends in specific neighborhoods over time. Which then allows police precincts to focus on their individual needs. If a neighborhood has 1000 carjackings but no shootings month after month, then the police can use that knowledge to predict what kind of crime is likely to happen there in the future, and ask Department heads beyond their precinct for appropriate support. The whole point is to identify crime patterns, which enables more efficient and effective strategies. Screw with the numbers and precincts lose out on opportunities. They can't identify crime patterns. They may be allocated fewer officers or less funding. It's in the cops' best interest not to falsify data. Which unfortunately, stupidly, doesn't stop them from doing so.

So, Bratton's system rewards increases in quality of life ticketing and arrests, which is consistent with his Broken Windows theory: Encourage cops to crack down on minor crimes. Doing so theoretically reduces overall crime and help people have a more positive view of their own neighborhood. When it was first instituted, the system was a resounding success. A 60% drop in crime. In NYC, murders have dropped steeply since application of CompStat began and are still far lower than they were before.

From that perspective, introducing CompStat into the reporting system clearly worked and gave benefit to the community. A massive, measureable reduction in crime. Happier residents. Police presence shows residents they care and are watchful, not neglectful -- which then leads to a long-term reduction in crime. That is good policing. But that was because Bratton also created an infrastructure to work with the data it was providing, and made an effort to reduce the types of corruption that plagued the department at the time.

But once you have an entire police force buy into the idea that all crimes should be treated aggressively, that opens the door to abuse. And our problem here in NYC is the same problem that other cities have: racist officers treat PoC like criminals. Then, when a PoC is suspected of committing a crime, the cops react in a wildly disproportionate way. That's how people like Eric Garner get choked to death during what should have been a routine arrest. And it's how people get shot dozens of time when they are not being threatening. And how the police protect their own and ignore abuse when they damn well shouldn't. That problem isn't necessarily predicated on data collection or falsified data. PoC were being harassed and murdered by cops in NYC way before CompStat came on the scene. But I believe CompStat has created an environment which sanctions that harassment.
posted by zarq at 2:40 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Introducing CompStat into the reporting system clearly worked and gave benefit to the community.

This conclusion is widely disputed. Correlation does not prove causation. Simultaneously with the reduction in crime in New York, there was a similar reduction in crime in other large cities that did not use CompStat and did not institute broken windows policing. This suggests that there were other factors responsible for crime reduction.
posted by JackFlash at 3:21 PM on November 30, 2015 [1 favorite]


Bail posted, cop walks
posted by Artw at 3:30 PM on November 30, 2015


That guy is going to be living the conservative funded dream for the rest of his life, probably won't even have to get a rent-a-cop job after he retired on full pension.
posted by Artw at 3:31 PM on November 30, 2015


Simultaneously with the reduction in crime in New York, there was a similar reduction in crime in other large cities that did not use CompStat and did not institute broken windows policing

Not to mention that a bunch of 90s NYPD brass went on to implement CompStat in Baltimore as CityStat.
posted by rhizome at 3:42 PM on November 30, 2015


This suggests that there were other factors responsible for crime reduction.

There were definitely a few factors responsible for the reduction in crime in the 90's, not just one. But I do believe that CompStat was one of those. For one thing, President Clinton signed the largest crime bill in history in September 1994. It provided billions in funding for law enforcement (including 100,000 new cops nationwide) and prisons.
posted by zarq at 3:45 PM on November 30, 2015


Dispatches from a post-racial society.
posted by tonycpsu at 6:06 PM on November 30, 2015


For one thing, President Clinton signed the largest crime bill in history in September 1994. It provided billions in funding for law enforcement (including 100,000 new cops nationwide) and prisons.

September 1994 was two years after violent crime in the U.S. started to trend downward.
posted by Etrigan at 8:09 PM on November 30, 2015


To be fair, it's not like Reagan and Poppy sat on their sentencing hands when building the War on Drugs.
posted by rhizome at 9:31 PM on November 30, 2015


Cover-Up in Chicago
posted by Artw at 5:03 AM on December 1, 2015


Video has now surfaced of cops inside the Burger King and fiddling with the computer on the night of the murder. Still no word from Ironmouth's "independent body".
posted by T.D. Strange at 7:32 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


There are now reports that the Mayor Daley III ... er Mayor Emmanual threatened to withdraw financial support for black communities if the community leaders did not keep protesters in line. Chicago being Chicago.
posted by srboisvert at 7:35 AM on December 1, 2015 [1 favorite]


“When police are able to kill black people with impunity, they're not doing it as random citizens”

And when the system fails, as in (citing only this one instance as an example out of a myriad) politicians reallocating resources away from proven, violence stopping programs, so kids get killed in gang crossfire, are they not to be held accountable?

Your own comment shows how futile that's been: "(theoretically) subject to democratic action."
And if you'd bothered to read the story, you'd see THAT'S the failure the judge was addressing.
The shitty way the system here works and imposes a separatist bias and siege mentality not just on police officers who adopt and reflect it as a code of silence and taboo against testifying against other officers or risking themselves any more than the absolute bare minimum they can get away with, but in the neighborhoods where people feel alienated from all democratic action, social services, and most especially the police.

“Segregation and income and wealth disparities aren’t a new story in Chicago, but they softened the ground, making even solidly established neighborhoods vulnerable to social ills such as drugs and crime.”


It's deeper than blue on black. Keep treating the symptom and the problem is never going to go away.
posted by Smedleyman at 7:40 AM on December 1, 2015


Alvarez said at a press conference last week no one tampered with the Burger King video.

“Forensic testing was done on the Burger King surveillance system to determine if anyone tampered with the evidence and the testing did not reveal any such evidence,” she said.

When asked who did the testing, Alvarez replied, “That’s all I’m going to say on this.”
Why the fuck does Anita Alvarez still have a job?
posted by zarq at 7:59 AM on December 1, 2015 [4 favorites]


Because, for some insane reason, we elect our prosecutorial heads, instead of appointing them like sane people.

Thankfully, Kim Foxx is working to give Alvarez the pink slip.
posted by NoxAeternum at 8:15 AM on December 1, 2015


Why the fuck does Anita Alvarez still have a job?

Because Alicia Florrick got robbed.
posted by Etrigan at 8:16 AM on December 1, 2015 [3 favorites]




Now he just needs to fire Alvarez, himself, and every policeman in that Burger King video.
posted by Artw at 8:48 AM on December 1, 2015 [8 favorites]


I almost* feel bad for Rahm, who clearly kept himself in the dark about all this so he didn't have to think about it, and is now dealing with the ridiculous level of corruption in his police force. He may have honestly believed that the officers didn't tamper with the BK video, or that the original shooting was justified, just by sticking his head in the sand.



*but not really.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 8:56 AM on December 1, 2015


Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy has been fired by Mayor Rahm Emanuel, sources said Tuesday.

And it only took him 13 months.
posted by zarq at 9:14 AM on December 1, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh that police officers are all Popes, or whatever gibberish it was he was spouting.
posted by Artw at 9:15 AM on December 1, 2015


One down, only another 12,243 Chicago cops to go!
posted by shakespeherian at 9:39 AM on December 1, 2015


Independent Reporter who FOIAed the videos says there's more:
The public needs to know what as many as eight officers did immediately after the shooting, as well as how the department handled what should’ve been plainly seen as murder by one of its own officers that night. What did these officers do following the shooting? In the first video released, you don’t see them bending down to comfort or render aid to Laquan.

Instead, police moved around some of their vehicles. We know this because video from a car that arrived on scene five minutes after the shooting shows a different configuration of cars than were seen when Van Dyke fired. This is important because each of these cruisers records what happens in front of them thanks to dashcams. Police have said that the five videos they released are the only ones from the scene that night, but police did not release video from the police car that likely shows Laquan’s face—and thus likely shows the shooting from the clearest angle.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:58 AM on December 1, 2015 [11 favorites]


Is the city trying to hide another damning video of a Chicago police officer shooting an unarmed black man?

“The city has sat on this thing for a year,” the lawyer said, “and they are fighting to keep it quiet. I don’t know how many videos are out there, but the city has gone out of its way to hide this again.”



We live in a society where white privilege is the political mandate. Certainly enforced by police – and being shot and killed is bad - but absolutely initiated and codified by political privilege which maintains socio-economic disparity and racial divisiveness as a matter of self-interest. Which, as it is akin to an invisible kind of slavery, is worse.
It’s like blaming teachers for failing schools. Schools fail because of poverty (and exploitation by privatization forces), and the school board, which is the democratic mechanism by which the school district is run.

There’s certainly a difference between a good teacher in a bad school system, a bad teacher in a bad school system, and an abusive or rapist or murderous teacher in a bad school system – and certainly there can be bad or destructive teachers in good school systems - but the bad school system is going to produce bad outcomes regardless of the quality of teacher.

And even a good school board can’t do anything if the county and state government drains money from education. And that’s a public policy failure.
It’s not enough to elect someone (or say ‘bu-bu-but teh Republikins r worse), you have to get them out of office or change the mechanisms, the laws, that create the context or situation in the first place.
Use an oar not a straw.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:23 PM on December 1, 2015


The Least Surprising Headline Of The Year Award goes to ... Chicago police union stands by cop charged with murdering teen.

Meanwhile, speaking of police officials in Chicago, the president of the Chicago Police Sergeant’s Association thinks all this hullabaloo is "a knee-jerk reaction":
“I don’t think you need someone from the outside to come clean up your house,” James Ade, president of the Chicago Police Sergeant’s Association, said yesterday of Patrick, a South Side native Emanuel’s office sought to characterize as a fresh set of eyes “who doesn’t live in Chicago.”

“We have oversight, through our independent police review authority, the police board, as well as our investigative internal affairs 
bureau,” Ade said. “It’s kind of like a knee-jerk reaction to an unfortunate incident.”

Yes, god forbid any outsiders come in to investigate what's going on in your notoriously corrupt police department. It couldn't possibly be that the internal controls in place to date have been captured and corrupted to the point of having no real teeth nor any real ability or desire to fix the problem ...

(and I say this as someone who is not at all a fan of Deval Patrick)
posted by tocts at 6:23 AM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


There's a thing that comes up in polling all the time with Illinois -- Illinois is the only state in the union where people CONSISTENTLY trust the federal government more than the state government. (Whenever politicians campaign in Illinois on "Do you really want Washington making laws for you instead of Springfield?" everyone is like, "YES FANTASTIC IDEA! Where can we sign up?" Even on the "visceral reaction" tests, in most states when you say "Washington" people have a negative reaction thinking of bureaucracy and Congress, and a mildly positive reaction to their state capital; in Illinois people have a mildly positive reaction to Washington as a place where shit gets done, and a viscerally negative reaction to Springfield as horrifically corrupt and useless.)

Anyway, I'm glad Lisa Madigan has called in the feds, because if I were going to make a hierarchy of "government entities in Illinois that I trust to cope with corruption" it'd be "the federal government --> the state AG --> Cook County (any entity) --> Chicago elected officials." I just don't even expect the state to deal with corruption. They never do. The only way it gets dealt with is when the federal prosecutor or the Justice Department or the FBI gets interested.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 8:06 AM on December 2, 2015 [6 favorites]


Illinois is the only state in the union where people CONSISTENTLY trust the federal government more than the state government.

I use it every time Illinois politics come up: The Daily Show pointed out a few years back that statistically, you are more likely to go to prison if you are elected Governor of Illinois than if you murder someone in Illinois.
posted by Etrigan at 8:21 AM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]




They're all cover ups, this is a remarkably bungled one they didn't know when to give up on.
posted by Artw at 9:23 AM on December 2, 2015


Sadly, what surprises me here isn't that they tried to bury this but that they were so bad at it.
posted by Justinian at 11:04 AM on December 2, 2015 [1 favorite]


Justinian: "Sadly, what surprises me here isn't that they tried to bury this but that they were so bad at it."

This is a disturbing trend in Illinois politics. Illinoisians will take public officials who are corrupt but efficient and competent (like Daley), or incorruptible but incompetent (like Quinn), but strenuously object to public officials who are corrupt AND incompetent (like Blagojevich). Rahm is putting himself squarely into the third bin there.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 12:05 PM on December 2, 2015 [7 favorites]


My most useful lesson in Chicago/Illinois politics was when the former Alderman Mell resigned and his daughter left the statehouse to inherit his ward.
posted by PMdixon at 12:14 PM on December 2, 2015


Sadly, what surprises me here isn't that they tried to bury this but that they were so bad at it

Well they did delay it long enough for it not to affect Rahm's re-election.
posted by rhizome at 1:19 PM on December 2, 2015 [3 favorites]


Mod note: One comment deleted. Smedleyman, please drop it. People aren't obligated to engage on the terms you prefer. If you need to talk to somebody, come talk to us at the contact form.
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:45 AM on December 3, 2015


“Anyway, I'm glad Lisa Madigan has called in the feds,”

Rahm’s been doing the “One individual needs to be held accountable” dance (of course, she's 'misguided', I mean, we don't want nobody nobody sent*).

But the pattern of cover up is obvious. (And indeed, Van Dyke played a role in the alleged cover-up of another fatal police shooting 10 years ago )

I know it sounds like I’m belaboring the point. But I don’t think there’s any question that the more heat that Van Dyke himself gets, the easier it gets, for the political machine, to sacrifice him to protect cover up business as usual.

*juuust to clarify in case it sounds like the old Chicago maxim is Smed saying she is misguided and we don't want her - I'd take a bullet for Lisa Madigan. Her dad...not so much. (and pardon the wiki link, just want to be extra clear here)
posted by Smedleyman at 12:57 PM on December 3, 2015


“Fifteen Things for When the World is Shitty and Terrifying,” Katherine Fritz, I Am Begging My Mother Not To Read This Blog, 28 November 2015
posted by ob1quixote at 1:18 PM on December 3, 2015 [1 favorite]




City officials on Thursday evening released more surveillance footage related to the killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by a Chicago police officer who shot him 16 times.

The recordings, obtained by the Tribune in response to a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, include 12 camera angles from inside and outside a Southwest Side Burger King on Oct. 20, but all of the restaurant footage provided includes a gap of about 80 minutes. The gap, from about 9:18 to 10:39 p.m., included the time period when McDonald was shot by Officer Jason Van Dyke on a nearby street.
posted by Elementary Penguin at 3:29 AM on December 4, 2015


Roundup of recent reporting with local commentary
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:31 AM on December 4, 2015


By the way, another black man was just gunned down on the street in San Francisco, this time by a bunch of cops, execution-style.

More links in this deleted thread.
posted by swift at 2:29 PM on December 4, 2015 [5 favorites]


That showed up in my FB feed - which gets a lot of copblock posts - almost immediately after its posting and it didn't even occur to me to look for discussion of it or share it here. Because it just seems de rigueur now

I know I'm not the typical citizen but man, it's hard for me to understand how anyone watches that and thinks this is okay. That cop moves into the guy's meandering path towards the cameraman and moves in close, particularly given this supposed 21 foot OMG QUICK KILL distance they supposedly believe in. I think it's noble and right for the cops to try to create a perimeter and keep an armed and disturbed person from getting near other citizens but why would you close in that close? Where are the "LA gear" batons (as the Miami cops I used to know would call them) rather than just the guns?

Hell, where are the tasers? The defense of the fruitvale station killing, on the other side of the bridge in Oakland, was that the cop thought he was grabbing his taser. I know it's a different force but don't the SF cops have them?
posted by phearlez at 3:31 PM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]


San Francisco PD does not use Tasers.
posted by rhizome at 4:07 PM on December 4, 2015


So at QUARTER TO MIDNIGHT ON A FRIDAY NIGHT Chicago released the written police reports of the shooting, full of flat-out lies (he swung the knife, charged cops, tried to get up several times necessitating they keep shooting, etc). I don't have a link to the documents but I'm sure the Trib or Sun Times will post them in the next couple of hours.

Quarter to midnight on a Friday. These people are sooooooo trustworthy and transparent.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 10:06 PM on December 4, 2015 [7 favorites]


On a Friday night when the news is 24/7 focused on San Bernardino.
posted by futz at 10:32 PM on December 4, 2015 [1 favorite]




What is the penalty for falsifying a police report?
posted by nubs at 7:30 AM on December 5, 2015


What is the penalty for falsifying a police report?

Promotion.
posted by zombieflanders at 8:09 AM on December 5, 2015 [7 favorites]


DISTURBING VIDEO: Man killed by @MiamiBeachPD at Alton Rd and 15th today during #ArtBasel

The man in question appears to be white.

Miami Beach police department officials released the following statement about the police shooting:

There was a 911 call at 1028 hours this morning reference a hold up alarm at 1414 Alton Road, Bank of America. The caller advised the subject was armed with a bomb and passed a note to the teller. PD responded and was advised the subject fled northbound on Alton Road. The subject was observed entering a barber shop at 1530 Alton Road. Police responded to 1530 Alton Road and observed the subject inside. The subject refused to exit the barber shop. The subject emerged with a straight edge razor in his hand. Shots were fired and the subject is deceased. Pursuant to departmental policy, Miami-Dade County Police Department will be investigating the shooting. The FBI and Miami Beach Police Department will be investigating the bank robbery. Alton Road is closed from 15 to 16 St reference the crime scene.
posted by roomthreeseventeen at 10:24 AM on December 5, 2015


I notice they didn't empty their clips into him after he hit the ground. Even white criminals have privilege, eh?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 11:32 AM on December 5, 2015


nubs: "What is the penalty for falsifying a police report?"

Probably obstruction of justice; however, from the Tribune article:
Bringing charges against the officers for their statements could be difficult, however. Under federal case law, statements the officers were compelled to make as part of the Police Department's internal investigation cannot be used against them in any criminal prosecution.

The reports state investigators viewed the video and found them consistent with officers' accounts. The reports also note the 911 call after the shooting and radio transmissions from the scene "were consistent with the statements of the police officers."
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 5:39 PM on December 5, 2015


The reports state investigators viewed the video and found them consistent with officers' accounts.

Well, that indicates the depth of the problem: corruption to the core. How can you fix this without basically replacing everybody on the force?
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:50 PM on December 5, 2015


And in government. Jesus.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 10:50 PM on December 5, 2015 [1 favorite]


Even white criminals have privilege, eh?

Never mind; he was Latino, as was the officer.
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 12:17 AM on December 6, 2015


Justice Dept is about to announce an investigation into the Chicago PD.
posted by futz at 3:13 PM on December 6, 2015


Only one? It's a start, I guess...
posted by Etrigan at 3:19 PM on December 6, 2015


Note how the Metropolitan Police in London fairly easily tazed and arrested an ISIS fanatic who had been slashing people with a knife at a Tube station.
That's a much more dangerous situation than the one in Chicago, and although the Met could have easily had a SWAT team turn up and shoot the guy a million times, that was not required.

This is a matter of equipping and training police with non-lethal weapons to the point where they automatically pull out a tazer not a Glock to deal with a guy who has a knife in his hand and won't put it down.
posted by w0mbat at 4:12 PM on December 6, 2015 [4 favorites]


In the past mattresses and blankets have also been used, technology that presumably did not make it over to the US.
posted by Artw at 4:39 PM on December 6, 2015 [2 favorites]



In the past mattresses and blankets have also been used, technology that presumably did not make it over to the US.


Unfortunately, Americans weaponized blankets more than a hundred years ago.
posted by drezdn at 10:14 PM on December 6, 2015 [2 favorites]


This is a matter of equipping and training police with non-lethal weapons to the point where they automatically pull out a tazer not a Glock to deal with a guy who has a knife in his hand and won't put it down.

That's a nice theory, but in practice the police have done as shitty a job with less-lethal weapons as they have with guns. Even in places where tazers are in use, the tendency is not that they start getting used in place of guns when minor force is required, but instead that they start getting pulled in situations that would never have warranted the use of force in the first place. Officers seem to view them as consequence-free, and a great way to widen their application of force without the repercussions of waving a gun in a random citizen's face.
posted by tocts at 6:56 AM on December 7, 2015 [3 favorites]


Officers seem to view them as consequence-free,

Seem?

“This is a matter of equipping and training police with non-lethal weapons to the point where they automatically pull out a tazer not a Glock to deal with a guy who has a knife in his hand and won't put it down.”

Training and equipment can be mutually exclusive. No matter what kind of non-lethal equipment a cop might have, if they’re not trained to seek non-lethal outcomes, and that training is not supported by the culture, the unions, other legal bodies like the prosecutors, oversight agencies like the IPRA (Independent Police Review Authority), police lobbyist groups, professional associations, politicians, etc. etc. the training itself doesn’t matter. This is what I alluded to in (one of, several clarifications were deleted) my first post.

If the mindset is that no matter what a cop does, no one is going to stand up and witness, no one from the community is going to get his back (legally) if he risks himself to help someone (again, that’s mindset)

Now, we can argue about it here. Or rather, you can argue about it here, I’m presenting how it is from the police perspective and how these kinds of outcomes occur. Not what’s legal or right but what is DE FACTO procedure – by the simple fact that when police can respond regardless of training (if any, beyond bare minimums) from their bias or fear or anger, and the law (or at least, the system as it is, not written law) protects them.

Clear so far?

Let me also make ABUNDANTLY clear the moral response to shooting someone who was not a threat, or shooting someone who may have been a threat but is now neutralized, is to render aid and try to save their lives.

But that’s again, not where many police officers are coming from, mindset-wise.
Bit of perspective: the Laquan McDonald case is nowhere near a unique one. The exact same story, police officers wrongfully shoot a person (usually a person of color) then refuse to render aid once said person is obviously no longer a threat. (Tamir Rice, Tanisha Anderson,,Akai Gurley, etc. etc. easy enough to google. The Gurley case is particularly interesting in the context I’m framing because the police officers were texting their union rep as Gurley was dying instead of calling an ambulance)


Once the police officer kicked the knife out of McDonalds hand (the act itself I agree with from a tactical perspective, people have been stabbed by wounded, grounded men – although I didn’t see where they handcuffed him, or searched him, or were willing to request specialized assets (e.g. a unit with tasers or riot shields, etc), just left him there, so they were at least negligent in managing safety in the aftermath of the shooting, all other considerations aside for the moment) McDonald was no longer any threat. He should have been given aid.
But that’s not where police head’s are at.

One of the news articles (or comment) referenced the police looking around for an invisible threat after the shooting. Again, this is how it’s done. Ambulances and medics can’t enter an unsecure crime scene.

And again, this is not to say I see any evidence (from the video) the scene was unsecure, nor from the nature of the call that it might have been, or that one or two officers couldn’t be spared from that detail to render first aid, just that it’s how they react based on the circumstances presented to them by the legal system, the unions, and so forth.

Contributing to this mindset are lobbying groups and various court rulings, one I cited above saying police aren’t compelled to help you, but also – and IANAL and speaking very generally with respect to how police are trained to think by what the courts tend to reflect legally – police can arrest you (some places) for stuff they think might be illegal, even if it isn’t.

Tangentially but relevant – and again, contributing to how police think of their role – asset seizures by law enforcement exceeded property stolen by burglars last year.

So all this is the systemic soil where the police responses are rooted.

So from there, look at the shooting again and think about what the cops are thinking.
Don’t look at it as a moral thinking person, it’ll just piss you right off.

Now, from the legal perspective, because I’m not a lawyer, I had to look stuff up. Regarding the good Samaritan laws – that’s swell and all, but since no one did me the courtesy of explaining WHY police officers, who would be protected by those as well as enjoying personal civil liability and “broad, judicially-created immunity from prosecution,” wouldn’t just go ahead and render first aid even if they had no training or were squeamish about getting a blood borne pathogen.

Why would they not render aid if they would be on the hook for it if it were considered a civil rights violation and a civil suit were brought against them, as I understand it (IANAL), or as it was explained to me, police are covered for what happens in the course of official duty, a civil rights violation would fall outside that area.

As it turns out, police also enjoy personal civil liability and broad immunity from prosecution for NOT rendering aid. (In fact, some prosecutors will side with police if they slug someone attempting to render first aid )

Chicago police can, but are under no obligation to give someone first aid, according to former Superintendent McCarthy: “The officer called 911, I think he fulfilled his obligation.”
And according to police union president Dean Angelo: “Our officers are trained to dial or to call paramedics. They're not trained in first aid, they're not there to supply CPR or to stop the flow of blood.”
As far as I know, McCarthy isn’t a lawyer. Yet there he is giving advice to police officers.

(Some police officers in Illinois have been trained to give first aid and do use that training. But we’re probably going to close those training facilities. Taxes, amirite?)

The laws in other states vary and are unclear as to whether police are required to render first aid to people they harm.
They are, under many circumstances, allowed to use deadly force against a knife wielding attacker, but they are under no obligation to give medical assistance in most states.

Again, and to make it abundantly clear, it’s not where I personally stand on it.

There is an (older) position paper in the California Law Review that looks at legal protections for police who don’t want to provide first aid.
And a position paper from the Florida attorney general explores it as well.


But such things are negotiable in a labor contract.
I haven’t seen the CPD contract or talked to the union officially, but there have been arguments that crime scene policy is at odds with the training (and equipment) officers are given and it sets up officers to fail no matter what they do.

NOLAPD for example, has similar circumstances (although they’re apparently not shielded by good Samaritan laws (IDK?)).

Again, I’m not debating right and wrong or whether negotiated contractual protections should be changed or public sector unions, but pointing to the political structure (IMHO deliberately) failing and how that leads to these kinds of outcomes.

Certainly individual police officers have done and do bad things and other police officers will help them, but that is a symptom of lack of oversight, lack of training, investment by politicians (most particularly in Chicago) in clout-hiring and promotion, - essentially everything this recent article in the Chi Tribune says.

If prosecutors are unwilling to investigate and/or prosecute police officers, if misconduct investigators are TOLD OUTRIGHT TO CHANGE THEIR CONCLUSIONS WHERE THEY FIND OFFICERS WRONGLY SHOT CITIZENS, of course police officers are going to be silent. What’s the use of pissing off fellow officers (where you might not get backup there Serpico) when it doesn’t do a damn bit of good to talk anyway?

IANAL but Paul Geiger is. From that piece: "The city comes out and blames the union contract for their hands being tied," said Paul Geiger, who was an in-house lawyer for the union for more than a decade and part of the negotiating team for the most recent contract with the city. "Their hands are tied because they want them to be tied."

And Steve Greenberg is also an attorney: “Steve Greenberg, who has sued the city and the department on behalf of the family of a fatal shooting victim, agreed. "It's a cozy relationship where the police union gets to cover up wrongdoing among its members and the mayor gets to protect his image. Neither side cares about the truth or addressing corruption," Greenberg said. "The entire system is built to impede the truth."

That this is a long standing and widespread (and racist) pattern (Akai Gurley, Tamir Rice, Rekia Boyd, Amadou Diallo, many many others), that prosecutors everywhere in the U.S. fail to prosecute police officers, that the courts often cut officers loose even when prosecutors (like Anita Alvarez) bring charges...

It’s funny, in researching these fiddly bits on the weekend (wife and kids were out of town) I ran across the supreme court case City of Canton v. Harris, 489 U.S. 378 (1989) which says (paraphrasing) a municipality which fails to train its officers in those essential functions of their jobs may be held liable for subsequent acts of misconduct by employees violating constitutionally protected rights of citizens.
Huh.

So cities are fine with admitting their officers acted wrongly, but shut down the justice system when they are supposed to hold them accountable.
So who is it ya think Chicago was protecting when they shelled out $5 million to McDonald’s family in a settlement? A few individual cops?

It’s not a failure of any individual officers to do their job, it’s a widespread insanity society inflicts upon itself masquerading as a justice system.


But more to the point: “This is a matter of equipping and training police with non-lethal weapons to the point where they automatically pull out a tazer not a Glock to deal with a guy who has a knife in his hand and won't put it down.”

I am knowledgeable about tactical training and have experience in using force under a variety of engagement rules, I know people in CPD, I know the people that train them and the people who have trained those trainers.
For the most part – the best training in the world doesn’t matter if it’s not A. repeated and B. reinforced. I can teach someone a number of methods in dealing with a knife. For example, one of the things I didn’t see in the video, retreating.

Van Dyke certainly didn’t.

I did see McDonald’s hand flinch. From Van Dyke’s perspective that could be the stereotypical “flash of metal” which put him “in fear of his life” because maybe it was a gun (or a knife-gun! Bam! Yeah, it’s stupid. But the press has been so full of bullshit over this case, e.g. “bulletin could find its way into the argument Van Dyke's attorney has been making” gee, that’s not speculative
What did CNN say, McDonald was shot for jaywalking? (0:50)
They keep pushing the “is there going to be a riot? Huh? Huh?” button like coke addicted lab rats. I like how they chased down Van Dyke – IANAJ but what, an accused cop standing next to his lawyer is going to talk to the press outside the courthouse? Has that ever happened? – but ex-Supt. McCarthy just skated off.)

Also, although McDonald suddenly revealed his knife in a threatening way, he was far enough that I wouldn’t consider it whatcha call a spontaneous attack. And the circumstances of the call (“suspect with knife”) everyone at the scene would (or should) have been aware he had a knife. And Van Dyke’s gun was already drawn.

So all that changes the nature of the engagement.

Anyway, yeah, Tueller drill, all that. Know what’s good in keeping distance? Adding distance by backing away. Putting obstacles like, say, a police car, between you and the knife wielder. For police officers making the suspect come to you provides a clearer proof of the threat.
Didn’t happen here.

As far as I know, from WOM and 2nd hand, there weren’t any tasers on the scene. Lack of the equipment itself and lack of training (which again opens you up to liability if you use the taser as someone untrained – from what union reps will tell you, not necessarily the law or subject to civil blah blah blah). So there’s the ILCS deadly force statutes (redundant, yeah, sue me), the police use of force models and procedure manuals governing this sort of thing.

Did Van Dyke follow those?
Well, it’s the same with the first aid thing. He’s allowed to protect himself with deadly force because knives are lethal weapons. (I’ve posted on shock knives and virtual blades before. In close quarters, a handgun is no defense against a determined knife wielder, believe it.)

But he doesn't HAVE to use lethal force. He's not compelled. Unless he has to shoot. Then he has to shoot to kill.
But again, lethal force with a pistol is not the only way (and I’d say not the most efficacious way) to protect yourself against someone armed with a knife. Plenty of ways to train to defend against a knife charge and insulate the public from harm at the same time.

At that, a handgun isn't even the BEST lethal response.

But it’s cheap as hell to train someone to shoot and ignore everything else.

I’m reminded of that video posted above of the U.K. police dealing with the guy with the machete:An average training in the United States is fifteen weeks. Fifteen weeks is nothing. Police forces in other countries have twice, three times as long training as we have here.”It's all about how police officers are prepared to deal with people who pose threats to them or to others. This is not something that we should save money on, but to me, that's exactly what we're doing. We are saving money on police training, saying that it's very expensive to have longer training. And I think it's irresponsible in a democratic society to say that a profession that has the authority to use deadly force, we just should shorten the training because a longer training is too expensive. Basically, what we're doing is putting a dollar sign on people's lives, both police officers and members of the public.

So, the police mindset and the culture are created by the lack of accountability fostered by the prosecutors and the courts and their collusion with politicians. That leads folks in the community to mistrust the police (and the system) and rightly so, and that leads to a vicious cycle of suspicion and divisiveness which affects use of force interactions.

Cui Bono? Because it’s not the rank and file cops. It’s not the people getting shot down or oppressed by the racist system.

Accountability affects street outcomes. It’s as simple as that.

When you have a properly running systems than events like this, the McDonald shooting, truly would be an aberration performed by some out of control racist cops instead of part of a pattern of business as usual.
posted by Smedleyman at 12:28 PM on December 7, 2015 [1 favorite]


Rally tomorrow in Daley Plaza in downtown Chicago. Hoping for huge turnout.
posted by agregoli at 11:52 AM on December 8, 2015 [1 favorite]


"That happened on my watch," Rahm apologizes.
posted by rhizome at 12:15 PM on December 9, 2015


They don't want your apology, Rahm.

They want your resignation.

Sometimes, when you fuck up big enough, your only option is to metaphorically fall on your sword.
posted by NoxAeternum at 12:41 PM on December 9, 2015


Protestors are doing a great job! I'm proud, near tears chanting, "who's city? Our city!"
posted by agregoli at 12:42 PM on December 9, 2015 [3 favorites]


live blog of protests
posted by agregoli at 12:44 PM on December 9, 2015 [2 favorites]


Sometimes, when you fuck up big enough, your only option is to metaphorically fall on your sword.

He has to install his preferred "reformers" before doing so.
posted by rhizome at 2:52 PM on December 9, 2015


A proposal to recall Rahm has been introduced in the Illinois state legislature.
posted by NoxAeternum at 2:42 PM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]




“It's Too Late for Rahm Emanuel, and It's Too Late for the Chicago Police,” Charles P. Pierce, Esquire Politics Blog, 10 December 2015
posted by ob1quixote at 6:37 PM on December 10, 2015 [2 favorites]


There was a story going around earlier this year, that didn't get a lot of pickup in the general news but generated a lot of heat on inside-politics blogs, that the Cook County Sheriff's office hasn't been able to get anyone at the CPD or the mayor's office to take their calls in over a year, so they just started making their own community policing changes and mailing reports. Literally the mayor will not take a call from the sheriff. The chief of police will not take a call from the sheriff. It is fucked up, guys.

However, I think the "recall Rahm" bill is mostly a stunt. Illinois law doesn't favor recall elections, preferring "impeach or get off the pot." One relatively perverse consequence of recalls is that it puts politicians even more at the mercy of special interests who can mobilize petition drives -- which, more and more, is well-funded GOP operations (a la the Koch Brothers) that pay for door-to-door canvassers. (Union mobilization has been falling off in Illinois unless there is an issue they care about actually on the table.) It FEELS LIKE it ought to make elected officials more responsive to the public, but in fact it makes them more responsive to professional political operatives who can raise a lot of money and put a lot of bodies on the street, and it tends to privilege one-sided and single-issue groups who can rage-mobilize over a single point while ignoring politicians who are wildly, but diffusely, incompetent or corrupt. (So, basically the fear is, you end up with (say) a gun rights group mobilizing a petition drive for a recall election every single year, and disregarding how bad or good the politician in question is otherwise, and regardless of the actual will of the constituents. Eventually a highly-motivated group can turn out enough people in an off-year election to get their way.) That's the fear, anyway, and as you may know, Illinois has been shut down since July 1, has no budget, and may not get a budget at all this fiscal year. They're shutting off stoplights for non-payment of electric bills. And a lot of the budget impasse has to do with highly-motivated, well-funded, single-issue political groups. Recall votes also override one of the points of a fixed term (rather than a Westminster-style Parliament), which is to allow politicians to make less-popular decisions for the common good and then ride out the rage of the electorate about it. Guys like Rahm will just turn out their own political machine operation when facing a recall, so the effect would probably be to not put a break on corrupt big-money pols at all, while terrifying little guys like the Mayor of Cairo who has to make unpopular decisions to raise taxes and cut services and tell idiots not to build on flood plains.

So I think the statehouse has traditionally been inclined to turn a skeptical eye towards recall elections ANYWAY, as Illinois law disfavors them, and the current climate in the statehouse has made everyone unwilling to commit to anything they don't have to commit to, because boy is there a lot of money on both sides waiting to go scorched earth next election cycle. There will have to be a clear, bipartisan benefit to get the votes to pass the recall law, and it will have to pass with bipartisan support, because saying "Yes, recall the Democratic mayor of Chicago" is going to turn up spun real ugly in every campaign ad next season. ("Republican Joe Schmoe abused his power in the state legislature to pursue the recall of elected Democratic politicians -- and only of Democrats. What about the six Republican mayors convicted of fraud in 2015? Joe Schmoe goes to parties with them [damning picture of grinning idiots in suits]." "Democrat Jane Doe can't be trusted to vote with her party -- is she REALLY a Democrat?") There will have to be NO money or advertising dumped into the campaign around the bill, or everyone is going to rapidly jump ship. And it will have to be worth it to Rauner to alienate Rahm, Rahm's people, and potentially Obama administration people.

I feel like the mood at the statehouse is going to be, "We're already on the Titanic, why are you trying to make us debark directly on to a trainwreck?"
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:00 PM on December 10, 2015 [7 favorites]


I mean aside from the law almost certainly not being applicable until after the next election cycle (it would probably be against both the Illinois and US Constitutions to make it apply immediately), and such a law possibly requiring a Con-Con especially if it only refers to one elected official statewide, and nobody ever wants a Con-Con because one you open that can you get ALL the worms, not just the one you're after, and we just voted overwhelmingly against a Con-Con in 2008 and we're not required by law to vote on it again until 2028.
posted by Eyebrows McGee at 9:23 PM on December 10, 2015


So, it's come out that Alvarez refused to prosecute a cop that openly admitted to perjury, despite recommendations to do so.

At this point, Chicago feels like a fire in search of a cow.
posted by NoxAeternum at 10:04 AM on December 15, 2015 [9 favorites]


That story is crazy.
posted by rhizome at 3:13 PM on December 15, 2015


From the article:
Not only had she lied, she stated, but police detectives, multiple superiors and her partner, Officer Dominick Catinella, had encouraged her to do so. She said that she had wanted to inventory the photo array but Catinella “wanted her to forget about it because it hurt the case,” according to the prosecutors’ summary.
This seems to so frequently be the case with police proceedings these days.

Say what you want about their biases, but the post-Serial S1 podcast "Undisclosed: The State vs. Adnan Syed" has touched upon this repeatedly, in very compelling ways. There's a culture within the police that says they don't want to create "bad evidence" -- that is, evidence that contradicts the theory of the case the prosecution wants to use at trial. Instead of focusing on finding the facts, they are focused on how they can play the system to "win".

This leads to things like the police conducting interviews or searches, but then pointedly not writing reports, since a written report would have to be turned over to the defense during pre-trial discovery. It also leads to what's described in that article: intense pressure to engage in misconduct at all levels, so that the prosecutor can avoid having to work around a problematic bit of evidence at trial.

Put simply, this is a culture that values convictions over justice. When that's the culture of the police and the DA's office, Chicago is basically what you end up with.
posted by tocts at 5:18 AM on December 16, 2015 [7 favorites]


But isn't that really the nature of an adversarial system? I'd love to believe that law enforcement was in the pursuit of justice, but the system is not really designed that way. Of course, they need to be harshly treated if they are caught cheating (and have a system that does not incentivize cheating), and that is likely a big problem right now, but I don't think you want to get rid of the adversarial system.
posted by Bovine Love at 8:00 AM on December 16, 2015


I think conflating police with the prosecution is a dangerous trail to hike. They have different roles and incentives, and their purposes should not be aligned. Whether they are or they aren't aligned, in various contexts, speaking of them as one unit is not a good thing.
posted by rhizome at 12:20 PM on December 16, 2015 [2 favorites]


But isn't that really the nature of an adversarial system?

I really don't think so, no. You can have an ethical system that's still adversarial. That our system currently incentivizes official actors at all levels to suppress evidence or act in bad faith (or to pretend not to know that this is going on, when done by others) is not an inherent feature of an adversarial system.
posted by tocts at 12:24 PM on December 16, 2015 [3 favorites]


But isn't that really the nature of an adversarial system?

The adversarial system originally meant that crimes were prosecuted by the victim: if someone stole from you, you were supposed to find them and bring them to court. Sometimes this wasn't possible: you can't expect a murder victim to prosecute a crime! In those cases the crime was prosecuted by a representative of the public or government, which is where we get the idea of a "coroner" from: the name means "someone who works for the Crown [i.e., the King or Queen]". This idea, that there is a public interest in prosecuting crimes, gradually drove out most of the private prosecutions. They still exist in many jurisdictions but as a matter of policy they're generally difficult and expensive to conduct.

This development meant that the interests of the prosecution and defense are no longer diametrically opposed. The prosecution isn't working for an individual; it's working for society as a whole. Society's interests aren't advanced when the wrong person is convicted; on the contrary: it often ruins the defendant's life and it lets the guilty party go free. This is why we place constraints on the prosecution, and why it's so important to stop them measuring their success by the number of convictions. That's not what they're there for, and that's not what society needs.
posted by Joe in Australia at 1:01 PM on December 16, 2015 [1 favorite]


All the cases those cops are on who are connected to this are going to be open to questions of perjury. Could be the worst kiddie rapist, mob boss, human trafficking bastard, but now he might get to walk because if they lie about the McDonald case, hey, why wouldn't they have lied about that one too?

It just destroys honest police work.
posted by Smedleyman at 5:46 PM on December 16, 2015




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