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Understanding What Is Allowed In US Police Departments…

I expect to be dragged for say­ing this, but that’s okay. I find it laugh­able that a police offi­cer who has been found to have ties to white suprema­cy groups would be giv­en a sus­pen­sion and allowed to return to polic­ing our streets.
Policing is a crit­i­cal dis­ci­pline in the sys­tem of jus­tice that is nec­es­sary for demo­c­ra­t­ic societies.
When the police, the first rung in the jus­tice sys­tem, can­not be trust­ed to be fair, just, car­ing, hon­est, and upstand­ing, the sys­tem can­not work.
When peo­ple do not trust the police and, by exten­sion, the jus­tice sys­tem, they take the laws into their own hands. Street jus­tice becomes the alter­na­tive. In com­mu­ni­ties of col­or in the United States, peo­ple do not trust the police, they are more inclined to han­dle things inde­pen­dent­ly, and the results are out in the open for all to see.
The high vio­lent crime rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the black com­mu­ni­ty, direct­ly results from the jus­ti­fi­able mis­trust those com­mu­ni­ties have for the police, which has nev­er served their inter­est but has act­ed as over­lords and executioners.
No one expects police offi­cers to be per­fect; offi­cers are humans who are prone to mak­ing mis­takes like every­one else.
Additionally, police offi­cers are asked to deal with and con­tain some of the worst actors in our soci­eties. Those are not easy tasks; car­ry­ing out those func­tions is some­times ugly, messy, and controversial.
Regardless of race or sta­tion, the aver­age per­son sym­pa­thizes with police offi­cers when they make mis­takes or do what soci­ety asks them to do, regard­less of how ugly the process looks.
As a for­mer police offi­cer, I was always con­ver­sant that the pow­ers vest­ed in me were giv­en to me by the peo­ple and that it was not sup­posed to be abused or used to abuse the very peo­ple who gave them to me.
The pow­ers vest­ed in police offi­cers are not and should not ever be so absolute that they ren­der police offi­cers immune from account­abil­i­ty to the point of impunity.
The American cop, if not total­ly at the point of oper­a­tional impuni­ty, is dan­ger­ous­ly close to it, made pos­si­ble by the United States Supreme Court.
Citizens are pre­pared to give the police the ben­e­fit of the doubt when they make mis­takes in the exe­cu­tion of their duties and cor­rect­ly so. After all, all cat­e­gories of work­ers make mis­takes on the job with­out being sub­ject­ed to imprisonment.
On the oth­er hand, hard­ly any oth­er cat­e­go­ry of work­ers is vest­ed with the pow­er of life and death over the cit­i­zen­ry; the police have that power.
What cit­i­zens are jus­ti­fi­ably incensed about is that on top of the awe­some pow­ers police offi­cers are giv­en, the mech­a­nisms of account­abil­i­ty that have been put in place because police offi­cers and entire police depart­ments abuse their pow­ers don’t even hold police accountable.
On sim­ple issues like body-worn cam­eras, police offi­cers get to deter­mine if they turn on the devices before inter­act­ing with mem­bers of the pub­lic in some munic­i­pal­i­ties. Police offi­cers turn off their body-worn cam­eras when they want to abuse cit­i­zens and are not held account­able. Police depart­ments get to decide in some cas­es whether the pub­lic that pays for the cam­era has a right to the footage on said cameras.
Police depart­ments are allowed to delete or alter footage they deem not use­ful to the lies they tell the public.
At issue in the United States with polic­ing is that the Republican par­ty does every­thing in its pow­er to ensure that the bro­ken polic­ing prac­tices are main­tained and strengthened.
The immense pow­er giv­en to police allows police and pros­e­cu­tors to frame inno­cent cit­i­zens send­ing them to prison with­out the pos­si­bil­i­ty of parole and to the death chamber.
It allows cops to mur­der peo­ple of col­or and then malign their char­ac­ter to jus­ti­fy their demise. This, in effect, is mur­der­ing the vic­tims twice while leav­ing their fam­i­lies with­out redress in the system.
These are not anom­alies; they are well-orches­trat­ed poli­cies and prac­tices that have been put in place to keep one seg­ment of the pop­u­la­tion on top and the oth­er in per­pet­u­al sub­ju­ga­tion. (mb)

Here is an example.


Chicago police super­in­ten­dent defends 120-day sus­pen­sion for offi­cer accused of Proud Boy ties

The dis­ci­pline of a Chicago police offi­cer who was inves­ti­gat­ed for alleged ties to a white nation­al­ist group became a flash­point dur­ing Friday’s wide-rang­ing police depart­ment bud­get hear­ing, which saw Superintendent David Brown on the defen­sive over dis­con­tent with his pub­lic safe­ty plan, bal­loon­ing over­time costs and more.

Ald. Jason Ervin, 28th, ques­tioned Brown on why Officer Robert Bakker received only a 120-day sus­pen­sion over alle­ga­tions includ­ing that he didn’t reveal he was inter­viewed by fed­er­al author­i­ties about his alleged past involve­ment with the Proud Boys.

Brown defend­ed the choice not to fire Bakker and said the inves­ti­ga­tion did not turn up suf­fi­cient evi­dence that the offi­cer was affil­i­at­ed with the organization.

“The Chicago Police Department has zero tol­er­ance for any of its sworn mem­bers being mem­bers of hate groups or asso­ci­at­ed with hate groups,” Brown said in his first pub­lic remarks on the case. “The alle­ga­tions put forth on this offi­cer did not sup­port by a pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence, which is the legal stan­dard, that this mem­ber asso­ci­at­ed with or was a mem­ber of a hate group — Proud Boys or any oth­er hate group.

Brown con­tin­ued, “I will just say from a per­son­al note, I’ve been Black a long time. I would not tol­er­ate an offi­cer being a mem­ber of or being asso­ci­at­ed with a hate group.”

A “pre­pon­der­ance of evi­dence” means the alle­ga­tions being inves­ti­gat­ed must be more than 50% like­ly to be true. Brown said that was not the case with Bakker’s ties to the Proud Boys, but there were “minor vio­la­tions” relat­ed to incon­sis­tent state­ments from the offi­cer to inves­ti­ga­tors about the extent of his inter­ac­tions with mem­bers of the group

“What we did prove is that this offi­cer failed to noti­fy us that he had talked with fed­er­al author­i­ties and some oth­er minor vio­la­tions,” Brown said. “And because of those minor vio­la­tions, we medi­at­ed a very high lev­el of dis­ci­pline. One-hun­dred-and-twen­ty days is a high lev­el dis­ci­pline for what we were able to prove.”

In April of this year, the department’s Bureau Internal Affairs resolved the case with a medi­a­tion agree­ment that said Bakker would not con­test any of the alle­ga­tions against him in exchange for the 120-day sus­pen­sion. The city Inspector General Deborah Witzburg rec­om­mend­ed that Brown recon­sid­er that pun­ish­ment but did not get a response.

On Friday, inter­nal affairs Chief Yolanda Talley gave the sur­pris­ing asser­tion that Bakker in fact was the one who request­ed the 120-day sus­pen­sion in lieu of the department’s much-short­er expect­ed offer.

“I’m just going to put it to you frankly,” Talley said, get­ting a nod from Brown to con­tin­ue. “His sus­pen­sion would not be more than five days for what we were able to prove. We brought him in for a sec­ond inter­view, and he just felt so bad that he was accused of this, he medi­at­ed 120 days. We didn’t offer him 120 days.”

Talley con­tin­ued by push­ing back on the idea of the Proud Boys being a hate group.

“The Proud Boys is not iden­ti­fied as an FBI hate group,” Talley said. “If the Proud Boys were iden­ti­fied as a hate group, this inves­ti­ga­tion would look total­ly different.”

In fact, the FBI does not keep a list of domes­tic groups that have been iden­ti­fied as a hate or extreme group, accord­ing to a state­ment the agency gave the Tribune Friday.

“The FBI does not des­ig­nate hate groups,” the state­ment read. “The FBI does con­duct inves­ti­ga­tions of domes­tic hate groups with­in guide­lines estab­lished by the attor­ney general.”

The orga­ni­za­tion has been des­ig­nat­ed a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

The state­ment said those guide­lines include whether there has been a threat of force, whether the threat can be car­ried out and whether it vio­lates fed­er­al law.

According to pub­lished new reports, as well FBI doc­u­ments avail­able on their web­site, mem­bers of the Proud Boys have, how­ev­er, been the sub­ject of inves­ti­ga­tions into vio­lent acts, includ­ing in 2018, before the alle­ga­tions sur­faced against Bakker.

The city’s inves­ti­ga­tion into Bakker’s con­duct was not crim­i­nal, how­ev­er. Investigators were seek­ing to deter­mine if he had engaged in behav­ior that vio­lat­ed depart­ment rules and reg­u­la­tions, includ­ing whether the con­duct con­sti­tutes con­duct that is unbe­com­ing to the department.

Bakker’s dis­ci­pli­nary case was first brought up when Ald. Byron Sigcho-Lopez, 25th, was the sole mem­ber of City Council to raise his hand in response to a col­league ask­ing the cham­bers, “Can I get a show of hands of any alder­men in this room who would like to see less police?”

Fellow alder­men piped up, “I’ll take his,” in response. Sigcho-Lopez then left the City Council floor tem­porar­i­ly after shout­ing, “Take the white suprema­cists too. … It’s a shame to have white suprema­cists in the force.”

Also dur­ing Friday’s bud­get hear­ing, sev­er­al alder­men pressed Brown on ear­li­er com­ments he made blam­ing high­er-than-bud­get­ed over­time costs on spe­cial events such as next summer’s planned NASCAR takeover of Grant Park. Chicago police has $100 mil­lion bud­get­ed for over­time this year but already spent $112 mil­lion so far on such costs, with more two months left in the year, Brown said.

“Primarily that’s a func­tion of an increase — real­ly an explo­sion of — spe­cial events across this city since Memorial Day week­end, much more than pre­vi­ous years, much more than pre-pan­dem­ic years,” Brown said, cit­ing the Pride parade in June and the 2023 NASCAR street race. “As we add more and more spe­cial events that require secu­ri­ty, we need to under­stand that’s addi­tion­al overtime.”

Special events require orga­niz­ers to find pri­vate secu­ri­ty before they get the city’s approval, but that usu­al­ly is not enough, and Chicago police staffing pow­er is also required. But such events also require police sig­noff before tak­ing place.

“You guys sign off on this stuff and you’re com­plain­ing,” out­go­ing Ald. Tom Tunney, 44th, noted.

Brown respond­ed: “We’re not par­ty poop­ers. We’re not going to say you can’t have the extra spe­cial events that we’ve had this past year, but it does require secu­ri­ty. And so we’re respon­si­ble for mak­ing sure these events are safe.”

Another City Council mem­ber set to retire in 2023, 48th Ward Ald. Harry Osterman, expressed frus­tra­tion with Brown repeat­ing crime is down while fears of vio­lence remain pervasive.

“I don’t feel that you have a com­pre­hen­sive plan to address vio­lence that has bought peo­ple in,” Osterman said. “Because of the lack of a cohe­sive plan, we’re an island. … But the vio­lence spreads every­where and with­out a cohe­sive plan with buy in from folks, we’re nowhere.”

Through this month, Chicago has seen dou­ble-dig­it per­cent­age reduc­tions in shoot­ings and homi­cides — 20% and 18%, respec­tive­ly — over last year. But since 2019, homi­cides and shoot­ings in the city were each up by at least 30%, accord­ing to offi­cial Chicago police statistics.