Its about time, that place stinks from the head down, from the unjustified shooting, the secret jail, erased tapes. I hope they clean house.
Fish rots from the head… Start with the head.
The whole thing is so sad. The kid was put into foster care at age 3 and then killed for no reason by people who should be protecting us. I just think of a cute little 3-year-old being thrown out, kicked around for years, and then executed. It’s just horrible.
They need to do something about the false statements the other officers gave. If officers providing false statements face consequences things might begin to change.
@tom1944 sadly nothing will happen, the blue wall of silence wins again
I dont think Rahm is going to last. Apparently more videos will be released, which will add fuel to the fire.
If they begin to prosecute officers where their written statements/reports are shown to be false based on video they will begin to stop the lies.
The other day my staff was going to seize a business and we always bring a police officer. As they were going in the officer pointed to his chest and said I have a camera.
Proudly my staff said that is fine we have nothing to hide.
Hopefully these videos will change things for the better.
@tom1944 It sounds so easy, yes we now have video. But then I remember, there was video of Tamir Rice playing in the park, when the officer jumped out, gun blazing, heck he hasnt even been brought up on charges. There was video of Eric Garner being choked to death. Then lets talk about the prosecutors, cops and others that either manipulate, remove, or suppress the video. Or lets talk about the officers in California who were turning off their body cameras.
Im sorry I am so angry about all of this. Some will never know until you are either a Black man, or you have a Black son. And for the record, this is about cops in general, because there are plenty of cops who are minorities and they are just as guilty as well. Until the blue wall of silence breaks, I fear these stories will continue.
I read a recently released summary of the investigative report about the abuses of the Chicago Police Department. The criminal justice system in Chicago is just awful. Atrocious and plain immoral. And yet the amount of denial and outright defiance is astounding. I read that the cop who executed the McDonald lad has been hired by the Police union. Has anyone else also read or heard this? If he has indeed been hired it indicates that the PD leadership has no intention of cooperating in reform.
The Chicago PD has been notorious for a long time, anyone remember the police riot in 68 at the Democratic national convention? The thing about cops is this isn’t necessarily about racism (it is in certain cases), but rather the whole think blue line nonsense that seems to affect all cops, no matter what background they are from. For example, there have been studies that show that black and hispanic cops are more likely to use their weapon than white cops in the same situation, and basically what this all comes down to is more the 'us versus them mentality" from what I can tell. In the Gray case in Baltimore, the cops accused were mixed black and white (and maybe hispanic), for example. I think a lot of it comes down to contempt for the people they supposedly serve, where it comes down to “us” versus them, and these kind of things happen when they have that kind of mentality.
I think it was highlighted to me a couple of years ago, when this cop had been drinking with buddies after work, ended up running down a young woman crossing the street, and his fellow cops made sure he wasn’t taken to the hospital until like 8 hours later to do the blood test, to make sure he had worked off whatever he had been drinking, and it ended up they couldn’t charge the cop with dwi and charge him with murder, it ended up being a vehicular accident and I don’t think the cop was charged with anything criminally, nor were the cops who covered it up. What the cops can’t seem to comprehend is they are making their job that much harder by doing this, that their actions just make people trust them even less, and they complain about being treated like invaders or people don’t trust them, well, guess what, they might have reason to.
Having lived in Chicago, I am not surprised. The Federal Courts have been investigating Cook County Jail and the Metropolitan Correctional Center (MCC) for years. I have little faith that either the FBI or the Federal Court investigations will come to anything. A real shame.
One thing that shocked me was how the DA’s go over to Cook County Jail with blank plea agreement forms, say a few words to the inmate, and then enter some numbers and shove the agreement through the bars. It’s like a bazaar. I was a prison visitor and one guy showed me his plea agreement. If he pled guilty, he’d get 15 months. If he went to trial, he faced 15 YEARS or more (with an conviction rate of 93%). Of course he signed. Who wouldn’t.