Posted on 05/06/2003 11:41:48 AM PDT by CHICAGOFARMER
Veteran cop sees modern police methods failing
May 5, 2003
BY MARK BROWN SUN-TIMES COLUMNIST
Jimmy called. He wanted you to know that he's outraged. He's outraged by the killing of the children. He's more outraged that there's so little he can do to help.
Jimmy is supposed to help. He's a Chicago cop, has been for more than 30 years.
"Nothing else but a street cop," said Jimmy, "every day out on the street."
But these days, Jimmy thinks he's the one wearing the handcuffs.
"Nobody fears us anymore. Nobody respects us anymore," Jimmy said. "The police are now toothless tigers, and everybody knows it. There's nothing that honest, decent cops can do. We're powerless, and the gangs know it.
"As an everyday street cop, I'm outraged. I'm incensed. "That pendulum of justice is stuck, and it's not coming back for the honest people. It's not coming back." Jimmy tells me this in a voice filled with pain as much as anger. It's the pain of someone who has seen more than his share of dead kids on the street.
"It's one of the most chilling things I could ever experience," he said, the emotion behind the words suggesting that the subject evokes mental pictures still haunting his brain. "They should just see these little kids and what's happened to them."
The "they" in this case refers to more than just the criminals. It's meant to include all those that Jimmy sees as impediments to the police doing their job: the courts and lawmakers, civil liberties advocates and plaintiff's lawyers, City Hall bureaucrats and news media who have set the modern rules of engagement for the police.
Jimmy won't have to see many more dead kids himself. He's getting out.
"I'm just sorry that it's ending this way," he said. "I do have the power, in my heart, in my brain, to bring justice." His solution? "Turn back the hands of time and loosen us up and let us go, and I'm not advocating brutality. I'm not that type of person."
It's not that I agree with everything Jimmy has to say or fail to recognize the flip side arguments, but I hear a lot of police saying the same things, and if we're going to stop the violence, we at least have to listen to the people we have saddled with the responsibility. Jimmy agreed to meet me for a cup of coffee to continue the conversation with the promise that I leave his name out, which I don't like, but the Police Department doesn't exactly encourage its employees to engage in full and frank discourse with newspaper reporters, so that's where we are.
Jimmy showed up in his street uniform, that being a navy blue sweat shirt and jeans. He sized me up on the move and then searched out the table in the farthest corner of the restaurant. His eyes were tired, but his hair still dark and full, his moustache droopy.
"Fear is needed for evil people," Jimmy said, picking up where he left off. "We deal with evil people. Fear is what they deal in. Some people need fear."
Jimmy bristles at the restrictions placed on police by the city's gang loitering ordinance, which requires officers to identify and document crime hot spots before conducting what we used to call sweeps.
Jimmy believes that if he sees somebody who causes him suspicion, whether on the street or in a car, then he ought to be able to stop them, pat them down for drugs or weapons and tell them to leave.
"I turn the corner, and I get what I get," Jimmy said. The courts, concerned about racial profiling among other things, would prefer a little more in the way of probable cause.
"Coppers don't look at it like racial profiling. That's an outrage," Jimmy said. "We don't just arbitrarily stop people. I don't care what people say. We know why we're stopping people."
"Cops are doing less and less street stops. The street stop was the best tool we ever had. We used to go block to block in high-crime areas. We can't even call them high-crime areas any more because they don't want to disparage the neighborhood."
Jimmy, as you might suspect, is a white guy, and perhaps not particularly sensitive to the profiling issue, but most black cops will tell you pretty much the same thing.
Among Jimmy's other frustrations are the police department's year-old restrictions on paid overtime, the new rules against car chases, police officers being made personally subject to lawsuits and an overemphasis within the department on statistics that he believes are manipulated to create an illusion of reduced crime.
It's all combining to create a situation where frustrated police officers are doing less and less policing, he said. What's worse, the gang members selling drugs and other criminals know the police restrictions as well as the officers and take advantage. To describe the situation in high-crime neighborhoods such as Englewood, Jimmy adopted some of George Bush's rhetoric from the Iraq war.
"Maybe they are as oppressed as the people were under Saddam," he said. "Maybe they need freedom. Every kid has the right to live. These evildoers have crossed the line. We've got to get the line back."
Jesse Jackson's legitimate half-brother is head of al-Rukyn, Chicago's most violent gang. Used to be called the Blackstone Rangers.
And, by the same token, anyone who suspects a cop of being on the take should be able to examine all their bank transaction records, search their homes for stashes of cash, narcotics or stolen property, and wiretap their telephone conversations.
Isn't it funny how the most crooked cops in the most notoriously corrupt departments demand the most power for themselves, to go hand-in-hand with their exemptions from the laws they enforce on others.
-archy-/-
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