TheAgitator.com
Chicago PD Switches to Battle Mode
Monday, May 19th, 2008New Chicago PD Chief Jody Weis was brought in to clean up after a series of police beatings, shootings, and corruption scandals forced out former Chief Phil Cline. Granted, Chicago’s had a violent spring. But this isn’t the solution:
One answer to curbing Chicago’s gun violence, according to police, is putting officers on the streets dressed in full battle gear and traveling in vehicles normally used in hostage and barricade situations.
“I think it acts as deterrent,” Chicago Police Dept. Supt. Jody Weis said. “The first thought is that it’s SWAT and they’ve backed off. I think the deterrent factor is important.”
In addition to the battle dress, police will soon add high powered semi-assault weapons to their arsenal.
Keep in mind, this is a police department which over the last few years has endured high-profile videos of officers beating the living hell out of unarmed Chicagoans, as well as a number of questionable shootings, and a general reluctance to hold wayward cops accountable. Of course, none of this is anything new.
Point is, battle garb may well scare the people in the neighborhoods these cops are patrolling, but it sure isn’t going to help the “us vs. them” attitude. What’s more, it’s hard to see how armed-to-the-hilt patrols are going to stop gang-related shootings any more than normal patrols would.
Pat Hill, a former police officer and the president of the African American Police League, questions the message police are sending to the black and Hispanic communities where the battle-ready officers are expected to be deployed.
“This is the stuff you use in war,” Hill said. “This is what you use in Iraq and Afghanistan. So are they telling the community now that they’ve declared us as the enemy?”
I gave a speech a couple of months ago in which, during the Q&A, an ex-military guy (now an academic) vigorously objected to my use of the term “militarization” to describe this stuff. The military, he said, is far more cautious, careful, and accountable than your typical overly-militarized police force. They treat the citizens of the countries we’re fighting better than American police treat the citizens they’re allegedly protecting.
Make what you will of the merits of that argument. It wasn’t one I’d heard before, but it’s certainly food for thought.
Thanks to Mark Draughn for the tip.
Someday, we’re going to have a major crisis that’s going to result in something like Marshall Law. The us-against-them mentality that is currently being cultivated in our law enforcement communities is really going to burst the seams when that happens. And you can bet, the word reform will be the first word off their tongues as they clean up the corpses littering the landscape.
The obvious is never obvious until it becomes impossible to ignore.
I dare say a soldier fears th Code of military justice more then the police fear the law.Plus rules of engagement can be quite strict.Many operations have a JAG involved during an action.
I think the former military guy you met is absolutely right. There is a much higher standard of accountability for military folks, officers and enlisted both, than is shown in the average PD. I’d have a lot more faith in these SWAT teams if I knew they were populated by former military and actually knew what the hell they were doing.
My buddy, a former army sniper, is the sniper on his towns SWAT team. I’ve known him for 25 years, know the incredible training he has had thanks to your tax dollars, so I feel perfectly fine trusting his judgment when he puts that training to use. What scares me is letting some donut eating tool, getting all amped up serving gambling warrants, put his finger on the trigger.
Dave,
“Someday, we’re going to have a major crisis that’s going to result in something like Marshall Law.”
Are they going to have a Marshall Plan to go along with it to aid in the reconstruction process?
(Sorry, I just couldn’t resist on that one!)
A bit of a nit-pick, but what the hell is a “semi-assault weapon”?!?
And don’t forget the most important point…that the military is more careful and accountable while doing a job that is almost always far more hazardous and difficult than what the police do. It’s a bad day for police officers when they come under automatic weapons fire…for soldiers, it’s often the norm (along with the fact that they’re attempting to do their business in a foreign country where they often don’t even speak the language, and where they’re far less loved than the police).
I generally respect police officers and appreciate the service they render and the difficulty level of their job…but sometimes I think that the cops really just need to get a fucking clue.
It’s also probably telling that Weis apparently wasn’t ever a street cop. Chicago hired him from outside the system, where he had a military and FBI background with no apparent experience as a police officer (since Daley wanted a “fresh” perspective…and because he apparently thought all internal candidates were “corrupt”)
http://cbs2chicago.com/local/police.superintendent.jp.2.598749.html
…meaning that while he’s got plenty of law enforcement experience, he’s got no experience with doing actual police work. So this shouldn’t come as a shock.
Afraid I have to concur with the ex-military officer as well. When I was left in jail with head injuries and not given any medical treatment on the orders of the police, a friend of ours came and visited me.
This friend was a medic in the army and had just returned from Iraq. When he saw the condition I was in, three full days after I was arrested and still untreated still with open wounds and unbandaged, he was furious. He said to me that they treated known combatants, people that they just saw shoot at their own friends, better than they were treating me.
When he got back to base he told his CO, and he told others about what was happening and at least 6 different army doctors tried to see me in that jail but they were forbidden to see me even visit during visiting hours.
When they tell you they are more professional than American cops, believe them. (maybe call them paramilitarized instead of militarized?)
LOL! That very thing was probably passing through my brain cells at the time I typed that. I’ve done worse, though. Once I noticed the phrase don’t forget milk embedded in the middle of a post about Demi Moore.
You know, I absolutely agree with what everyone is saying about the police. You are all absolutely right on every account. You must be, you all are very wise and highly educated souls who are apparently well read and current on all manner of world history.
Perhaps we should vote to disband all law enforcement agencies and roll in the tanks, march in the (18 yo) soldiers. Allow these compassionate souls to stand post in your neighborhoods to watch over you. I wonder how long it will be before they start catching soldiers shooting at women and children and then getting caught raping people as they were tried and convicted by their own Uniform Code of Military Justice did.
Lets see in over like 200 plus years of having some form of law enforcement in the United States how often do we here of police officers breaking down your door in the middle of the night doing raids on suspected people in your neighborhoods then shoot your family because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time?
Oh by the way all you really smart people….police departments all over this country actively recruit separating or recent military applicants all the time. Being a veteran I know. I think the real problem in society lay with the fact that whinny little morons like yourselves have problems with taking responsibility for your own actions and fail to just man up when you do something wrong. I stop traffic violators everyday as a Traffic Crash Investigator and a member of the Traffic Services Unit, hardly anyone I stop ever accepts responsibility for their actions. They would rather go to traffic court, lie before the court about what happens, then they get to call me a liar. Then all of a sudden I play the digital video recording which records 30 seconds before I actually turned my emergency lights on. It displays the event I witnessed and wrote the ticket for and yet the offender still stands their all smug like I owe him something for doing the job I am payed to do.
Officers don’t write the damn laws, the elected officials do, and we put them their. YOU don’t like the laws we’re told to uphold then bitch and complain to someone who can change them. We’re not paid to change the laws just hold your feet to the fire for breaking them.
The military is not an organization that upholds or is even slightly aware of the thin line we have to walk. The line where we have to be polite to people that run over kids because the jerk was drunk driving. No what you catch is the news that after arresting the same person 4-5 maybe even 6 times he finally killed someone and he got smacked in the back of the head because he wouldn’t get into the back of the police car while we scrapped the body parts of the 5 year old that he ran over off the sidewalk.
No you don’t see that, you don’t see the guy beside you who has to put a smile on while talking to a gang member while trying to canvas a neighborhood after a little girl just got raped in the back wooded area of a park right near the gang signs spray painted on the walls where she was found. Yeah I’m sure you’d be able to say,” yes sir, no sir, could I offer you and and your cohorts a ride back to your neighboorhood” all the while knowing these punks had something to do with her rape and they’re snide remarks and statements about pigs that can’t touch them cause the evidence is all but inconclusive.
Don’t bash a cop or anyone else unless you know what your talking about. Perhaps you should go and volunteer to the police department when they start hiring again. Oh wait you probably can’t because your probably a felon or a criminal in general yourself. That’s right, it’s still up to us to have to balance how we treat the guilty and the really guilty without breaking down every night knowing what you did today means nothing because their are 10 more scum buckets like you ready to take your place and I am just expected to bear it and grin without looking disrespectful.
But in the end I really hope you get what you think is best for you….just look at China a decade ago. Military police there. Think you have it rough now being able to spit in the police officers face and getting at worst a rude statement from the officer. Try something like that under “military” law enforcement. It’s only a matter of time before all your civil liberties are curtailed in the matter of national security.
Them make movies about things like this, you just must have missed them.
Best of luck to you all.
I’d heard that “semi-assault weapons” (which I think means military-style weapons without full-auto capability) were going to be standard equipment for many Bureau cars, and it’s probably happened by now, so that would explain his interest—it’s what he’s used to.
The FBI also spends a lot more money per agent than Chicago spends on cops, resulting in better selection, better training, and better equipment. You don’t read about too many FBI agents getting into barfights or beating up suspects.
You can say a lot of bad things about J. Edgar Hoover, but he kept his people well-disciplined, a tradition that hasn’t yet died out. FBI agents rarely go off the reservation—when they do something abusive that violates your rights, it’s Bureau policy.
I think a “semi-assault” weapon is like a “less-lethal” weapon. They’re only kinda-sorta assaulting you with it, the same way a “less-lethal” weapon doesn’t kill you quite as dead as a lethal weapon. (The correct term is “less-than-lethal.”)
I’m sure they meant “semi-automatic assault weapons”–which, actually, is an oxymoron. An “assault weapon” is, by definition, full auto. But consider, as always, the source.
As former military with friends (and now friends kids) in the military, the ex-officer is absolutely correct.
Just think back to that story of how a sniper shot an Army medic (which is on LiveLeak.com) and then the medic’s buddies chased down the sniper. The medic then TREATED the injured sniper THAT JUST SHOT HIM.
How many here would think any cop anywhere would do that?
We do need a new term for the militarization of the police forces. Something like occupationalized…no that sucks…something along that line.
Yeah, that about encapsulates it…. Hide behind that Balaclava and the “Blue Code of Silence” while spewing that bullshit….. Fucking cops.
I have friends and family that have come back from overseas and told me that people from law enforcement backgrounds were just awful to try to deal with. Out of control dumbasses who disrespected and brutalized the natives they came in contact with. Made the populace hate them and destroyed whatever good will and information sources that had been previously been built. They were held in very low regard by those that attempted to serve with them.
Thanks Roger! That was hilarious!
If on the off chance you were perfectly serious, thank you for illustrating quite vividly the “us against them” mentality that we over-educated liberal pussies have come to expect (via the numerous psychological studies and other academic resources we peruse daily.)
When I was a prosecutor, the officers that displayed that kind of attitude always brought the worst cases and never wanted to budge on them; pissed me off to no end.
Roger, you just don’t see it, do you? You can’t possibly get it, because you’ve wrapped yourself in a neat, cozy insular world where long-suffering cops just aren’t understood by the citizens they serve. It’s a convenient denial layered upon denial you’ve bought into that refuses to let you see the growing trouble with police officer who aren’t held accountable for their actions. Look around this website, you poor blind fool, and read case after case of your fellow boys in blue going nuts on people.
I used to believe it was one bad cop ruining it for all the rest, but no more. Not when I see the institutionalized support bad cops get from their departments. Where cops assault citizens, sometimes even murdering them and going unpunished. Where departments repeatedly close ranks after all these incidents and pretend the officers involved were “just following procedures” and did nothing wrong. You folks put your uniform before the law. You put your fellow cops ahead of justice. And you’ve forgotten what liberty and civil rights are all about. The good cops are the exception … an even greater minority when you consider how many cops choose to look the other way when one of their own number does something wrong.
And then the pitiable lament that the rest of us dumb “civilians” just don’t understand a cop’s job. As if we’re supposed to.
Listen close, pal. Put the word out with your fellow gangsters. The people are getting sick of it. We’re not just an armed country, we pay your damned salary. You boys gotta get it through your porcine skulls that you’re not doing anyone any good busting down doors and going commando on poker parties or tips from questionable sources. The more you militarize, the less respect you get. The more you kick people senseless in the streets for daring to question your authority, the less respect you get. The more you taser adolescent boys for having epileptic seizures, the less respect you get. And the more you break down people’s doors in the middle of the night and shoot innocent old women caught by surprise, the less respect you get.
Because, in the end, organizations which do that deserve none.
I’m a white, middle-class homeowner in a predominantly WASP neighborhood. I’m politically active and pay all my bills and taxes on time. I don’t do drugs and am so “square” that cubes see me as a role model. If people like me have decided it’s time to put an end to this, it’s game-over for people like you. Drop the confrontational attitude now. Get rid of the military gear. Get rid of the black storm-trooper body armor. When you see a cop with a head-busting mentality in your ranks, get rid of him. Stop picturing yourself on “COPS” when you go on a no-knock raid and start asking yourself, “What would Sheriff Andy Taylor do?”
On this blog? All the time. Why do you ask?
So, when you curb someone for a traffic violation and as you’re walking up to his window he flips out a badge, you just ask for his license and write the ticket, right? And when you get stopped yourself, you man up and take responsibility, just like you said, right?
That spitting thing…care to put that to the test? Leave your badge at home, drive to another city, and spit in some cop’s face. Let us know how it turns out.
You’re right, we don’t want military law enforcement. Which is precisely why we get upset when our peace officers start arming themselves like the military, driving vehicles like the military, conducting close assaults on people’s houses like the military, and making videos of military-style police action to use as recruiting tools. There’s supposed to be more of a difference between police and soldier than the spelling.
The irony is that these methods aren’t being used in Iraq. As I recall, Petraeus pacified Mosul by taking off the battle gear, going door to door and meeting with people.
In Philadelphia fewer narcs = better police coverage.
The Philadelphia Police department is doing something very different. While they too are increasing the profile of police on the street they are doing so by taking people out of under-cover work. And they are making positive public relations out of the ending of the federal Byrne Grant program at the same time.
http://cbs3.com/topstories/philadelphia.police.commissioner.2.713300.html
May 1, 2008, CBS
Ramsey Reveals Police Department Changes
PHILADELPHIA (AP)
“The 6,600-member force needs more “generalists” — uniformed officers on the streets who will be highly visible in neighborhoods and can quickly respond to any type of crime, he said.
To that end, the Strategic Intervention Tactical Unit was disbanded and its 49 officers were redeployed to district patrols. The Narcotics Strike Force’s 135 officers also were moved to patrol duty, where they will respond to a variety of crimes.”
Anyone who thinks it is his job to ‘ hold you feet to the fire’ has a serious problem.The fact he is a traffic cop is is even worse.This man attitude is what’s wrong with todays LEO ’s.
“Lets see in over like 200 plus years of having some form of law enforcement in the United States how often do we here of police officers breaking down your door in the middle of the night doing raids on suspected people in your neighborhoods then shoot your family because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time?”
How many should it take before it’s an outrage in a “free country”? Hmm? You tell me, since you brought it up: how many innocent and harmless peoples’ lives have to go through the shredder before it starts to really mean something to the concepts set out in the Declaration of Independence and what this country is all about? Tell me this: should I get all worked-up and outraged if it happened to you? Or, should I just count it — your destruction by sheer attitudes like this — as a cost of “civilization” or something like that?
Don’t hand me that “At least it’s not China here” pile, man, and don’t hand me that…
“Officers don’t write the damn laws, the elected officials do, and we put them their. YOU don’t like the laws we’re told to uphold then bitch and complain to someone who can change them. We’re not paid to change the laws just hold your feet to the fire for breaking them.”
…Nuremburg gas, either. It is surely true that a culture ends up dealing in poison and corrosion when it hires people to do nothing but sit around and write laws for more than two centuries, but that’s not going to get you off the ethical and political hook for your end of it.
You’d better pay attention to Psion, above. There are a lot of people out there who’ve had it with you.
I would be shocked by the Chicago Chief or Roger is I didn’t read that kind of nonsense every single day.
If people don’t start speaking out, I’m afraid the endgame for this issue will not be pretty.
Made me think of the intro to Fallout (at about 30 seconds in):
http://youtube.com/watch?v=WkBNKa2KXZE
Yeah I’m bored at work today….
Dissociative:
http://dictionary.reference.com/search?r=2&q=dissociative
“to sever the association of (oneself); separate”
I think ‘dissociative’ works well. For example:
Symptoms of a police force becoming dissociative is the ‘us vs them’ mentality and the increased use of military equipment….
As a point to consider, here in new Orleans we still have a noticeable National Guard presence, army soldiers riding around in Humvees. When i see them out on the streets the concept of them being there bothers the heck out of me, but reality of seeing them also instill trust in a way the local police absolutely do not. The soldiers, perhaps because they are all too aware of their role and all too aware that not only are these people they are protecting NOT enemy combatants, but that they are truly American Citizens, tend to be friendly, approachable, non-belligerent, and seem to act like they are the to serve the communities they are patrolling. Very much unlike the cops they are helping to supplement. That may be just my own observation and feelings on the matter, but I would not at all be surprised if it were a consensus of citizens throughout New Orleans.
I still don’t want soldiers patrolling our streets for all the good reasons we had Posse Comitatus to being with, but while they are here I think our police forces could sure learn a thing or two from them.
After twenty years in which the idea of community policing has been pimped over and over again and this is the CPDs solution? Maybe it would help if someone sent a copy of the Armys COIN manual to get some better ideas than just have the police ride around like a band of invading paramilitary types.
#17 - Psion.
I applaud your comments…although I think calling them “fellow gangsters”…may be too broad a term…I believe many have lost touch with their humanity…and “impunity”…has made them… apathetic.
I too recognize…that there are…policies…procedures…and attitudes…in law enforcement…that are terribly wrong…and they need to be addressed and corrected…so that the confidence… many people once felt…in the legal system…and the respect held…for those sworn to protect and serve…might stand a chance…at being restored. There shouldn’t be an “us vs them” mentality…and…in applying the law…there should be…only one set of rules…applicable to all…”no double standard.”
We as a society…have two choices. Since we are on this earth…for only a short time…we either take responsibility…for our actions…that have caused…pain and suffering…to others…and right the wrongs now…that allowed for such happenings…so that they are…no longer a practice that can continue…OR…be held accountable for them…in eternity.
I don’t believe there will be a closing of ranks…or a blue wall of silence…or looking the other way…on that someday…when in His presence…we will be questioned…about our treatment of others. No one will have immunity.
Hopefully…there are enough of us…willing to speak out…and to make our voices heard…and just maybe…we can fix what’s broken…while there is still time…and we are “here.”
In my son’s memory…I am keeping the faith…
http://www.justiceforsal.com
We’re Losing in Chicago!!!! Civil war is about to erupt!
We must Pull our forces Out now!!
No Blood for… uh… Deep Dish Pizza!
[...] We’ve been talking about the problems with Chicago PD on this site for some time. Unfortunately, new Chicago PD Chief Jody Weis–the guy who’s supposed to clean all of this up–doesn’t seem to get it, either. [...]
I applaud your comments…although I think calling them “fellow gangsters”…may be too broad a term…
Too disrespectful toward the Mafia?
Correct me if I’m wrong, but a Mafia operative who hits the wrong target will not just get a verbal reprimand and a three-day suspension with pay. Indeed, such a person would probably be lucky if he could keep wearing normal footwear rather than concrete goulashes.
It is mind-boggling the extent to which many police departments no longer seem to want to be seen as respectful public servants. They’ve become so invested in their roles as intimidators that they’ve tried to acclimate the public to totalitarian anarchy rather than try to maintain a veneer of civility and legitimacy.