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The [Thursday] Papers"Months after revealing the Chicago Police Department set up sobriety checkpoints almost exclusively in African-American and Latino communities, the Tribune has found that the pattern continues," the paper reports. "Between March and August, Chicago police scheduled 14 roadside checks, pulling over drivers randomly to check for drunken driving and other violations. Nine of the checks were in majority black police districts. Four checkpoints occurred in a predominantly Latino districts. There was one in a majority white area. That's despite the fact that the Tribune has in the past shown some predominantly white districts in Chicago had more alcohol-related crashes than many minority districts." Consider: No corner of the city had more checkpoints than the Harrison District on the city's West Side, where police have scheduled three of the random stops since March. An earlier Tribune analysis of state traffic data found that the majority black district ranked 10th out of the city's 22 districts for the number of alcohol-related crashes in recent years. Rahm? "[We] respect the hard work of the men and women who protect us every day and do it in a way that's also consistent with our values of being fair and progressive." Oh wait, that's him defending his proposed $500 million property tax increase. "I want to be clear as mayor what our values are. And there is no place for discrimination. No place for racism. And no place for expressing discriminatory or racist views. You represent the city of Chicago and all of the people that pay your salary." Oh wait, that's him commenting on a cop who said Michael Brown deserved to be killed. "Mayor Rahm Emanuel's office declined requests for comment." There it is. Good job, Rahmie. * From the Trib in May: "A Tribune investigation found that in Chicago, 84 percent of the roadside checks were scheduled in areas populated mostly by minorities while roadways in areas with more DUI-related crashes that are predominantly white are checked less often, or not at all." * FYI, from a Trib editorial in May: "The Chicago Police Department has good reason to use checkpoints. But it should review how they are assigned. Targeting minority motorists, even unintentionally, can produce needless resentment and distrust of law enforcement. If there's unfair enforcement - really, no checkpoints in Jefferson Park? - it could have significant consequences, letting impaired drivers operate more freely in some areas than others." So funny - the editorial board's concern is that drunk drivers are operating more freely in some areas than others, which misses nearly the entire point of the paper's investigation, which found yet another bracing example of how the criminal justice system is tilted against people of color. For all they care, the disparity could have found that police districts with fewer trees are targeted more than districts like leafy Jefferson Park - if even unintentionally! Equal up those checkpoints! Guess what: I'm 99.99999 percent sure no member of the editorial board is black and lives in one of the targeted districts. But then, you shouldn't have to be to see the disgrace of this situation - even more so to see that Rahm Emanuel and Garry McCarthy haven't done jack shit to remedy it. It's about values. * P.S.: Maybe the objective of the checkpoints isn't really to catch drunk drivers, but to have an excuse to pull over people of color. "Like other municipalities across the six-county area, Chicago police conducting roadside sobriety checks have written far more tickets for minor offenses than they have made drunken driving arrests." My guess is that this is part of the police department's crime-fighting strategy far more than an effort to keep drunk drivers off the road. Me, again, from May: "The results provide fodder to critics who have long questioned whether the stops are effective - or justify the infringement on thousands of drivers who are stopped by police each year only because they are in a checkpoint zone. They also wonder whether the primary motivation for the checks is to rack up violations and revenue or to find other criminal activity." I strongly advise you read the Trib's stories and the rest of my May column. Con College We call this oddly appropriate public service programming, though it comes just a smidge too late to save College of DuPage from its leadership flimflams. Well done, my friend. - The Andy Kaufman Award European Luxury In Oak Brook - BeachBook Posted by The Beachwood Reporter on Wednesday, September 9, 2015 - TweetWood
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- The Beachwood Tip Line: Here to save the day. Posted on September 10, 2015 |
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