By Steve Rhodes
If it wasn’t for all the corruption, Richard M. Daley would be the perfect mayor, right? And let’s face it, a little grease is needed to make the wheels of government turn. Hail Daley!
At least that’s the way the media sycophants and stenographers tell the tale. And the current “campaign” is no different. Without an opponent the media deems strong enough, the tough Chicago press corps has taken a pass once again at examining the mayor’s record, much less his plans going forward into another term. Why bore everyone with the issues when we’re trying to land the Olympics?
Policy-makers and advocates in the trenches tell a different story, though. The Developing Government Accountability to the People project consulted hundreds of such civic-minded people and organizations to study the issues over the past year to grade the mayor’s job performance. It isn’t pretty.
And yet, even the DGAP’s report card doesn’t wholly reflect the reality of this mayor’s tenure. The Reader’s Ben Joravsky reports that “some of its members privately confessed to me that they felt pressured to inflate Daley’s grades (awarding him, for instance, a C on transportation) because they figured their funding agencies and the media wouldn’t take them seriously if they’d given him all the Fs he deserved.”
Today we run the second of our two-part series excerpting from the DGAP report card. In Part One, we looked at the Environment, Economic Development, Housing, and Transportation. Today we’ll examine Education, Criminal Justice, and Corruption. Read both parts, ehen decide if you really want to cast a vote for this guy – and if he’s as great as the media tells you he is.
EDUCATION: C
“Given questionable methods of data collection and interpretation, concerns abound as to whether progress truly is being made in such critical areas as reduction of dropout rates and increases in college enrollment and completion. Test scores in some areas are up, but many believe this is because test instruments have been changed, creating a situation in which reporting has lost credibility and reliance on these standardized tests is widely discredited.”
Vaunted Retention Policy Fails
“Chicago students who are held back do no better, and often do worse, than students who are socially promoted.
“The retention policy was quietly modified over the past two years, with no public announcement, after it became painfully clear that the rule was doing more harm than good. Far from narrowing the ‘achievement gap,’ this policy actually widened the chasm between academically high-achieving and low-achieving students, driving countless scholars out of the school system altogether. The cost to the quality of life of the city cannot be calculated because the exit numbers are unknown.”
Military Zones
“While everyone agrees that security is necessary, Chicago’s schools are becoming increasingly militarized. CPS has a huge security budget, $53 million in 2003-2004, and armed, uniformed Chicago police officers in every high school. There is a reliance technological devices such as metal detectors, heavy police presence, video surveillance and other prison-style mechanisms.”
Budget Busts
“In 1995, using his new powers to repair budget shortfalls of the early 1990s, Mayor Daley boosted new-school construction and renovation, and completed new projects in neighborhoods most in need of new schools. Unfortunately, these initial exertions did not have long-lasting effects. For instance, numerous new elementary schools were added in the densely populated Little Village and Pilsen neighborhoods. But this early spending could not be sustained, because the basic funding formula used by CPS has yet to be reformed. Today, despite a handpicked school board, millions of dollars from the Gates Foundation, other grant money and a powerful board of foundation partners, CPS again finds itself in financial trouble. The administration plans to plug its projected $328 million deficit by reducing expenditures by $87.5, increasing revenues by more than $165 million and securing $75.5 million in transfers from reserves to the operating budget. It also plans to increase the property tax levy by the maximum amount allowed, the tenth time to do so since 1996.
“Curiously, there seems to be no clear explanation for the system’s current financial fragility. Moreover, this year’s budget is purported to contain ‘ . . . contradictory, inconsistent and unsubstantiated budget calculations and staffing numbers, contradictory special-education enrollment figures, and hundreds of undercounted central office staff.'”
Renaissance Unfair
“This tactic of replacing large, struggling schools has become all too familiar in many Chicago neighborhoods. As Renaissance 2010 moves toward its objectives, at least 60 existing neighborhood schools are slated to be, or have been, closed. The vast majority have been in African-American neighborhoods that serve very-low-income students.
“Some of these concerns could be overlooked if it was clear that the Renaissance 2010 plan was working, but reports of the new schools’ performance are contradictory and confusing.”
The Education Mayor
“Chicago Public Schools are headed in the wrong direction.”
CRIMINAL JUSTICE: F
“Two years before the 40th anniversary of the police riot at the 1968 Democratic Convention, and decades after Lieutenant Jon Burge led the Chicago Police Department (CPD) in the torture of more than 100 African American men, police abuse continues to plague (and cost) the city of Chicago.”
Defending Criminals
“Routinely accused of racial bias, Chicago pays legal fees for defendants and pensions to those found guilty, even of torture. And when police misconduct is charged, city officials invariably trust the officer’s word over that of an ordinary citizen. It protects the department and its officers at any cost and makes it impossible to get details of investigations without a Freedom of Information Act request. Chicago’s citizen-complaint process is so complicated and intimidating that many aggrieved citizens forgo it altogether. Rather than commit the resources necessary to address these issues, Chicago would rather buy Segways for its community service officers and spend money on bomb-sniffing robots of questionable efficacy.”
Secret Police
“The Chicago Police Department is notable for its lack of transparency, openness or willingness to share information, particularly as it relates to instances of serious misconduct. Faced with a ‘blue wall of silence’ in which ‘fellow officers [turn] a blind eye to corruption and later [resist] cooperating with criminal investigations of their colleagues,’ community organizers and academics often resort to Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) filings to have any chance of getting the information they seek.”
Culture of Corruption
“A recently released report by Lou Reiter, a former deputy chief of the Los Angeles Police Department, contends that police officials, including Supt. Philip Cline, have continued a ‘practice of indifference’ toward corruption that ‘makes officers who engage in misconduct feel protected,’ and that police officials make ‘a conscious choice to not implement a reasonable system to identify and remediate officers who exhibit negative performance, behavior and/or attitudinal problems.’
“Although the department denies fostering a culture that tolerates corruption, little is done to discipline the officers whose behavior exacts such a toll on the city, or to deter others from following their example. Statistics provided by the city in a federal civil rights suit show, for example, that the 10,150 complaints of police abuse in the categories of excessive force, illegal arrest, illegal searches, and racial and sexual abuse from 2002 to 2004 resulted in only 18 officers receiving any ‘meaningful’ discipline – a suspension of seven or more days.
“More disturbingly, the Chicago Police Department refuses to put in place a system that protects whistle-blowers, and police rules and regulations prohibit transferring or rewarding police who report misconduct by fellow officers.
“According to human-rights law, the state or governing body may be held accountable under international human rights standards when ‘abuses persist owing to the complicity, acquiescence or lack of due diligence of the authorities . . . ‘ ‘Due diligence’ describes the threshold of efforts a state must undertake to fulfill its responsibility to protect individuals from abuses of their rights. According to this standard, it is Chicago’s responsibility as a city to take effective measures against abuse, to investigate allegations of abuse and to prosecute and bring to justice through fair proceedings the alleged perpetrators. The victims of crimes – abuse by police is a crime – must be provided with adequate compensation and other forms of rectification. According to the most recent report and other publicized and anecdotal evidence, Chicago is largely failing in its due diligence.”
Blind Eye
The CPD credits I-CLEAR with reducing crime and increasing productivity, and it has been lauded around the country as an innovative and enterprising system. While the city and the CPD have embraced this technology to track criminals, it has been reluctant to use the system to analyze patterns of behavior in its own officers. I-CLEAR can detect patterns of criminality – it also has the ability to implement a personnel performance system that would hold all data related to officer behavior and performance. This software could assist management in early identification of potentially problematic officers through patterns of recurrent citizen complaints, pursuits and traffic accidents, firearm-discharge incidents and the like. Officers thus identified could be provided with intervention (counseling or training) designed to improve problem behavior before it becomes untenable. It also would provide the department with the means to rout out the ‘bad apples,’ those officers whose habits have become so ingrained that they have become criminals themselves, and there is no other choice but to exorcise them from the force, and perhaps even take criminal action against them.
“Not surprisingly, the department has not put a premium on monitoring the behavior of its personnel. While a computerized personnel performance system today could assist the department in monitoring officers’ behavior, previous lack of technology should have not been an impediment. OPS long ago could have adopted a streamlined paper filing system that would have performed adequately, if not at quite the level as this automated system. And indeed, OPS was handling these activities on a manual basis, although the statistics cited earlier show very little intervention occurring in the system. Of 662 officers who have received 11 or more complaints, only about 10 percent have been enrolled in one of Chicago’s early intervention programs. Some officers with more than 50 complaints have never been identified. Disturbingly, Chicago never analyzes patterns of accusations against groups that work together, despite strong evidence that officers tend not to abuse alone.”
Witness Denigration Program
“Police treat crime witnesses the same way they treat criminals – those who observe a murder, for example, are brought to the station and stripped of their possessions and personal belongings, including cell phones, shoe laces, etc. They are searched from head to toe and placed in locked interrogation rooms, often for hours. Deputy Superintendent James Maloy has said publicly that he wouldn’t be surprised if more than 100 witnesses within the last two years had been held in these locked interrogation rooms for more than 24 hours. Further, when lawyers or family members come to the station, police often refuse to let them in and don’t report to the witness that the visitor was there.
“Obviously, this practice perpetuates resentment and discourages citizens from reporting crimes. It also hints that police are keeping witness in interrogation rooms until they receive the responses they desire, calling into question potentially thousands of accusations against accused criminals.”
CPD is Racist
“There continues to be great perception of racial discrimination and abuse in minority communities. While there is anecdotal evidence to support this feeling, a wealth of factual data substantiates this claim as well. In 2001, 26 percent of African Americans reported having been stopped by Chicago Police that year, compared with 20 percent of Latinos and 16 percent of whites. Reportedly, sixty-four percent of black males are stopped in the course of a year!
“Examining 911 emergency response time, a WMAQ Channel 5 special report aired in November 2006 detailed how getting prompt service depends on where you live. The story involved a radio disposition called a RAP – radio assignments pending, a list of crimes in progress waiting for police to arrive. The report illustrated that South and West Side communities that are heavily African-American and Latino have grossly more RAPs than white areas.”
ETHICS & CORRUPTION: F
“Since Richard M. Daley was elected mayor in 1989, federal investigations have continued to uncover widespread corruption in city government, including Operation Silver Shovel (1992-2001) and Haunted Hall (1995), and, most recently, the Hired Truck scandal.
“But it’s not only political corruption scandals that have mired Richard M. Daley’s administration. Patronage remains a fixture in Chicago politics, and 2005 and 2006 illustrated its machinations as continuing abuse allegations came to light. Some abuses were banal, like discovery that nine employees of the city’s water department were paid for time they had not worked by having friends swipe their time cards in and out. But many indicate a deep-rooted corruption that stretches to the Fifth Floor. In July 2005, the Chicago Tribune found that nearly four of every 10 people conducting voter-registration on behalf of groups supporting Mayor Daley’s candidacy held city jobs (which prohibit ‘electioneering’), and City Hall employees were convicted of rewarding the mayor’s supporters and political workers with jobs and promotions. Even more revealing was release of a ‘clout list’ during the trial of Daley’s patronage chief, Robert Sorich, in which the city was accused of creating an illegal list of more than 5,000 names of politicians, powerbrokers and mayoral friends vying for city jobs or promotions for their families, friends and supporters.”
Low Bar
“The junior Daley’s funds tend to flow not from unions, organized crime, and industrialists so much as from lawyers, lobbyists and entrepreneurs of the new economy, all, at least on the public record, perfectly legally . . . no alderman, committeeman, or candidate since 1964 has been shot, pistol-whipped, kidnapped, dumped in the Sanitary and Ship Canal, or encased in concrete. This is progress.”
He Doesn’t Care
“It is likely that every administration has issues with corruption, but with a reputation like Chicago’s it should seem reasonable for the administration and City Council to make every effort to rout out the systemic base of misconduct. Unfortunately, a high volume of federal investigations, some ongoing, indicates a lack of real interest in altering the pattern of corruption that plagues the city.
“Several questionable activities directly involve the office of the Mayor.
* A lawyer who was a former Daley aide and head of the Hispanic Democratic Organization directed a $1 billion no-bid contract to a development team he represented.
* A top Daley fundraiser has received 90 percent of O’Hare construction work since 1989.
* The Duff family, longtime Daley contributors with known mob ties, has received more than $100 million in minority and woman-owned set-aside contracts – despite being neither minority- nor female-owned. The Duffs were indicted in 2003 by the U.S. Attorney’s office on charges of racketeering, conspiracy, mail fraud and money laundering.
* John Daley, the mayor’s brother, brokers insurance for a company under indictment for alleged fraud. He earns $400,000 annually in insurance commissions, and the majority of his clients are connected to the O’Hare construction project.
* Brother Michael Daley is paid $180,000 per year as a consultant by Salomon Smith Barney, the investment firm that floats the bonds that generate billions of dollars for city public-works projects.”
Lip Service
“Each time there’s a [new scandal], [the mayor] makes a little change to the ethics ordinance or fires someone. His theory is that there are only a few rotten apples, but the real truth is that the barrel is rotten, and he’s not ready to replace the barrel,” says former ald. Dick Simpson, professor of political science at the University of Illinois at Chicago.”
The Daley Tax
“[The FAA] fined the city $33,000 for closing Meigs Field without giving the required 30-day notice. Still pending is a proposed FAA order that would fine the city up to $4.5 million for allegedly misspending $1.5 million in airport funds to demolish Meigs Field. Besides the $33,000 fine to the FAA, and $1.5 million in repaid misspent funds, the city’s legal bills for the Meigs episode totaled nearly $550,000 through June 26, 2006. To make this event even more of a tangle, the Park District now is concerned that it does not have the money to finish the park that was to replace the airport.”
DGAP Recommendation
“Require Mayor Daley to personally pay the legal fees and the fines for the destruction of Meigs Field, and in the future, for any unilateral decision he makes that imposes financial obligations upon the city.”
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See also Grading Daley: Part One and The [Daley ’07] Papers.
Posted on February 27, 2007