By Steve Rhodes
Wow, you’d think Chicago had never experienced a rise in crime before.
For all I know, Jody Weis is a total fuck-up, but I really want to tell everybody to lay off the guy – and it’s not like I was a big fan of his hiring.
Instead, I’d like to ask Ike Carothers and his fellow city council weasels where they’ve been all these years.
The Daley Show
“The mayor brought in Weis, the former head of the Philadephia FBI office, to restore faith in a department that in recent years had been stung by a series of complaints of brutality and corruption,” the Tribune reports today.
Actually, Daley never really explained why he hired Weis. But it certainly wasn’t to usher in an era of reform.
“This is a very difficult, challenging job and they’re always afraid of beefs because, once they get a beef, you write about it,” the mayor told reporters, whom he blamed for scaring Chicago police officers into not doing their jobs. “[You say], ‘He has 25 C.R. numbers [complaints registered], all unfounded.’ You say, ‘Why? This fella must be a problem’. And you find out most of them are gangbangers and dope dealers [who] filed charges. And they didn’t show up in court or adminstrative hearings. [Yet] you write about it . . . You beat em up pretty good. Now, you want to be their friend.”
Please. The media’s fawning over cops is beyond sickening. Yes, they are heroes, we get it!
But does Daley?
“Although videotapes of off-duty officers beating up people in bars grabbed the public’s attention, it has been the scandal involving the disbanded Special Operations Section that prompted a federal investigation into whether police brass ignored a pattern of hundreds of similar complaints lodged against the officers for years,” the Tribune notes.
“Seven SOS officers were eventually charged with kidnapping and robbing people, and several other officers were stripped of their badges. The federal investigation continues.
Putting the media criticism aside for the moment, consider: The mayor doesn’t believe that officers who rack up citizen complaints are problems. Nor does he find it a problem that an officer who would rack up 25 complaints would be absolved of all of them.
As Mick Dumke writes, it’s not easy to get a complaint filed.
And the idea that it’s gangbangers filing all those complaints is nonsense.
A year ago (See the last item, Richie Wiggum), the mayor was singing the same tired tune.
“Mayor Richard Daley defended the Chicago Police Department and its troubled Special Operations Section after revelations that officers in the unit have been the subject of hundreds of citizen complaints,” the Tribune reported.
“‘We have a very good police department,’ Daley declared. ‘You cannot say there are a few bad apples and write them off just like the media does. You have a few bad apples as well.'”
“More than 1,200 complaints have dogged 57 officers in the Chicago Police Department’s elite Special Operations Section over the past five years,” the Sun-Times reported at the time. “But only four of those complaints have led to discipline: a 15-day suspension and three reprimands.”
Gun Fun
“Mayor Daley wants to raise $1 million to buy back guns and remove them from Chicago streets, but the latest in a string of corporate fund-raisers got off to a slow start,” the Sun-Times reports.
“‘I know you sent someone over there to spy on everybody – like the Sun-Times is gonna [have] a big exclusive [saying], Where are all the CEOs? But, we raised quite a bit of money,” said Daley, who asked the Sun-Times and Tribune to donate $100,000 apiece.”
All I can say is, Barack Obama endorsed the guy.
File Under Duh
“The value of gun buy-back programs came under question this week at a City Council hearing.
“Dr. Carl Bell, president and CEO of the Community Mental Health Council and Foundation Inc., argued that turn-in programs don’t reduce gun violence because ‘the guns they buy back don’t work in the first damn place.'”
Liar, Liar
Someone’s not telling the truth. We deserve to know who.
Brainless
“CTA To Experiment With Seatless Train Cars.”
Passengerless train cars next.
A Maverick Sandwich
McCain vs. McRib remixed by the the good folks at Vocalo.
Here is the original text version, the original audio version, and the Beachwood’s Vocalo page.
We The People
Recent polls show that 12 percent of the population believe that Barack Obama is a Muslim (not that there’s anything wrong with it) and that Rod Blagojevich has a 13 percent approval rating.
The Beachwood Tip Line: Approved by 87.5 percent of the people.
Posted on July 17, 2008