Page 5 - July 2017 Newsletter

CHICAGO LODGE 7
Official Magazine
President’s Report
FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE CHICAGO LODGE #7
EXECUTIVE BOARD
KEVIN GRAHAM
President
PATRICK J. MURRAY
First Vice President
Martin Preib
Second Vice President
Jay R. Ryan
Third Vice President
Greg Bella
Recording Secretary
Michael P. Garza
Financial Secretary
John Capparelli
Treasurer
Dean C. Angelo, Sr.
Immediate Past President
Sergeants-at-Arms
William Burns James Jakstavich Michael Mette
Trustees
Harold Brown Andrew Cantore Mark Donahue William Dougherty Pat Duckhorn Sergio Escobedo Fernando Flores Joseph Gentile Danny Gorman Ken Hauser Rick King Frank Quinn Carlos Salazar Ron Shogren Mark Tamlo Daniel Trevino Michael Underwood
Field Rep
Robert Bartlett Rich Aguilar
The ‘Code of Silence’
Recently, I was asked to appear on WTTW Channel 11’s Chi- cago Tonight, along with civil rights attorney Locke Bowman from Northwestern University. Bowman, in my opinion, does not have much respect for the Chicago Police Department. The inevitable allegation arose from this attorney about a “code of silence.”
After serving more than 30 years as a Police Officer, not all of which was with the Chicago Police Department, I have to say that this “Code of Silence” is largely a myth. Mistakes are made, and sometimes there is police misconduct, but the claim that Police Officers routinely conspire to cover up evidence and police wrongdoing is not true. I believe the statistics bear it out. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Police Officers are the good guys. Police Officers are the ones who
are enforcing “civil rights” day in and day out.
Certainly, there is a brotherhood among Police Officers, but it is a broth-
erhood rooted in a desire to enforce the law fairly. We look out for each other and we keep each other out of harm’s way. Unfortunately, some- times the greatest threat comes from politicians who think they under- stand police work and know how a police department should be run. Instead of sticking to budgets and plans to get more money into the De- partment that will keep officers safe from the criminals who want to harm us, many politicians pander to criminals and groups that have an agenda to see the police fail.
I cannot understand why some people choose to believe that two Police Officers who never met each other and have no financial or other gains to be made would somehow conspire to commit a felony and cover up a crime, an act that could potentially cost them their jobs and their pen- sions, and even risk jail. This seems to be a better story than a couple of
KEVIN GRAHAM
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