Page 11 - August 2017

First Vice President’s Report
Concerns about COPA’s true agenda
Times sure have changed since I started working as a patrolman in Englewood. It was 1990, and Englewood was a dangerous area with lots of gangs, just as it is now.
I was lucky in a lot of ways. Shortly after I arrived in the district, I found a good part- ner in Mike Grantz. The son of a policeman, Mike was great to work with. He was a street- smart guy, a south sider from McKinley Park,
hardworking, and he always treated people fairly, no mat- ter how stressful the situation. We got along great, and I learned a lot about policing from him — lessons I took with me throughout the rest of my career.
But now, as First Vice President of the FOP, I can see clearly that being the kind of policeman I was in 1990 is not really feasible anymore. And that’s a shame, because despite the relentless Greek chorus from Chicago’s media about how dirty the police are, the truth is that, by and large, we did a good job under the most difficult situa- tions. I always say that a good Chicago cop was as a good a police officer as any in the country.
Our word used to stand for something. Now, it doesn’t.
The reason things have changed for police officers is that too many forces are lined up against them that make their jobs too hard.
Starting this month, for example, it will get even worse, as the new City agency overseeing police misconduct, COPA, comes into being. This agency, which promotes itself as an entity to investigate police misconduct, is a sharper, more streamlined agency than IPRA, the last hopeless incarna- tion posing as an agency that investigates police miscon- duct.
By all reports, COPA is going to be an aggressive anti- police force in the City, with strong legal representation and sophisticated ways of jamming up police officers, even for essentially innocent mistakes.
Many of these allegations will be ridiculous, as are many of those with IPRA. This will have an even further negative influence upon morale when police are needed to combat the violence in a city with 800 murders in one year.
One particularly dangerous consequence of this anti-police agency is the cost of legal defense at the FOP. Legal defense is my job. I’m in charge, among other things, of assigning attorneys to police officers who are called into cases in which COPA is investigating the police. By all accounts, COPA will be coming after a lot more police officers, meaning the FOP will be forking over a lot more money for representation.
We are going to need more lawyers at the FOP, and we are going to have to change our strategy. The days of strict- ly playing defense are over. We need our attorneys to pick
out the evidence of misconduct in the movement to vilify the police, then get them to go after these offenders with the same zeal they go after us.
How important is it?
I think it’s all important, and let me tell you why.
I sometimes wonder if the endgame of all this anti-po-
lice hysteria in the city isn’t to bankrupt the FOP. If the anti-police movement can relentlessly attack the police through endless accusations and investigations, the FOP could go belly up.
Is that what is really going on with COPA?
Let me tell you something I learned many years ago working in Englewood with my partner, Mike Grantz: Po- lice is an art that takes years to master. It takes officers with guts and smarts. But when a City decides to take the word of its most violent, criminal members over that of a working cop, well, then, that’s a step toward chaos.
I didn’t work all those years in Englewood to let things come to this.
No, to hell with that. d
PAT MURRAY
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ AUGUST 2017 11