Page 11 - June 2017 Newsletter

SecondVice President’s Report
Stop this madness
I’ll never forget Lee Westerly (name changed). He was a gang member who tried to set up shop along Devon Avenue, where my partner and I patrolled every day.
My partner, now a detective, was relative- ly new to the job and wanted to learn every- thing. As we drove around the neighborhood, it seemed we ran into Westerly every day. One of our first introductions was when he beat up
his pregnant girlfriend. But in a short time, we became aware he was trying to set up a dope spot, a place where he could sell narcotics every day at great profit.
Westerly was a dangerous guy. He had a significant rap sheet. Devon Avenue had been improving, however, and we wanted it to continue getting better.
So when we saw Westerly up to something, we checked it out. All of our stops were legit. He drove around in a car that had no tags on the plates, was damaged, and he broke every traffic rule in the book. When we stopped him, we wrote him a ticket.
After a while, he got mad. One day, while working the north end of the district, we saw him again. He was parked in the middle of the street, so we stopped him and wrote him a ticket. He got mad again.
Four days later, we got notice that he filed a complaint against us, accusing us of all kinds of things we had not done.
This was about a decade ago.
Times have changed.
These days, something’s going on in Chicago that few
members of the news media or the political establish- ment want to acknowledge. It is the hesitancy among many Chicago Police Officers to engage in the kind of po- licing that would help stem the tide of crime in the City, where the rate of murders hit a record high in 2016.
Why are Chicago Police Officers so hesitant?
Because Police Officers don’t believe the system of eval- uating their performance and the system of overseeing their conduct is fair. They believe it is seriously biased against them.
How biased?
Well, many Chicago Police Officers believe that the real intent behind many complaints is to get the Police off the back of those committing the most, and worst, crimes, and to provide easy opportunities for lawsuits by the ever-increasing number of attorneys making a living by suing the Police.
This is why FOP Lodge 7 will not be willing to give in when it comes to new discipline policies in the upcoming contract negotiations. If the City is not utilizing the cur- rent measures fairly, why should we settle for new ones?
Once the door is opened on these measures, they are all but impossible to close.
There is IPRA, soon to be COPA, IAD, lawsuits, micro- phone recorders, cameras in cars, cameras on officers, members of the community recording officers, main- stream news media always looking to slam the Police and a large section of the political establishment looking to do so as well.
After Westerly’s complaints against us went nowhere, he eventually disappeared from the neighborhood. We like to think that we had something to do with that, and that the continued improvement of the neighborhood was due in some small way to the pressure we exerted on the gang members there.
And I wonder what would happen these days with the same pressure. Westerly, like so many gang members, would likely become resistant and combative on even the slightest interaction with the Police. And his allega- tions, no matter how absurd, would take shape in some form or another. And the Police Officers who would have otherwise stopped him and hindered his aspirations in the neighborhood, well, they might just drive by and say, “Forget about it.”
Which is one reason why the FOP must fight any new disciplinary measures in the upcoming contract negoti- ations. d
MARTIN PREIB
How much more can Police be scrutinized, anyway?
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ JUNE 2017 11