Page 35 - May2021

Profiles of Chicago Lodge 7 members who are the foundation of the Department
A Wealth of Information
In 22 years as a Chicago Police Officer, Dr. Carolyn
Crump has helped the Department and the FOP
move forward in some very important ways
n BY KIM REDMOND
As a third-generation Chicago Police Officer and fifth-gener- ation Chicago native, Dr. Carolynn Crump’s ties to the area run deep.
Becoming a police officer has always been in her blood. She has Chicago Police Officers on both her mother and father’s sides of the family – and is a third-generation police officer. Numerous family members on the job include her grandfather, father, uncles and cousins — 28 family members in total. Her grandmother served as a CPD crossing guard.
From a young age, Carolynn, her older sister, Marie, and brother, Stanley, were surrounded by positive examples from several police officers, starting at home with their father.
“He always guided us in a positive direction to make ethical and/or the right decisions,” Crump related.
When they were younger, their father, on occasion, would give them a ride to or from school in a police car. During that time, he would allow his children to talk on the P.A. system, honk the horn or turn on the strobe lights. Crump related that when she was at home or in her dad’s personal car, she used to practice her ABCs and draw pictures on her father’s blank police report forms.
Being a cop kid, Crump experienced changes in her vision of policing. When she was in college, she saw the rise in gang- ster rap music that exhibited anti-police sentiments. She didn’t initially understand the negative lyrics because her upbringing presented a different perspective of police officers.
However, she realized the rap music influenced a negative perception about cops. She informed her friends that there are good and bad police officers. She also related that she wanted to become a police officer in the future.
After graduating from the University of Illinois with a bache- lor’s degree in sports management in 1997, Crump had several jobs.
“I juggled several part-time or temporary jobs,” she ex- plained. “The police, fire, healthcare, government and military
professions were considered long-term careers.”
Her sister saw a police job announcement and suggested that they take the police exam. The Crump sisters took the exam, passed and were both hired, following in their father’s footsteps. Crump started the academy in November 1999. Some of her childhood memories resurfaced when she saw her dad’s 9th District partner. She had known him as a part-time clown, ma- gician and musician who used to do tricks for the family. He was
one of her instructors.
She remembers learning to prepare police reports using a
black pen on the blank, carbon-ply police reports. She was shocked that the department still used pen-and-paper reports. At that time, the common technology used was the typewriter. She couldn’t believe that CPD had not enhanced the depart- ment’s resources to generate automated reports that would also collect and retrieve quantitative data for analytical purposes.
After she graduated from the academy, she completed her field training in the 4th District. After that, she was briefly de- tailed to the traffic unit before being assigned to the 2nd Dis- trict.
She later applied for the Unit 125 Data Systems because she felt that she could be an asset to implementing change in tech- nology. She was originally one of the two officers who helped develop the automated police report applications (CLEAR, E-Track, Automated Arrests, Mugshot, etc.) with the computer programming stakeholders. She also used her help desk experi- ences to cultivate change in technology by installing computers
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CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ MAY 2021 35
The Real Police