Page 30 - February 2016

Lodge 7 President Dean Angelo, Sr. was part of the Illinois Campaign for Political Reform forum to discuss how City Hall and the CPD work together.
Department are systemic and go back maybe 100 years is not news.
But President Angelo expounds on the low morale state- ment by noting that there is only so much members will ignore after hearing day after day that they are bad people, that they need to be retrained, that they don’t know how to do their jobs.
“I concur that morale has taken a big hit, and it has for a long time,” reports Marlon Harvey from his work as one of the Lodge 7 Field Representatives. “But this is like a boxing match. We’ve take a couple of shots here and there, and now all of the sudden we have been hit with a big haymaker. And the trust is gone.”
The breaking points that have been generating headlines have been well-documented on every TV station, every radio program, in every newspaper for what feels like 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Members should make sure to absorb the “President’s Report” that leads off this issue of Lodge 7 Magazine to interpret the breaking points that have been driving the headlines.
Upon further review, the hullabaloo about de-escalation is,“insulting,”Angelo,Sr. asserts.“We’veallbeende-esca- lating since we got out of the academy. Like I didn’t know what I was doing for the last 20 years. Give me a break.” As for the call that the public wants the police to cure every- body’s addiction, diagnose their psychoses, repair their marriages and help their children, he tells, “We can’t be everybody’s Swiss Army Knife. We’re the police. Our job is to enforce the laws.”
Although the numbers about numbers of weapons taken off the streets of Chicago the past seven years, the numbers of arrests resulting from that work and the miniscule num- ber of corresponding police-involved shootings are worth repeating, do the math: Less than 1 percent of all those inci- dents have resulted in police-involved shootings.
So as for the politicians using the attacks on police to get elected, well, that statement has, and probably should,
“We can’t be everybody’s Swiss
Army Knife. We’re the police. Our
job is to enforce the laws.”
Dean Angelo, Sr.
make it into every interview. Elected officials placating vot- ers by beating up police is, of course, another breaking point, as is campaigning on the anti-police approach rather than the anti-crime tactic of elections gone by.
“The problem is that everybody is second-guessing and it inhibits your ability to do the job,” Harvey surmises from his contact with the members in the field. “You can’t be pro- active. You can’t be creative. You can’t apply yourself. Most officers I know love their jobs, so to come to work every day knowing that someone on the other side doesn’t want you there, and if they could, they would get you off the job, you can’t do the very job you love.”
In going for broke, is it possible that actions speak louder than words for the other side? The new stop order proce- dure is creating additional hours of paperwork and is another issue the media wants to discuss with Angelo, Sr. Dane Placko of Fox News 32 came to the Lodge with such an interview request, and from behind his desk and in front of the camera, Mr. President explains that the flaw in the new stop order is that it was conceived without any input from the very officers who are using the form.
He further relates that if the stop order was supposed to lead to better policing, then why have contact cards dropped by the thousands? Nobody is giving the FOP an answer.
“The problem with all the reactionary litigation and doc- umentation of what police do is that you need police involved in the process,” Angelo, Sr. elaborates for Fox News. “Is this part of the ‘gotcha’ process?”
The refused-to-be-beaten path
Beyond the breaking points, the voice reasons as to why Chicago Police Officers, why Lodge 7 members, might be broken but will not be beaten. He implores that, above all, control the anger because the task at hand is to represent the members, and the path is more formidable than ever because there is nobody to ask what they did before because what is happening has never happened before. But that doesn’t subdue the voice of the membership.
The political publication reporter is pushing on the issue of endorsing a candidate for State’s Attorney. He sees this as an opportunity to rise above the politics and make the statement of unity, the statement of strength that all should hear.
“The Police Department and the State’s Attorney’s Office used to have a very symbiotic relationship,” President Angelo dissertates. “We arrest the bad guys, they prosecute the bad guys and we try to get them in prison for as long as possible. With a lot of the case work that goes on at 26th Street, the success rate is based on the police work and they skill sets they have.”
The reporter is stunned to learn that police shootings went down in 2015 by 33 percent as compared to the previ-
30 CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ FEBRUARY 2016