Page 5 - February 2017

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FRATERNAL ORDER OF POLICE CHICAGO LODGE #7
EXECUTIVE BOARD
DEAN C. ANGELO, SR.
President
RAY CASIANO, JR.
First Vice-President
Frank DiMaria Second Vice-President Daniel D. Gorman Third Vice-President Greg Bella Recording Secretary Kevin Kilmer Financial Secretary John Capparelli Treasurer
Bill Nolan Immediate Past President John Dineen Parliamentarian
Sergeants-at-Arms
Bill Burns Al Francis, Jr. Jim Jakstavich
Trustees
Robert Rutherford, Chair Dean Angelo, Jr. Mark Donahue
Pat Duckhorn Sergio Escobedo Kathleen Gahagan Michael Garza Joseph Gentile
Ken Hauser
Tom Lonergan Kevin McNulty Landry Reeves
Inez Riley
Jay Ryan
Steve Schorsch
Ron Shogren Daniel Trevino
Field Reps
Keith Carter Marlon Harvey Thomas McDonagh
Magazine Committee Members
Greg Bella, Chair Joseph Gentile Bill Burns Thomas McKenna Michael Carroll
President’s Report
DOJ Final Report
we had previously addressed – such as training, equipment, promotions and technology – be front and center in their document, so that our members might have something to look forward to. Again, it came as no surprise that the DOJ did not give us everything we asked for. But then nowadays, who does?
As everyone knows by now, and exactly as we pre- dicted, the Department of Justice (DOJ) released the Final Report before the pres- idential inauguration. It came as no surprise to the Lodge that the Final Report contained shallow claims of
NON-STOP DOJ Interview Requests
DEAN C. ANGELO, SR.
how the women and men of the Chicago Police Department engage with minority populations. Also, as predicted, the Final Report fell short of including any of the supportive variables that we are convinced would assist in justifying much of the DOJ narrative. Without much diffi- culty, one could conclude that the DOJ’s decision to not include any supportive crime-related data to address the causal factors of police interactions in communi- ties of color was due to either the DOJ’s rush to close out the report before the inauguration, or because addressing the relationship of violence to policing and communities of color are issues they were directed to avoid altogether, which in fact is another prediction we made early on.
During the days prior to our scheduled National Labor Coalition presentation, immediately after the release of the DOJ’s report (and for nearly the week that fol- lowed), our phone was blowing up from media request after media request after media request. While waiting to board a plane at O’Hare Airport two days before the DOJ report was released on Friday, Jan. 13, phone calls from several media outlets began, each asking for what we thought the report might contain. It appeared that each of the pre-flight reporters were more interested in speculation than substance. Needless to say, most of what we spoke of actually turned out to be included in the Final Report. Obviously, the flight itself caused the calls to be delayed, but that all changed immediately upon landing. Once the phone was rebooted, the calls were already stacked up and our speculation picked up exactly where we left off.
When we had our final meeting with the DOJ examiners in mid-December, we dis- cussed several concerns that dealt with whether the DOJ would end up authoring a narrative so negative that it would wind up overshadowing any positives we hoped would be included. We also cautioned the DOJ to not repeat what happened the last time the city attempted to examine the CPD, which ended in a biased claim of “systemic” racism that unfairly labeled everyone. We cautioned that a repeat per- formance of that negativity would not only be undeserved, but that it would fur- ther fracture whatever morale might remain. We asked that DOJ recommenda- tions for any improvements in the areas
The next day was a repeat of the day before, except that the phone calls began at 6:30 a.m. and continued late into the evening. The Final Report coming out sometime on that Friday appeared to be something every reporter was anticipat- ing, and some gave the impression that they were given “confidential” in- formation that the report was going to be released at a midday press conference. There were even two reports that not only
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