Page 6 - February 2017

ANGELO CONTINUED FROM PAGE 5
• There was nothing the DOJ examined in Chicago that offered sufficient evidence to warrant an addi- tional investigation. If the DOJ would have found something in its examination that could have led to another, independent investigation, it most assuredly would have.
National FOP President Chuck Canterbury, left, and Lodge 7 President Dean Angelo, Sr., participate in a phone conference with DOJ examiners and Lodge 7 Counsel Pat Fioretto.
• A major finding was lost in the narrative that Attorney General Lynch shared during her press conference. According to Gupta and Fardon, no findings of any civil rights violations were discovered related to race. But how could that be possible after hearing the constant flow of negative media reports? In order to understand how that narrative was car- ried out, one needs to carefully read how the DOJ chose just enough descriptive wording to allow read- ers to formulate a conclusion fitting to the negative narrative, even though that type of conclusion is unsubstantiated.
had the exact time frame down, but went so far as to identify everybody who would be on stage when U.S. Attorney Gen- eral Loretta Lynch more or less shared the generalities of the report. Not surprisingly, even though we were told all along that the content of the report and its release were to be held in the utmost confidence, as with just about everything else that deals with the city of Chicago, confidence is in the eye of the beholder and something that is typically much less than confidential.
• Due to the new administration in Washington, D.C., we believe that several of the Chicago team of exam- iners might not be with the DOJ much longer. How- ever, there are numerous career personnel who have been working with the DOJ for years, and will con- tinue to do so in one capacity or another.
Immediately after our presentation to the Labor Coalition on Jan. 13 ended, National FOP President Chuck Canterbury and myself participated in a telephone confer- ence with Vanita Gupta, Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General of the Civil Rights Division, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois Zachary Fardon, Special Litigation Counsel of the DOJ Civil Rights Division Emily Gunston and Lodge 7 Labor Counsel Pat Fioretto with the intent to discuss several aspects of the report. The conver- sation entered into what was in the report, what was not in the report, what the report found and what the report didn’t find.
• Under the most ideal of circumstances, any consent decree would not come anytime soon. Typically, a consent decree follows the Final Report, anywhere from 12 months to 18 months after the report is released.
Even with our most recent attempts requesting that the negative narrative not overshadow any positive aspects (and there actually were several positive aspects within the document), the negative narrative Attorney General Lynch shared just moments prior to the start of our phone conver- sation did in fact become the narrative. We believed then, and continue to hold fast, that the DOJ missed an opportu- nity to accurately address everything that is taking place within the CPD.
Several months ago, we were invited by the National Lodge to conduct a presentation to the National Labor Coalition concerning the nearly three-year search we endured to find a replacement healthcare plan for nearly 10,000 CPD retirees. In order to comply with our invitation, Jack Byrnes from Source One, Tom McDonagh and I attended the annual Coalition in St. Petersburgh, Florida, where we were able to share with those in attendance the process that we experienced for most of our term of office researching, vetting, interviewing and eventually selecting an alternative healthcare offering that we believed would best meet the needs of our retirees, surviving spouses and dependents. The presentation went as planned. The ques- tions were answered. We believe that the information we shared was not only informative, but we hope that it might assist other Lodges if (God forbid) their retirees ever experi- ence the tragedy of losing their healthcare coverage at a time in their lives when they are so desperately dependent on it. One can only hope that no other retired law enforce- ment officer, or members of their family, will ever have to deal with the fear and uncertainty that our retirees were forced to confront, which is why this administration worked
Some of the takeaways from our conversation were:
• Our Washington, D.C., visit was the best thing that we could have done in order to guarantee that our members’ frustrations would be heard. Without being as proactive as we were in this unavoidable process, the only voices that would have been heard in the examination of the CPD would have wound up being from 35th Street, City Hall, demonstrators, offenders, activists and all other non-police (and
non-police friendly) individuals.
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• After sharing our conspiratorial suspicions as to the timing of the release of the report (post-November election results and pre-presidential inauguration), we were assured that the DOJ was “apolitical” and, historically, it does not get involved in politics. On this matter, we will have to agree to disagree!
National Labor Coalition Presentation