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creatures are hiding in plain sight. It surely is a tough way to live one’s life, but to each his own.
The evidence shows that Chicago Police Officers are very judicious in following the body-worn camera general order. While this is just a gut feeling, it is the FOP’s experience that 99 percent of the time the BWC exonerates the officers. Many police shootings have been justified by the fact that the body- worn camera captured the offender with the gun, the verbal commands to drop the gun, and that the bad guy’s gun was pointed at the officer or his or her partner. While from a dis- ciplinary standpoint the BWC has been a great advantage to us, COPA still aggressively hunts for that unicorn and tries to hit us with a violation. A shooting will be considered within the use of force policy, but the officer will get dinged on the BWC. Never mind the fact that the officer was ducking from a hail of bullets or dodging a man with a bat: That officer needs to call a “time out” like on a video game, have everyone hold their positions to allow for time to hit that precious button on his vest. Not only is it unreasonable and such an academ- ic response to a real-world problem, it is dangerous to our safety. But “officer safety” has never been a big priority over on West Chicago Avenue.
The most humorous part of the BWC general order is that it is illegal. It is illegal because the City of Chicago rolled out the program without first collectively bargaining with the FOP. In 2018, the FOP filed an unfair labor practice claiming that the program could not be initiated until labor laws were
adhered to. When an employer changes the condition of em- ployment or our working conditions, the employer must first collectively bargain with the employees. An administrative law judge ruled that the City had engaged in an unfair la- bor practice and that essentially the City cannot discipline us until they bargain with the FOP. Of course, the City has taken a different view on this, and recently we just saw our first complaint filed at the Police Board alleging an officer be terminated over failure to activate his BWC during a shoot- ing. So much for progressive discipline and any empathy to an officer in a gun battle.
The end result is that COPA is going to start to get even more aggressive with the BWC allegation. Expect many more allegations to be added to all charges that we have to answer to. If you follow the thought process they have expressed, the first thing you should do in the morning, before you hit the snooze button or brush your teeth, is to activate that BWC. I would imagine that they will start keeping track of the of- ficers who have numerous violations and the penalties will get more severe. You can protect yourself by trying your best to get that muscle memory down to activate and to know and understand the general order, but do not put yourself in harm’s way to comply with such a minor part of policing.
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