Page 9 - FOP Magazine August 2020

SecondVice President’s Report
Four hundred with five months to go — what a lovely place
According to the publicly accessible “Geo- graphical Information System” (gis.chicagopo- lice.org) and the website heyjackass.com, more than 2,200 people have been reported shot this year. At the time of this writing, just under 400 of those died, in addition to those who died of homicide by other means.
At the time of this writing, the city is four peo- ple shy of 100 total murders for the month and has seen more than 500 shot this month. Prior to
the May riots, the murder rate every weekend was the high- est it’s been in decades. Since the riots, it isn’t uncommon for two dozen murders to occur every weekend. Let’s not for- get that murders continue to occur every day of the week, and for the month of July, we saw an average of three mur- ders per day. We rarely hear about any of the other violence in this city — the pistol whippings, the blunt-force traumas, the stabbings, the batteries with vehicles, etc. What a lovely place (sarcasm).
I just received a message that another toddler, a 10-month- old, had been shot in the temple and is in critical condition — in the middle of the morning, no less. In recent weeks, ev- ery few days we hear an 8-second local media report about someone under the age of 17 who was either shot or killed.
Where are the news conferences? Where is the public out- cry? Where are the protests? Where is the change in behav- ior?
Partnership
When asked about how she feels about federal assistance being sent to help our city, the mayor replied, “You can’t just allow anyone to come into Chicago and play police in our streets and our neighborhoods where they don’t know the first thing about our city; that’s a recipe for disaster and that’s what you see playing out in Portland.”
Even though I’ve heard her give a version of this statement a number of times leading up to her welcoming the federal partnership, I still don’t understand why she says that “know- ing neighborhoods” or “knowing our streets” has anything to do with enforcing laws and attempting to restore order. Un- less she is concerned with federal agents’ safety and well-be- ing, as they most likely will be deployed to these neighbor- hoods and these streets that are statistically worse than war zones in Afghanistan and Iraq (and not to give insult to those countries or those who’ve served there).
Well, I don’t know what videos from Portland she has been watching, but the videos I’ve watched show me uniformed and organized groups of professional individuals wearing identification, calmly approaching single animated individ-
uals and successfully making a detention without the use of force. This, while having antagonists, agitators and obstruc- tionists standing by filming their every action. Granted, I have no idea what the detainee was wanted for or what they were witnessed doing, but I understand law and policy and I also understand that the video clips are just a few seconds and do not show the entire story.
Che
The mayor has also created a new Community Working Group to review use-of-force policies. According to the may- or’s press release, this working group is composed of activ- ists, community leaders and police officers who will convene in another partnership with the Department. The way I un- derstand it, this group’s mission/task is to make formal rec- ommendations to CPD to adopt a new use-of-force policy, as if there aren’t laws and 11 various force policies already in place (all subject for review and discipline).
It has been reported that this use-of-force group meets once a week and currently conducts its meetings via vid- eo conference. It is troubling to hear that a member of this group embraces “Che” and has donned an image of Che Guevara during one of its video conference calls. For those who don’t know who Che was, he was revolutionary guerrilla leader Ernesto “Che” Guevara and essentially has been cred- ited for executing hundreds of people without trials. Ironic for someone participating in a use-of-force working group.
I’m trying so hard not to use the name of this committee member, because I don’t want to publicize and legitimize this person; however, a review of her public social media posts exhibits her true beliefs and how they pose a conflict. A review of this individual’s public statements in a Sun-Times article indicates that she was an organizer for the protest at Grant Park, where nearly 50 officers were injured defending the Christopher Columbus statue. In her interview with the Sun-Times, this individual grieved about officers’ use of force while protecting the statue. I wasn’t there, but from the foot- age that I saw, officers were not only protecting the statue but protecting themselves as well. Hopefully, the community work group sees this in her and takes her input appropriately.
On a side note, in the same Sun-Times article, the writer displayed pathetic journalism by describing the vandals who spray-painted the Christopher Columbus statue as “artists.” I doubt the journalist was being sarcastic, and I doubt these vandals are actual artists by trade.
DAN GORMAN
CHICAGO LODGE 7 ■ AUGUST 2020 9