The Chicago Police Board orders two officers be fired for making false statements in their reports and under oath:
The officers “knowingly and intentionally falsified official police reports and lied under oath at a criminal trial,” the board said in its 8-0 decision. “Had their testimony been believed, it is likely that Mr. Vasquez would have been convicted of one or more crimes. It is difficult to overstate the harm this would have caused.”
Article quotes ex-cop as defining the ‘code of silence’ as coordinated lying.
Spalding said Johnson and other top police officials ought to do two things. First, she said, they should keep acknowledging “that a code of silence does exist and that they’re not going to tolerate it anymore.”
Claims of aggressive policing after AFT agent shot in Chicago’s Back of the Yards neighborhood:
More than two dozen people outlined claims of intimidation, harassment and mistreatment by officers as they try to find the attacker. The group said while they feel for law enforcement, gunfire in the neighborhood happens on a daily basis and they don’t see a similar police response.
For more: http://wgntv.com/2018/05/05/manhunt-continues-after-atf-agent-shot-in-head-back-of-the-yards-residents-call-police-response-too-aggressive/
“ ‘This is a city with a history of sending people out to record protesters. Now imagine doing it with facial recognition technology,’ says Ed Yohnka of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois.”
https://chicago.suntimes.com/?post_type=cst_article&p=1075643
Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson said he has no reason to strip police powers from 10 officers that Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s office said it will no longer call as witnesses in criminal cases due to “concerns about their credibility.”
Another Burge era torture case makes the news
A salty, old-school Chicago cop, Kill, who worked for a time under disgraced former Cmdr. Jon Burge, didn’t back down during testimony in January 2016 from the techniques he used to obtain convictions he says in more than 90 percent of his murder cases. Kill has also defended his repeated use of the N-word while questioning black suspects.
Ed Yohnka, director of communications and public policy for the ACLU of Illinois, cited findings from the Department of Justice’s 2017 report on the Chicago Police Department that the CPD “routinely” files charges against citizens who complain as a form of retaliation or intimidation.
From part of an article on the defeat of a bill that would have limited FOIA requests to police departments in Illinois.
The chief of the state’s attorney’s Criminal Prosecutions Bureau determined after review that “the 10 officers who worked closely with Watts could no longer be used as witnesses in pending or future criminal prosecutions”
… to help honor Ida B. Wells, an activist who (among other things) watched the Chicago police in the early twentieth century and pressed for change: http://www.idabwellsmonument.org/
“The records I obtained from the department don’t inspire much confidence.”
Chicago’s so-called gang database includes some people in their 70s and 80s. This article suggests there are a host of other problems.
Pattern & Practice: Reclaiming the Lost History of Police Torture in Chicago, 1871-1971 