January 23,2017
Chicago Sun-Times
Let’s hear it for keeping gun silencers from shooters
Just as Chicago is moving ahead with new technology that could help reduce gunfire deaths, Congress and the Illinois Senate are considering misguided bills that could shoot Chicago’s effort to pieces by making gun silencers easily available.
Chicago’s new technology, called ShotSpotter, alerts police as soon as bullets start flying, instead of making them wait for a phone call. Officers can respond more quickly - sometimes within seconds. By arriving faster, detectives are more likely to find witnesses, and crime scene personnel have a better chance of scooping up evidence, such as shell casings. Victims can get medical care faster. Recently, Chicago’s Public Building Commission voted to spend $938,500 to expand ShotSpotter in the Englewood and Harrison police districts, which are home to most of the city’s gun violence.
But ShotSpotter is ineffective if shooters use gun silencers, devices that muffle the sound of gunfire when they are attached to a gun’s barrel. Silencers also further imperil innocent people at a shooting scene because they can’t hear the crack of the gun that tells them to get out of the way. The Violence Policy Center in Washington says silencers “could help enable mass shooters and other murderers to kill a greater number of victims more efficiently.” A proliferation of silencers would mean more dead innocent people.
But that hasn’t stopped two U.S. House Republicans from introducing a bill this month to eliminate federal restrictions on silencers. Nor has it prevented the introduction of a bill in the Illinois Senate that would lift the state’s ban on silencers.
Defenders of easily obtainable silencers, including Donald Trump Jr., say the devices protect the hearing of hunters, who apparently can’t be bothered to wear hearing protection or obtain federal silencer permits, which involve submitting fingerprints and a photo, paying a $200 tax, a background check and a wait of several months. But the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence says there is no public health evidence that gunfire is causing hearing loss.
Because Congress is friendly to the gun lobby, the federal restrictions might be eased. It is all the more important, then, to maintain Illinois’ own ban on silencers.
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January 19, 2017
Belleville News-Democrat
Feeling pretty sure God did not advocate sex with little girls
Some would point to religion as the root of many evils, from massacres of those professing other faiths to rationale for the subjugation of women of your own tribe, plus everyone from other tribes. But when you get down to it, faith is usually less to blame than the individuals who interpret a tenet to rationalize their behavior.
James Lopes and his “Rise Star Church” certainly fit that model. He argues that his attempts to have sex with prepubescent girls in public is a religious teaching entrusted to him by God, and that it isn’t rape because they were wearing green to signal their desire to have sex as his child bride on a mini date.
He defended himself in front of a jury as Madison County prosecutors successfully argued that Lopes is sexually dangerous, a civil proceeding that will now put him away until he is no longer a threat to little girls. Until his sanity is determined and the threat to children is eliminated, there is a hold on the criminal felony counts stating he tried to have sex with multiple little girls in front of their parents at an ice cream parlor, gas station, grocery store, bowling alley and other public places.
Lopes did the same thing in 2012 in Oregon, but essentially got away with it when the Oregon Supreme Court declared the state could not force him to take medications intended to get him sane enough to assist in his defense. They ruled that forced medication was not guaranteed to work and would not fulfill an important state interest because any sentence for soliciting the 8-year-old YMCA camper in a Portland park likely would be less than the 18 months he’d been in jail and a mental hospital. Charges were dropped.
He’d say God was on his side. That’s what the Nazis said. Same for Al Qaeda and ISIS.
The Madison County jury disagreed. They decided the high priest of the “Rise Star Church” needed an extended retreat for religious reflection.
Our daughters are thankful.
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January 21, 2017
Chicago Tribune
Bringing a culture of accountability to Chicago Police Department
There’s a business adage about employees resisting new ideas: “Culture eats strategy for breakfast.” It’s recognition that change is uncomfortable, and ingrained workplace habits and beliefs are hard to uproot - even when poor performance demands a different approach.
On Jan. 13, the U.S. Department of Justice excoriated the Chicago Police Department for its appalling record of officers using excessive force, including shooting suspects who pose no immediate threat. Nowhere in the 164-page investigative report do you find the phrase “culture eats strategy,” but that’s the takeaway from one of the report’s crucial findings: how an entrenched code of silence shields Chicago cops from accountability for wrongdoing.
The code of silence is unwritten, of course, and a violation of CPD policy. It corrodes public trust, because police officers should not be above the law. Yet the report from Justice’s civil rights division alleges that the code is pervasive and meant to intimidate officers into collusion as much as protect them from punishment.
The Justice Department uses the phrase “code of silence” to encompass an astounding array of deceitful practices by police officers to evade responsibility for misconduct - from keeping quiet to falsifying reports to lying to investigators. It goes up the chain of command to supervisors who are far too quick to accept officers’ versions of events, even when contradicted by video evidence.
The DOJ’s investigation is the legacy of Laquan McDonald, a black teen shot 16 times by white officer Jason Van Dyke. Police dashboard videos showed McDonald holding a knife and walking away from officers when he was shot, but Van Dyke told investigators he feared for his life. Other cops at the scene and command-level officials backed up that account. City Hall went into damage control mode, withholding the video from the public until a judge ordered it released under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act.
Now Van Dyke faces a first-degree murder charge and four officers face firing, while several senior police officials slipped into retirement. Four other officers received suspensions for failing to ensure the dashboard cameras in their squad cars were operating properly that night. The investigation showed that officers routinely disabled cameras, and supervisors knew it - yet nothing was done until the McDonald shooting exposed the practice publicly.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel replaced the police chief and promised a series of reforms. The City Council approved his plan to overhaul the disciplinary system and create a dedicated inspector general for public safety. Those are important changes - but they’re strategy, not culture. They don’t automatically translate into accountability.
Breaking the code of silence begins with zero tolerance - “You lie, you die,” as former Superintendent Garry McCarthy put it in a visit with the Tribune Editorial Board on Thursday. It means clawing back provisions enshrined in union contracts that shield bad cops from accountability. An officer involved in a shooting has 24 hours to coordinate stories with others at the scene before making a statement, for example, and can amend that statement after viewing video.
This isn’t the first Chicago has heard about this corrupting culture of cops protecting cops, of course, but it’s sobering to see it dissected and documented by the Justice Department. The report may lead to a consent decree and a federal monitor to keep watch on CPD reforms. Or that effort may fall short if the Trump administration decides not to prioritize it. So, pressure has to be maintained locally.
It will take time and true commitment to fix what’s wrong with CPD. But nothing in Chicago improves unless the public trusts the police to do their jobs responsibly. That means building a culture of accountability.
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