Yes, It’s Difficult To Change Cop Culture, But Let’s Not Pretend It’s Too Expensive Or Impossible To Achieve Quickly
from the you-have-to-want-to-do-it dept
The US Department of Justice has entered into many consent decrees with many, many abusive law enforcement agencies. These decrees have the force of law, supported by court orders. They’re contractual obligations with the federal government — agreements that swear local agencies will comply with directives and do their part to respect not only the Constitution, but the people they’re supposed to be serving.
While the directives may be clear, compliance is often muddled and less than enthusiastic. Taxpayers want swift compliance and comprehensive overhauls of broken policing systems. What they get instead is years of foot-dragging, expensive litigation, and years passing before any incremental change can actually be observed.
Brace yourself for disappointment.
Los Angeles took 12 years to meet the requirements of a 2001 consent decree and Detroit took 13 years. The average for cities to comply with such court orders is about 10 years, according to Chicago officials.
Could this take less time? Absolutely. But those being asked to change don’t have their hearts in it. They’re overly concerned about losing officers who feel being asked to comply with the Constitution is an unfair job requirement. They’re stymied by restrictive police union contracts that make it almost impossible to institute meaningful reforms or discipline plans. They’re also coddled by lawmakers who still believe — despite all evidence to the contrary — that law enforcement agencies should be given more discretion when it comes to pretty much everything, ranging from force deployment to discipline of misbehaving officers.
To be sure, the larger the police department is (and the two listed above are some of the nation’s largest), the more difficult it will be to achieve full compliance with consent decrees. But the city of Chicago is using data points to explain away its inability to move forward with the requirements of a consent decree put in place in 2019, prompted by the killing of Laquan McDonald by since-convicted officer Jason Van Dyke — an officer whose lies about this killing were exposed by cruiser dashcam recordings.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot has asked for more time to comply with the consent decree. And she has secured it. The Chicago PD — a notorious abuser of civil and human rights — will get three more years to get its shit together, which means it won’t have to be fully compliant for another eight years. The mayor of the city is also highlighting the cost of compliance, which is a pretty disingenuous move.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot defended the extension Friday, saying the previous timeframe was “unrealistic” for massive changes she expects will have a price tag of at least $50 million.
$50 million is nothing. The Chicago PD’s budget is second only to the NYPD’s. According to this report, Chicago’s police department will have $1.9 billion to use in 2022. And that’s just what’s budgeted. It’s not like it’s uncommon for government agencies to exceed their budgets. That amount is 2.63% of the PD’s annual budget. This is spending that needs to happen. It’s also spending that won’t be missed.
Mayor Lightfoot is using other cities’ failure to rein in their police departments as an excuse for her presumptive failure to do the same.
“Five years was just never realistic,” Lightfoot said Friday in an interview with the Chicago Sun-Times. “You know, most of these, it’s 10 or 12. And frankly, there’s some cities that had to do it twice, like Cleveland, New Orleans.
Rather than demand speedy compliance and move forward with tough policies that would help ensure a quick turnaround, Lightfoot is asking for extensions and setting the bar low enough the Chicago PD may actually be able to clear it without breaking a sweat. This is an abdication of her duties as the leader of the city. It also means she’ll be able to take partial credit for whatever minimal compliance actually occurs during her tenure as mayor.
Fuck that. Chicago deserves better than a mayor making excuses for future non-compliance. It also deserves better than the supposed leadership of the police department, which is apparently fine with slow-walking compliance while hoovering up additional tax dollars meant to drastically change how the PD operates. This is some expensive mediocrity. And it will do nothing to hasten sorely needed reforms of a law enforcement agency that has spent decades going rogue.
Filed Under: chicago, chicago pd, consent decree, cop culture, lori lightfoot
Comments on “Yes, It’s Difficult To Change Cop Culture, But Let’s Not Pretend It’s Too Expensive Or Impossible To Achieve Quickly”
Bad Apples and Insurance
First off the only a few bad apples thing when applied to cops is bullshit.
Yes it is a minority of cops that are going around and killing and hurting people. However if you are a “good” cop and stand around and watch other cops do bad things or lie to help cover up the “bad” cops actions then you are a bad cop. There is no middle ground on this. The phrase “If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem” has never had a better example
Fixing the problem is actually pretty easy.
Make it so every single cop is required to have personal insurance. I would rather they pay for it themselves but having cities pay for it will probably not cost that much more than paying out settlements and probably much easier to accomplish. No insurance no law enforcement job.
One of two things will happen. The “bad” cops will continue to act they way they are and become un-insurable making them ineligible to be cops or they will change their ways and stop being so violent.
It is a win either way.
But nothing will ever be done about the problem. Most politicians will drop to their knees and start blowing cops any chance they get. Until we get better politicians (definitely not holding my breath on that one) the problem will continue.
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It would be easy... IF they wanted to do it
Time after time it’s claimed that there’s only a few bad apples among the police so to try to argue that it would be incredibly time and money consuming for them to follow the law and respect constitutional rights, something that is treated as the default for the public suggest that either that barrel is a lot more rotten than portrayed and it will take extensive work to clean it up, the police are vastly less competent than the public and need extensive training and reminders for the most basic things, and/or they have no intention of improving and any effort to get them to behave is one they fight tooth and nail.
‘It’s difficult to get police to follow and respect the law’ has no good explanations and even just making the argument in an attempt to defend them is damning.
Re:
“Time after time it’s claimed that there’s only a few bad apples”
Here’s the regular reminder that the point of that saying is that if you don’t get rid of the bad apples quickly they spoil everything, not “meh there’s only a few bad apples, we can deal with that” as it’s often misinterpreted as saying.
Seems to me that the standard requirement that any contract stipulation that requires illegal activity in order for compliance be null and void should apply to municipalities and police unions too?
If a company or government agency can tell an individual “sorry, complying with that term would be illegal, so it’s void” and have an airtight legal case, it seems to me that should work with police unions too. Might make the unions start to work for realistic terms, too.
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Re:
yes, these DOJ “Consent Decrees” are illegal, unconstitutional nonsense.
No formal Contract is legally valid if any of its parties is coerced into signing it — which is exactly what DOJ is doing.
A court cannot order or bless such compliance unless there is some type of conviction in a fair and formal judicial process (which is not happening)
This stuff stinks and DOJ is every bit as corrupt as the municipal police agencies DOJ claims to be reforming.
Situation Normal – All Feucked Up SNAFU
Re: Re:
Log back in, Chozen.
This comment has been flagged by the community. Click here to show it.
Re: Re: Re:
guess that’s some insider cryptic comment.
the flagging (partial suppression) of comments seems especially popular here now; the flagging process is completely opaque to website visitors, apparently because that moderation process can not withstand open scrutiny.
Re: Re: Re:2
Ah yes, the grand conspiracy that is ‘if someone thinks your comment is the equivalent of a turd in the punchbowl they’ll flag it, if enough people do that it will be hidden behind one mouse click‘.
Truly a most nefarious scheme, complex beyond mortal understanding.
Re: Re: Re:2
Nobody else is dumb enough to fall for that lie, bobmail.
Re: Re: Re:3
…but you swallowed the bait anyway without realizing it
Re: Re: Re:2
Log back in blueballs.
“And frankly, there’s some cities that had to do it twice”
And if all of your friends set up a blacksite and tortured innocent people to get fake confessions you’d do it…. oh… nevermind.
Whats 50 million vs what you are paying out to people your officers are abusing?
Sad that courts can’t break the union agreements.
They obviously are flawed if they allow those who violate people’s rights to still have jobs.
Re:
they broke every other union, inckuding those still extant.
Bad Apples and Insurance
First off the only a few bad apples thing when applied to cops is bullshit.
Yes it is a minority of cops that are going around and killing and hurting people. However if you are a “good” cop and stand around and watch other cops do bad things or lie to help cover up the “bad” cops actions then you are a bad cop. There is no middle ground on this. The phrase “If you are not part of the solution then you are part of the problem” has never had a better example
Fixing the problem is actually pretty easy.
Make it so every single cop is required to have personal insurance. I would rather they pay for it themselves but having cities pay for it will probably not cost that much more than paying out settlements and probably much easier to accomplish. No insurance no law enforcement job.
One of two things will happen. The “bad” cops will continue to act they way they are and become un-insurable making them ineligible to be cops or they will change their ways and stop being so violent.
It is a win either way.
But nothing will ever be done about the problem. Most politicians will drop to their knees and start blowing cops any chance they get. Until we get better politicians (definitely not holding my breath on that one) the problem will continue.
It starts with the people at the top. Hold them accountable first.
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Change cop culture, and we’ll leave.
Re:
Good. Maybe then, we can start putting together police forces that aren’t populated by bigoted sociopaths who want a power trip.
Re:
In the words of Willy Wonka: Stop. Don’t. Come back.
Re:
That’s what the phrase “good riddance” is meant for. The only way you can create a better world is by leaving.
Re:
“Change cop culture, and we’ll leave.”
That’s the idea. Now we know it’s a good one.
Re:
Bye. Don’t let the door hit ya where the good lord split ya!
Re: Re:
Oh come on, we all want that door to have a solid interaction with what they use for communication.
Re:
So fuck off and leave then. No one really gives a shit if you guys aren’t up to the job. With more states allowing open carry without a permit, you’re quickly becoming obsolete.
Re: Re:
There’s really no pleasing Republicans. Try to mitigate school shootings, they bitch about the Second Amendment. Give them all the guns they want, they whine about cops getting their fee-fees hurt.
Re: You should have tin snowflakes instead of badges
Oh look another crybaby cop. Y’all a bunch of KK-Karens.
Bad Apples
95% of cops make the rest look bad.
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Changes
The money and effort would be better expended to change black violent crime culture. Want less black men in prison? Try quelling the violent behavior coming from them.
Changing cop culture? Are you nutz? How do these delusional articles keep getting written here? What happened to the Teck in TeckDirt?
In other words, write about what you know, and you certainly know nothing about the off the wall black violent crime rates in the United States (and any other country on Earth with substantial black populations).
See how far writing about that gets you with your faithful readership……..
Re:
That means putting effort into education, providing them with opportunities and generally not treating them like seconds class citizens. There is a corroboration between poverty and crime.
Re:
Says a lot about you that you think the answer to police reform is to target one specific racial/ethnic group for its wrongdoings and harangue them into “doing better”.
No, we’re generally in favor of pushing police culture away from the “warrior” mindset of treating everyday citizens as “enemy combatants” in a “war zone”. That you consider such a thing to be “nuts” is your issue.
White people are also criminally violent. Why aren’t they getting the same treatment from cops as Black people, at least in proportional numbers?
Forces, crosses, etc.
Re:
Changing cop culture? Are you nutz?
Yup, fuck it. Civilians need to start arming themselves, especially ones of color. Something something 2nd amendment.
If you can’t change the cops’ culture, then that leaves the citizens, no?
Perhaps once we’re all on the same footing, agreeing on what culture needs to look like will be easier.
Re:
How’s that microdick hanging bro?
sensible policy change
a few things that need to be done at the federal level.
ADMINISTRATIVE LEAVE:
any time an officer is placed on administrative leave it will be UNPAID leave.
ONLY if laws, policy, civil rights, and/ or rules have NOT been violated, then they will be eligible for back pay.
IF ANY laws, policy, civil rights, and/ or rules have been violated, then NO back pay.
PENDING INVESTIGATIONS:
if an officer is being investigated for _______. the investigation whether pending, started or ended will be considered “OPEN” if they quit before any discipline is handed out. also they will NOT be able to move on to the next agency over or receive retirement funds and any other benefits until pending case is resolved.
BODY CAMS:
ALL law enforcement police, FBI, DEA, CBP, ICE and any other law enforcement agency shall have and use body cams.
body cams will be turned on prior to an incident or as soon as possible and are to NOT be turned off, muted or paused until after the conclusion of the incidence.
USE OF FORCE:
MANDATORY MINIMUMS OF 2X the max. shall be enforced upon conviction.
CITIZEN REVIEW BOARD:
shall replace internal affairs. it shall have full investigative powers.
LOCALE DAs/ POLICE:
will not be able to decide if police are not charged for there crimes.
POLICE UNION(S):
shall only be limited to negotiating pay, leave time, vacation, sick leave, benefits. anything else is NON-NEGOTIABLE.
TRAINING:
there shall be a 2yr training program. then when hired the first 2yr period is probation with no gun. then the next probation period is a year with gun after they prove themselves to be responsible. so in total it would require 5 yrs. to go from training to fully certified.
DISCIPLINE/ COMPLAINT RECORDS:
any and all complaints (founded and unfounded), discipline, suspensions shall be placed in a national database. these records are to be held from training to 20yr after retirement and/or death.
………
Re:
body cams will be turned on prior to an incident or as soon as possible and are to NOT be turned off, muted or paused until after the conclusion of the incidence.
Good ideas in general but I’d have bodycams not only mandatory but turned on at the start of the shift and only allowed to be turned off in very narrow circumstances like going to the bathroom as allowing an officer to decide when an interaction began and/or is over leaves the door wide open for abuse.
Re: Re:
The same thing about firearms and munitions.
They should get issued at the beginning of shift and returned at end.
Both will be laser marked and indexed so that there will be no substitutions.
QR codes with a checksum will help prevent replacement of discharged munitions.
Of course all nonconforming officers would be immediately up for investigation and either possible dismissal or criminal charges depending on why they failed this simple system of control.
Re: Re:
The bathroom thing is easily covered by gps locater functions automatically shutting down video on entering designated and approved facilities. Microphone remains on just in case.
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How’s that
How’s that microdick hanging?