ENOUGH IS ENOUGH

This is the last time you will be able to link to the Sun-Times from this site! As a matter of fact I will never pick up that rag sheet ever again. Today Frank Main and Annie Sweeney do another hatchet job on the men and women of the Chicago Police Department. In their front page headline grabber titled "Mistakes cost city, not cops" these two equate settlements with wrongdoing.

• • Twenty-five lawsuits stemming from shootings cost taxpayers $27 million between 2002 and 2007. The figure includes a 2003 award of $9.6 million in the shooting of Northwestern University student Robert Russ, but not a 2001 settlement of $18 million in the shooting of LaTanya Haggerty.

• • None of those 25 shootings led to an officer's firing or a suspension of a year or more, according to Chicago Police Board records. Twelve of the shootings happened in the 1990s and the rest were in the last six years.

• • Of about 200 Chicago Police shootings between 2002 and 2006, the Office of Professional Standards recommended firings in at least five cases and lesser discipline in at least nine. OPS -- now operating under a new name to reflect reforms being made within the agency -- reviews police shootings and recommends discipline.

• • Of those, no on-duty shootings cost an officer his or her job. Only one officer was fired -- for shooting his girlfriend in the foot while off-duty, according to OPS records.

• • One officer remains on the job despite his involvement in two shootings that resulted in settlements, records show.

The funny thing is Frank is relying on Second City Cop for how "officers" are feeling about the new OPS procedures in the shooting of an offender in 15th district the other night.

Already, officers are privately complaining about how OPS investigators aggressively grilled the officers involved in the rapper's shooting, treating the officers like "offenders."

If Frank really wants to use SCC as a source for his writing then maybe he should go back and see how most officers feel about the city settling lawsuits. We see these settlements all the time and it is demoralizing because it gives the impression that what transpired was wrong. I on the other hand understand the cities logic for settling these suits but they have given rise to the John Loevys of the world.
Frank grabs a line from SCC and assigns it as the prevailing opinion of the rank and file. I talked to two sergeants that were on scene and in the area for the investigation and never were the officers treated like offenders.
There obviously are times that scandals occur and the press has a duty to report it but the day to day vilification of the Chicago Police Department and the men and women who work it has got to stop.

Boycott the Sun- Times!!!!