The Chicago Way

From the Holy City of Parma Heights

Well, it took a while, but the video of a bunch of drunken off-duty Chicago cops beating up some stockbrokers then waving off responding police was finally released this week.

Thuggish behavior by drunken Chicago cops is about as unexpected as an icy wind in the Loop in January, but it’s nice to see the true nature of the Chicago PD held up for public inspection yet again.

By now, it’s plain to see that the only real difference between cops in Chicago and Teheran is the somewhat more dapper attire of President Tom’s boys.

Anybody who’s payed even the slightest attention now knows that the Chicago PD is one of the most brutal and corrupt in the nation. If anything, they make the New Orleans PD look like the Pope’s Swiss Guard. From home invasions to outright murder in broad daylight, they’ve got all of the bases covered.

One apparent specialty of the Chicago Police Department is violence against women. Unless you’ve been away rehabbing the face on Mars, you’ve probably seen the heartwarming video of 250+ pound Officer Anthony Abbate bravely stomping on 115 pound barmaid Karolina Obyrcka for refusing to fuel his alcoholic binge. However, many of you are probably unaware that this subhuman display of violent misogyny and craven cowardice reflects a core philosophy of the Chicago PD.

Back in the spring of ‘96, National Public Radio’s All Things Considered ran a story on proposed legislation in Illinois which would have barred those convicted of domestic violence from owning or possessing firearms. This legislation was set to fairly sail through the Illinois legislature... until the Chicago lodge of the Fraternal Order of Police learned that cops were NOT exempted. At that point, the Daley hit the fan.

There followed one of the strangest radio interviews I’ve ever heard. Only the NPR interview of the “roving ambassador” for the Taliban exceeded it in sheer, joyous creepiness and childish malice.

The three “highlights” were as follows:

• An FOP spokesman declared that you couldn’t take away a cop’s gun merely because he beat his wife’s brains out. It was after all, his “tool of the trade”. The interviewer did not apparently think to point out that hitmen like Sammy “The Bull” Gravano could make the same claim with equal validity. But then NPR “journalism” does often have an endearing air of credulousness.

• Another FOP spokesman declared that taking the gun from an angry, violent cop would only make him MORE angry and violent. Strangely, the interviewer again neglected to inquire as to why the same consideration didn’t apply to any Crip, Blood, Hell’s Angel or member of the Aryan Brotherhood. Of course unless she’d worked in Arafat’s Palestinian Authority, she’d probably never run into “police” like those in Chicago.

• Finally an FOP spokesman declared that you could trust a wife beating cop with a gun because he’d be “closely supervised”... just apparently not closely enough to prevent him beating his wife into a coma in the first place.

The FOP’s performance was positively Talibanesque in its effortlessly natural misogyny. It lacked only the obligatory cries of “Allahu akhbar!”

But let us not fail to recognize the other “accomplishments” of the Chicago PD. For instance, there is the murder of Michael Pleasance by Officer Alvin Weems. Weems, for no apparent reason, blew Pleasance’s brains out in a rapid transit station, then proceeded to spin a web of fantasy worthy of the Art Bell Show, repeated and amplified by the Superintendent of Police, Phil Cline. Cline, a dead ringer for Captain Kangaroo, overruled a police disciplinary board which had recommended Weems’s firing. Instead, Cline “punished” Pleasance’s murder with a thirty day suspension. Weems has since been promoted to Detective. One would hope that like the white haired Captain, Cline at least bothered to admonish Weems to “play with toys of peace”. I have my doubts.

Similarly, Chicago cops riddled a paraplegic man with bullets, in front of or near one of the homes where I lived as a child. They claimed he pointed a gun at them. Strangely, the gun which they “found” in his car was completely uncontaminated by either the victim’s fingerprints or blood... despite the fact that the man was shot through his alleged “gun” hand.

I could go on, but that would be like the Monty Python courtroom sketch where the individual murder charges against a defendant take fully three minutes to read, after which he says he’s sorry and will never do it again. Of course being a Chicago cop means never having to say you’re sorry... or to obey the law.

With the latest spate of police atrocities, Chicago’s version of Slobodan Milosevic, Mayor Richard M. Daley, has promised “reform”. Cynic that I am, I’m not optimistic. After all, nobody tried to reform the Gestapo. They just put out the “Out of Business” sign and hanged the upper management of that similarly troubled organization. Perhaps they should have gotten thirty day suspensions instead...