More on the Chicago police

I've written a fair amount about the Chicago police in the past year of two; most of the postings are not favorable to the police. The Chicago Reporter has written an extensive article on the city's attitude toward police misconduct; the attitude is mainly 'ignore it', although it has cost taxpayers about $263,000,000. Some major cities spend a fair amount of time analyzing the lawsuits for trends, identify the officers most frequently sued, or determine ways to reduce both the cost of the cases and officer misconduct. Chicago does not.

The Reporter looked at 655 police misconduct lawsuits that paid out from 2012 to 2015 and concluded that police misconduct extends beyond a few “bad apples” to department-wide practices. 

"In the small fraction of cases where officers and the city admit liability, the officers rarely are disciplined.

Nearly half of the lawsuits claim that officers filed false reports—and sometimes committed perjury on the witness stand—to cover up their misconduct.

More than one-quarter of lawsuits allege that two or more officers conspired to violate a person’s civil rights.

Nearly one-third allege that some officers on the scene could have but didn’t intervene to prevent misconduct.

In one-quarter of excessive force lawsuits, the person who alleged police abuse was also charged with either resisting arrest or assault of a police officer.

One in 10 cases involves minors. Officers have pointed guns at children, shot at teenagers and left toddlers alone while their parents were arrested. 

Roughly 1 in 6 cases alleges that an incident is part of a pattern of misconduct, fortified by specific Police Department policies or the city’s general failure to adequately investigate officer misconduct."