Can a Murder Verdict Help Reform Chicago Police?

I would have thought that the gang murder of Tyshawn Lee, a 9 year old, would have been more shocking than the murder of a gang member with a long history of criminality. I know it was more shocking to me. Even more of note- no one seems to care. I wonder why? I think more than the police need to be reformed in Chicago.

It would be helpful for Chicago if Jeff Sessions didn't deliberately misrepresent a letter about the consent decree that was written by a U.S. Attorney in Chicago after he resigned his position. Sessions picked out one fragment and used it to imply not having the consent decree - the writer said the consent decree is key to improving policing, and public safety, here in Chicago. https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/opinion/commentary/ct-perspec-decree...

A city in shock. A talented young man, with a bright future, dead on the streets. Murdered by those meant to protect. When did this become the 'normal'? Who would have woken up and thought that a gang member with a long record of criminality would be dead? In Chicago. By a cop with a gun. In Chicago, this year, 2,346 people have been shot. Reforming the police is only going to solve part of the problem- unless anyone seriously believes that the police shot 2,346 people. Maybe we should include doing something about gangs. It may result in lives being saved.

October 12, 2018 It wise to say one case at a time for its evaluation in the affairs of Police actions requiring litigation. Police lethal actions are best not understood as conforming to operational policies as each confrontation is subject to the filed reporting and always left to the write-up for the event that may or may not be easy and clear to interpret. Shakespeare showed how Hamlet final act and scene resulted in chaos and that wit princely court atmospherics and as such the human condition in life and death judgments are rarely if ever a general reform policy other than the law's reports as evident interpretations and conclusions for understanding that are ever lessons learned for the police practices - decidedly with the most senior transparent review for all public and official oversight - all to the good the next similar event and best recommended actions to execute.

I am a Federal law enforcement officer working in the city of Chicago, where I have been posted for over 10 years. And on my first day, my superiors cautioned me as I drove out in a marked car with light bar and radio to beware of CPD. Even though we rank state and local police on paper, there's a pit bull mentality in Chicago police that one constantly encounters on the street, in the courtroom and out of uniform. Add to that the complacency of mayor Rahm the Nine-Fingered, whose agenda is to fill the city's vacant lots with enough banal condo towers to boost its revenues. Rahm pays lip service to the other classes who still dwell amid the wreckage of the unfashionable districts of Chicago, but he only cares about rich people like himself. And is anxious to see Chicago transform itself into a city like Manhattan, reserved as the exclusive playground of the Children of Privilege. Police brutality is ignored if it keeps the lower orders away from the wealthy neighborhoods.

This case doesn't add up. I watched the video. Saw the first shots and some dust fly. 14 more shoots from one gun. Van Dyke had to have flipped out. But no mention!

I happened to be in Chicago last week. I got on the train to O'Hare just before the verdict was announced. Walking through downtown, I noticed there were two or three cops clustered on every street corner--I assume that in case Van Dyke got off, they were ready to defend the property of the wealthy like they've never cared to defend black lives. It was hard not to see each one of them, standing there joking with one another, as some variant of the very archetype of corruption.

No, I don't think so. Cops will always lie to some degree, cops will always cover up to some degree, cops will always be corrupt to some degree; they learn and share these behaviors from the beginning and throughout their employment. Is it all just human nature?

I started as a cop in 1970 (my first of three careers) before the widespread use of handheld radios, so when you answered a call you relied on your verbal skills if possible, and your physical skills if necessary. The basic assumption was that nobody but your fellow cops would assist you in a violent situation. That’s one reason cops cover for each other, right or wrong. Another is what happens in the social sphere: every cop has numerous stories about the guy who claps you on the shoulder and says words to the effect of “90% of you guys do a great job, but I got this ticket....”. Like any group that works in high pressure, quickly changing situational environments, members will closely identify with each other and offer support, regardless of the form it takes. All that said, this was a bad shoot. No other cop on the scene drew his or her gun, in fact a taser had been called for. The jury got it right, the downside of the entire tragic process is that pure political venality caused justice to be delayed for so long. Cops who practice the true craft of policing are well aware that this was a betrayal of reasonable standards.

Can a Murder Verdict Help Reform Chicago Police? There's not a chance in the world if this murder verdict is the minimal standard for gaining a conviction in Chicago in a court of law!

Chicago's police unions are nor politically powerful.

Can a Murder Verdict Help Reform Chicago's Gangs? NAW!

There is no mention in this article how mayor Rahm Emanuel suppressed the release of the video until after his last election. I also did not find any mention of this in the comments.

This is exactly the problem BLAME ALL Police Officers! MacDonald should be alive and VanDyke should in prison for life, Former Mayor Emanuel has made policing in Chicago ineffective thru his reforms even as crime continues to soar. Let’s blame the Police for citizens shooting each other! The NYT Editorial Board should walk the Chicago streets unaccompanied by the CPD. It will never happen!

Training is not a substitute for common sense. And each time a policeman shoots it is an individual decision. In combat you have soldiers who engage too late and those who engage too quickly. Those who engage too quickly are not usually so-called “murders”. So long as people have lethal weapons . . . .

As long as "The blue wall of silence" continues,police will be mistrusted and feared.No matter how egregious the crime police will cover up and lie too protect their own.The police unions,too,do their part in abetting this.Their members can do no wrong.After the trial and verdict the police union was still protesting the verdict and saying the officer was innocent.The police are their own worst enemy.Officers found to lie and aid in coverups should be summarily fired and charges brought.

"The cover-up that began as Mr. McDonald lay bleeding on the pavement on Oct. 20, 2014, is the subject of a second trial, set to begin next month." This second trial is just as important as the first though the first had a "smoking-gun-video." For me, this is the trial that can allow committed city leadership to make the unions agree to terms that could improve the police department.

So the Trump administration is content with the status quo. As silly the scene in the Oval Office yesterday at least Kanye West was able to tell the president he has a message from Chicago. Stop-and-frisk does not lower crime. It just creates a rift between police and communities. Maybe Trump will listen to him and not to AG Sessions.

Yep, that about sums it up.

Yes, Chicago has its fair share of policy brutality and corruption. I was unable to view the video the NYT carried last week, but it's hard to understand why police aren't first trained to shoot at the legs first. Had Van Dyke been alone, it would be easier to understand his fear. But, with other cops around, and presumably several squad cars, what was he thinking, especially after the first or second bullet had Laquan collapsed on the ground. Was his personal anger at the teen so great it overwhelmed his thinking process? It's not just a lack of oversight, it's the training which is obviously lacking. Multiple bullets may be necessary when the criminal is shooting at you, and it's a zero sum situation. But here? Yet, Chicago is hardly alone in these overzealous police - criminal scenarios. And the same applies when the alleged criminal is mentally ill and hallucinating, as happened years ago to a Jewish man in Borough Park, Brooklyn. He also ended up with at least 10 bullets. The brutality goes beyond discrimination against blacks.

How is it that the NYT’s Editorial Board does not know how unseemly it is for Big Apple glass-house dwellers to throw stones at Windy City glass-house dwellers? Perhaps irony has been so diminished in the age of trump that wordsmithing has become unmoored from historical context! The death of Laquan McDonald will inspire as much reform in the policies and practices of the Chicago Police Department as did the deaths of Randolph Evans and Clifford Glover did in those of the NYPD. Namely, none! Yes, there was a pressure-valve conviction in Chicago. But, until the appeal process runs its course little consolation should be taken! Alas the Editorial Board’s proposition that the Laquan McDonald case might alter police practices underscores the stubborn fact that the criminal-justice system’s perceptions of Black Folks and White Folks still differ like day and night! In 1997 Harlem’s Sekou Sundiatta captured this dialectic in the leitmotif refrain of his masterpiece “The Blink Of An Eye!” To wit: It All Depends on the Skin You’re In!

Thank you for keeping this on the radar

“The verdict, the first time in nearly 50 years that a Chicago officer has been convicted of murder in an on-duty shooting, “ That officer, Richard Nuccio, shot Ron Nelson, a classmate of mine from Lake View High School while he was running away from him in an alley near Wrigley field. Two weeks earlier Nuccio stopped me along with two friends while crossing an empty lot behind my house. He pulled out a chrome handgun saying “ stop or I’ll shoot”. Luckily we stopped and didn’t make any false moves. He did , I believe 6 years of a 12 year sentence. It was a white on white killing and probably the last of that type.

The only real prospect for change is if some very large businesses, probably foreign-owned, announce their intent to pull out of Chicago and encourage others to boycott the city unless the Chicago police are straightened out. Nothing short of that will get the attention of the people who run Chicago.

If Chicago is an amalgam of the formal and informal institutions which come to be make up a metropolis over decades, an integral one of which is its police, any verdict with anything short of the implications of the OJ verdict, say, this one, is going to help incrementally at best. Abysmally sad as that is. Why? Because as the title of the Art Linkletter show "People Are Funny" put it, there are also some ways in which enough people are fouled up, that reform even if screaming to be made, takes maybe eons. As a Celine Dion song title also suggests, "That's the Way It Is," connoting that the particular abyss, like this one, is abysmally large.

A sound education, including the need to face one's own bias and discrimination, so to change 'bad habits', is of the essence. But how about removing lethal guns, provide only tasers? How about requiring the police officer to be and live in the community he/she is serving? A meeting of minds, professional and otherwise may illuminate the issues, so to take proper action. Continued surveillance is necessary, so bad cops may be weeded out. We all are corruptible and with a tendency to abuse power when out of sight. Why tempt us?

Police are shot and shot at every day serving warrants, writing traffic summons, responding to domestic violence calls, doing their job. One fire captain was shot while evacuating for a fire. Another time, a officer was shot by a suspect “walking AWAY.” The suspect pulled out a hidden gun, then turned and shot the cop. People do not accept that police officers have a REASON to fear for their life every single day because THE MEDIA DOESN’T COVER THEIR DEATHS. No protests, no jumping on cars, no fiery parades. Not even a mention on the national news!!! But every police officer knows how other police officers are shot. And they have every reason to be afraid. No one wants to talk about the reasons they have to fear. No one talks about how insanely violent and dangerous some communities are. 250 million guns on the street. You’d be crazy not to fear for your life each and every day. Doctors are not tried for murder when they make medical misjudgments, especially in a crisis or triage situation. Police should not be tried for murder when they make a misjudgment. Many of us would make the same misjudgment under similar circumstances. And all of us would avoid those circumstances.

I wouldn’t be a police officer in this city; you couldn’t pay me enough. It’s a thankless job and a dangerous one. Crime here is getting out-of-control. Last week, we had a spree killer who walked up to two strangers and shot them both in the head at point-blank range. A posse of teenage girls (teenage girls?!) ransacked Dior, fleeing with $70,000 worth of merchandise. These random acts of chaos aren’t happening on the infamously dangerous south and west sides; this is happening in north side, lakefront neighborhoods and downtown, the presumably safe areas. No one is in custody for either crime. It feels as if Chicago is falling apart and increasingly unsafe. Carjackings are becoming routine and everyone’s knows at least one person who has been assaulted, mugged, pistol-whipped or had their home burgled. I feel safer in Manhattan than I do where I live. I don’t know what the solution is, but I know we need police. If this consent degree results in police turning away from proactively policing, we can expect crime to increase even more than it has.

The corruption and racism in police forces is endemic. Bad apples just get rehired by other police departments. Chicago police are no different, especially now that we have a president who promotes both.

The answer is simply, NO.

I’m certain that the police department has a few good apples.

The purpose of the editorial is to set out the proper lessons to be learned from the murder of Laquan McDonald. The starting point is establishing where Officer Van Dyke went wrong. According to the Board, the officer essentially executed Mr. McDonald, and the murder was essentially premeditated. The problem, though, is that the Board is describing first degree murder whereas the jury found second degree murder. Premeditated murder in the nature of an execution is first degree murder. That's what the Board alleges but it's not what the jury found. The jury convicted Officer Van Dyke of second degree murder -- which is to say that the officer thought the killing was justified, but his belief was totally unreasonable. The city's response needs to conform to the verdict of second degree murder. But the Board clearly misapprehends the difference between first and second degree murder. It's pretty simple, but the Board doesn't get it.

If you want to concern yourself with Chicago police that's fine, but closer to home, Eric Garner was strangled by a cop for selling cigarettes in Staten Island & last I heard the cop who strangled him was still working for the NYPD 4 years later. Mr. Garner's family received $4 million from the city, which is a pretty good clue the incident could have been handled without killing him.

I want a professional police force- one where there is accountability. I also want accountability for people like Mr. McDonald. Mr. McDonald had a long, long, history of criminality. He had been in a gang from the age of 12. He sold drugs as a career. He had been evaluated by psychologists, after one of his many run-ins with the law, and was determined to be prone to violence. The night he was killed he was breaking into cars and had threatened a person with a knife- that being the cause of the initial police call. Let's stop fooling ourselves. Mr. McDonald was on a trajectory of violence and criminality. The police should not have shot him- but we can guess what the future would have been like had things been different. The statistics are clear. Mr. McDonald was on borrowed time. It was only a matter of time before he died from the gang violence he was a part of or be incarcerated for a violent crime. The tragic loss of Mr. McDonald has one silver lining- he won't be able to victimize anyone.

The video is pretty stark evidence that this was murder. Even if the cop was alone on the street the young man was staggering along parallel to the cops positions, then actually leaned/turned away from them as shots rang out. AND the cop was not alone, but joining a number of other officers already on the scene. I do not know what was in the officer's mind, but it is impossible for me to imagine that he felt that his very life was threatened under those circumstances.

The jury found that the cop made a mistake in judgment and that a suspect wielding a knife from a distance is not enough provocation to justify the cop using his weapon repeatedly.

Honestly... if a man or woman is going to walk into a potentially dangerous situation with the mindset that firing their gun is the FIRST resort? That person should not be a police officer. Firearm as LAST resort. Of course there comes an element of danger with that mindset. Similarly, there comes an element of danger with being: a firefighter, a soldier, an astronaut, a construction worker, a football player, and, yes, a bicycle messenger (in fact, the dangers of the latter cannot be overstated). None of those professions come with a license to kill based on a person's subjective definition of a threat. In fact, please name me one other tier of citizen who enjoys an ASSUMPTION of mitigating circumstances when a life is taken? Why does law enforcement get this right? Where in the Bill of Rights is it written they should have this right?

Well, so far they're up to one conviction every almost-50 years. It's a start, I guess.

It's not just the Chicago police. Police all over the country have been seen to use excess violence and cover up for each other.

The killing of a black Chicago youth who was brandishing a knife by a white police officer was murder because the officer discharged his entire magazine – 16 bullets – into the youth’s body, continuing to shoot him even as he lay on the ground and was clearly incapable of offering further danger to the officer. There can be no question that his purpose was to kill the boy. All the following obfuscation by the police dept. was the predictable desire to avoid the legal and social consequences of what may have been a panicked reaction by the cop that resulted in (possibly) an unnecessary civilian death. But if the cop had shot once and killed the boy, he would have skated. Much of our society sees this as a hate crime by a cop. It seems to me to be far more complex than that. It remains that white cops in Chicago possess a legitimate and reasonable fear for their lives when entering a Southside neighborhood to enforce the law. Similar situations may be minimized in future with more intensive panic-management training, and better procedures – and even more attention paid to employing officers who display no detectable racial animosity. But that fear will remain so long as cops are asked to enter such neighborhoods and enforce the law, as they’re expected to do in any other neighborhood. We cannot tolerate the murder of anyone on our streets for any reason – and this one was not tolerated. But so long as that legitimate fear exists, I believe that the inevitable …

I do not think that a guilty verdict will help reform Chicago police. City police employ mercenary gunslingers, poorly trained in the use of firearms and self-control. As a resident of Illinois, a State with heavy restrictions on the ownership and carrying of weapons (firearms, as wells as blank weapons), I often think that the public would be safer if all citizens of good will and reasonable mind were allowed to carry EVERYWHERE AND ALWAYS instruments for self-defense and the defense of others, without relying on the police.

Laquan's murder can be a starting point for reform. There are lots of variables to consider. 1. Who is it police recruit? The criteria are similar going from police department to police department. Since the year 2000 and a circuit court decision, police do not hire applicants with a high IQ. https://www.rimaregas.com/2014/11/27/court-oks-barring-high-iqs-for-cops... What are the other criteria? In many of the cases we've seen in recent years, there was no deliberative process. The time between encounter and killing is most often very short. Why? 2. How are police trained? 3. Is anyone looking at culture and bias? 4. How effective is the anti-bias training? Is it one time or ongoing? 5. Should police officers work a beat for an entire career? From a psychological standpoint, what happens to officers, 5, 10, 15 years down the line. 6. AG Sessions has been against Chicago's reform proposal. He wants to apply the same kind of brutal force we now know makes things worse. 7. Economic development, improvement in education services, housing, and all of the things a community requires need to be assessed and provided. In order to make reform work, the conditions must be fundamentally changed, culture completely transformed. That means investing time, money and a great deal of care. I don't see that commitment at DOJ and am afraid they'll try to thwart current efforts. --- https://www.rimaregas.com/?s=police+IQ

This police officer failed to follow the policies regarding the use of deadly force, so he was charged with murder. That is what is supposed to happen under the circumstances. But that has nothing to do with the anger and protests. The officer was not charged with murder the same day as the shooting. It took many months but even if it took only days, there would have been outrage. This is because of the people who are so angry about perceived discrimination by police that at the very least any officers involved in any efforts where people are killed should be presumed to have committed murder in their eyes. Institutions like law enforcement avoid disclosing much about personnel involved in any kind of incident where people are hurt or property damaged because they expect trouble. In this case the delay was great and the reactions very angry. Nevertheless, the man did not get away with murder.