Is Chicago’s Police Superintendent Eddie Robinson Failing His Officers?

I wrote earlier this week about Chicago’s murders which are on a record-setting pace this year. 400 blacks have been murdered by the time it passed the Labor Day holiday. My wife and daughter were in Chicago over that holiday but why was it I was never concerned for their safety. It was because they were not in the areas where the murders were taking place. Strange to say in America we have safe zones and danger zones in some of our cities. The danger zones are usually in the black areas.

I checked some statistics writing this. Throughout our country the majority of the cities that have the highest murder rates also have the highest percentage of blacks. The same goes for the most violent cities. Fortunately most Americans other than African-Americans do not have to spend much time in those areas.

This is why the great majority of the victims in these areas are black. The murders are mostly black upon black. They far surpass any black murders by police officers about which we hear so much from groups like Black Lives Matter or from those protesting America by sitting down during our national anthem.

Chicago superintend of police Eddie Johnson, an African-American, was asked about the soaring murder rate after the Labor Day weekend in Chicago saw 65 people shot and 13 of them fatally.

He replied: “It’s not a police issue, it’s a society issue.  Impoverished neighborhoods, people without hope do these kinds of things. You show me a man that doesn’t have hope, I’ll show you one that’s willing to pick up a gun and do anything with it. Those are the issues that’s driving this violence. CPD is doing its job.”

Is he right? The Chicago police are doing their job and society is to blame for the murders.

Obviously the Chicago police are not doing their jobs. To get a true understanding of the reasons for this I would urge you to read this article by Heather MacDonald, Chicago on the Brink. They are unable to do their job for the many reasons Ms MacDonald spells out. But the overriding reason is the interference by the ACLU and other “police review boards” on the actions of the police officer on the street.

Using phony statistics the officers are now required to fill out a report on every stop which is reviewed by people who have no idea what it is to be a cop on the street and who do it in the Elysian comfort of their offices. The police officers patrolling the community are handcuffed in the name of political correctness.

It is impossible to convey in writing to people who are not on the battlefield all that goes into an action that requires a stop. Nothing, absolutely nothing, will destroy the morale of a police officer more than to try to explain in writing all the mental processes that occurred prior to a stop. Unable to do this, the aggressive cops stop caring. Why risk one’s life or the chance of losing the job if the stop is found not up to a certain standard by taking chances. The pay is the same whether one acts to protect the community or doesn’t.

I reviewed lots of police reports that were made after stops and arrests. I kept in mind my job was not that of a police officer. He or she worked on the tumultuous streets while I worked in a somewhat orderly office. I kept in mind that I had 20/20 hindsight. I never found fault with an officer who made a good faith mistake in doing his job. The remedy for that if someone’s rights were violated was to stop the prosecution. It was not to punish the officer.

In Chicago that does not seem to be the case. The police officer fears his job will be in jeopardy if he makes mistakes. The best way to avoid that is not to do the job correctly. When that happens it is a police issue and the police are not doing their job.

The Chief Eddie Johnson should know that is the case. The rise in crime seems to mirror the decrease in police stops. When what you are doing is not working it must be changed. Time to do away with the review boards and trust the good faith of the Chicago police officer.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

He made two points. The Chicago police are not to blame ; and that society is to blame for the shootings rather than those who are actually doing them.

the police and don’t blame the people doing the murders;

14 Comments

  1. should read, “agian, carefully”

  2. I remember the race riots that occurred in Chicago during the mid and late sixties. Nobody wants to revisit those scenes. Robinson has to choose his words carefully. Chi-raq is a powder-keg with a smoldering fuse. Gun violence is a symptom of the disease, not the disease. The disease is racial and economic inequality. It festers in the hearts of the privileged. They can not cure it with new prisons and more cops. It’s eating them up like a cancer.

    Doug: Obama was a Trojan Horse. It’s not a color thing. He’s a bourgeois liberal through and through, and, looks at the world through that privileged prism. His radical credentials were always suspect. Association with Bill Ayres doesn’t seem to have had much of an effect on him.

    Top job at CPD is a political position. When things go bad, brass-hat’s are the heads that roll. Robinson has to choose his words carefully. There’s no clear replacement for Rahm, as yet. Chicago has more problems than gun violence, as bad, as it is. The Republican Governor is looking for ways to get out from under city and state pension obligations to retired public sector employees.

  3. wa-llahi! Prof. Duke, do you believe medical experts can physically measure black folks’ propensity for crime, using a caliper like instrument to trace suspicious undulations in surfaces of their skulls? Phrenology is a neglected science.

    • Agreed, Khalid. New York City is safe for a big city, and crime continues to fall in the US despite spikes in places like Chicago. Do the conservatives seriously believe the US is worse off under Obama than their boy Bush? Please!

  4. So much for an individual’s accountability for their own actions.
    Do they have a “sociological disease”?

  5. “It’s not a police issue, it’s a society issue.” Part wrong and part true. As Matt points out faulty police procedures play a role. There are societal issues that are also in play. It is a rare problem that exists without a confluence of causes contributing to the situation.

    Occam’s Razor is the principle that whenever there are alternatives the simpler or more obvious reason is probably the correct one. Sadly Political Correctness rigorously enforces the exact opposite today. Call it the PC Wreaking Ball.

    Every statistical compilation in my experience around the world comes up with the same result, areas with heavy Black populations have higher crime rates.

    Accepted Darwinian evolutionary science posits that populations that evolve separately develop differing traits. Blacks have lower impulse control and lower intelligence as a whole compared to Whites and Asians. As both factors play a very important, if not decisive, role in higher crime rates in Black areas, these districts require more policing measures, not fewer.

    Chief Johnson attributes blame only to society. The real culprit is mostly Mother Nature. Social programs can only do so much. Ditto, tough police measures. Gin both those inputs as high as possible and there will still be higher crime rates in Black areas. Forcibly desegregate neighborhoods and crime will get spread around injuring groups with lower crime inclinations.

    We have to accept that results will reflect inputs, not theories. Equality is an idea, and too often a religion; it is not a fact.

    Superintendent Eddie Johnson is in an impossible situation. The prevailing zeigeist forces him to lie. The Mayor is in the same position. They must burn incense before the nonsense of Political Correctness. Society must suffer from poor policing because an effort to produce racially equal crime statistics has precedence over public safety. Soaring crime rates will mirror the strength of this mad obsession.

    The best approach is to treat people as what they are, warts and all, with compassion, understanding and dignity. Each individual is unique and deserves to be handled as such. The compilation of numbers has nothing to do with individuals. It is only aggregates. The bottom line numbers will always be disparate. Those numbers should have nothing to do with how you approach this or that person.

    On the other hand each person has the right and duty to segregate himself in order to protect himself and his family. This will render stark the differences between races. There will be low crime White and Asian neighborhoods and high crime Black ones. The situation in Chicago will not improve until procedures, in a hidden or overt fashion, can accept unequal crime rates in a nonjudgmental, rational spirit. There is nothing sinister about this because on the ground reality will Trump ideas.

  6. With an approval rating near thirty percent and falling,don’t expect the liberal media
    To print the truth about the growing crisis in our country, the collapse of our inner cities.My guess is that all the long suffering,law abiding citizens of those areas would
    prefer a man in blue over the ACLU to stop the carnage.

  7. I suspect that most of these cities a) have some form of gun control and b) have Democratic mayors.

  8. I went to Time Sq in NYC in 1984 it was a scene straight out of a futuristic horror movie of a collapsed society. All the store fronts had XXX and the streets were full of prostitutes and drug addicts. If you go to Time Sq today it is a tourist filled economic engine safe at all times of the night and day. This is the direct results of “zero tolerance” and “stop and frisk” by the NYPD. As a lover of the Constitution, “stop and frisk” rubs me the wrong way, however Lincoln, with the approval of Congress, suspended Habeas Corpus during the Civil War and, at least in Chicago, it sure looks like war to me.

  9. Matt: I don’t know Eddie Robinson from a hole in the wall, but sweeping change is needed here. That begins with a new mayor and a new police chief.

  10. “The murders are mostly black upon black. They far surpass any black murders by police officers about which we hear so much from groups like Black Lives Matter…”

    What a shame that statements such as this are considered by so many as hate speech!

  11. Missing a few words?

  12. I would be forced to conclude that Superintendent Robinson is correct when he says, “It’s not a police issue, it’s a society issue. Impoverished neighborhoods, people without hope do these kinds of things. You show me a man that doesn’t have hope, I’ll show you one that’s willing to pick up a gun and do anything with it. Those are the issues that’s driving this violence. CPD is doing its job.”

    Like I said, police have the most dangerous job in society, never knowing if they are going to the hospital, the morgue or home on any given workday. Scary would be an understatement.

    It’s not the police, it’s a few bad cops that need to be identified and removed.

    The “”Hope and change” promised by President Obama has not been delivered and the results are plain to see.

    No hope and no job is a bad recipe for any community.

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