CHICAGO - A CULTURE OF CORRUPTION

Tuesday 23 November 2015 will go down in history as the day that the culture of Chicago was laid bare for all the world to see. That was the day that an Illinois Court of Law mandated the release of the police video detailing the cold blooded shooting of a 17 year old African American youth Laquan McDonald. Before delving into the immense cover up of this dispassionate, callous and inhuman execution it is worth noting that this behavior is symptomatic of a City and a State steeped in malfeasance that dates back to Al Capone. Illinois is a State where over half its Governors since 1970 have been jailed for corruption and a third of its Alderman in Chicago since 1972 have been convicted as criminals. The FBI this month has subpoenaed the files of the outgoing Chicago Legislative Inspector General Faisal Khan who was in the midst of investigating 29 Alderman for criminal wrongdoing. The whole scenario stinks to high heaven and it is quite possible that the number of convicted Chicago Alderman may well increase.  

All this is by way of background to the McDonald tragedy that begun in October 2014. The official police report blandly stated that the youth had been shot in the chest and taken to Mount Sinai Hospital and pronounced dead. The police version as told by Patrick Camden of the Fraternal Order of Police to The Chicago Tribune was that a crazed individual lunged at officers with a knife and one of the officers shot him with a single shot. The officers, Camden continued, had told McDonald to drop the knife and were waiting for stun guns to arrive at the scene. Camden opined that the victim was a very serious threat and this was a clear cut case of self defense. One of the Officers Jason Van Dyke had fired at the oncoming menacing individual.

CULTURE OF SILENCE AND COVER UP

So the line was out. It was cut and dried and the cover up was well under way and it had started from the word go and it was going to continue up into the highest echelons of power. It all started at the crime scene. As the video showed there were several officers present all of whom knew that Van Dyke, an officer with a rap sheet a mile long, had murdered McDonald in cold blood. They not only said nothing they immediately and automatically went into cover up mode. There were bystanders who were shoed away and according to one report one was taken to the police station and was so harassed that she has kept her mouth shut to this day. The other officers acted systematically so as to remove any possible impediment to the expected narrative of the incident and nonchalantly walked into the nearby Burger King and allegedly wiped off the observation videos’ recording of the incident. The police took the video recorder with them. Although there is a gap of 86 minutes of the recording the prosecutor states that there is no evidence that the video was tampered with.

FROM THE BEGINNING THE STORY DID NOT JIVE

Whoever received the report from the scene had to have realized that it didn’t hang together. Why for example was it only Van Dyke who opened fire if McDonald was lunging at a number of the officers? Who chose him to fire when all were under attack? Why would he only shoot once, (sic), if a crazed person was coming at them with a knife? But leaving those subtleties aside it would not be long before it would be even more obvious that the official story was a lie. The cover up would have to expand as more and more police staff involved in the post mortem noted the body and post mortem findings. The simple sketch done by the forensic pathologist detailed 16 entry and exit wounds sprayed over the whole body. Not only was the one bullet explanation a lie the very distribution of the shots did not support someone being shot at while rushing at a target. The shooter would not have as a priority systematically putting in bullets up one side of the body then down the next of the assailant, execution or target practice style. Rather, in fear of his life, he would fire rapidly in one area. The inconsistencies abound - another was that the police spokesman has Van Dyke together with all the other officers while it is now common cause that he arrived in another squad car got out and within six seconds mowed down the victim who was walking away from him and then fired several shots while he was lying on the ground. An accused incidentally as it turns out had been slashing tires with his knife which according to reports was found folded in his dead hand.

It is almost as if no one cared about getting the cover up totally straight. This was self defense and there an end. Who was going to take the word of a dead teenager with a knife in his hand over those who are protecting society? As long as there was no witnesses talking and the tapes were obliterated there wasn’t a problem. Also for whatever reason no other shooting had gone anywhere so why should this one? 

THE DASHBOARD VIDEO AND OUTCOME

Everyone now knows that 5 months later in March the McDonald family attorney obtained a video of the shooting and that the City Council settled there and then for 5 million dollars. This before even a legal action was initiated. Now 5 million dollars is a helluva lot of money. The procedure to effect this exchange would have been for a person or persons, pretty high up, to instruct the City Attorneys to negotiate a settlement. The City Council attorneys objective would have been, to dish out as little as possible. How the latter is achieved in a country that lives, eats and drinks litigation is to drag out the proceedings as long as possible, usually for several years, on the assumption that the plaintiff tires and accepts anything. Here the victim’s family would obviously be vulnerable to calling it quits relatively quickly to reach closure. Remember too plaintiffs against the police in Illinois have not exactly a stellar record of success so the McDonalds must have thought after their tragedy they had won the lottery. There was one known stipulation to this settlement namely that the video must not see the cold light of day. One can assume the McDonald family also agreed to keep their mouths shut.

Now this agreement had to be ratified by the City Alderman at a formal meeting. The unique circumstances surrounding this massive payment so promptly agreed to must have made it stand out like a sore thumb. Nevertheless  it obviously passed without a whimper. The Mayor had of course to be involved and It has been alleged that the he was more than anxious to keep this under wraps as he was in the midst of a tough reelection. 

To add to the argument that this is a far reaching conspiracy was the announcement of the murder charge of Officer Van Dyke by the Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alverez just a few days prior to the court instructed release of the video of the crime scene. This 13 months after the alleged murder where it was argued that she had the tape for over a year and had more than enough evidence to proceed months ago. To add to the alleged treachery her announcement was preceded by a press conference held by the Mayor Rab Emannuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy. It all sounded a bit hollow when McCarthy dolefully extolled that, “The officer in this case took a young man’s life and he’s going to have to account for his actions”.  The comments of both the Superintendent and the Mayor, who maintained that this was an isolated case, were greeted with cynicism. The belief was that not only was this a defense of what was alleged to be a cover up but an attempt to keep the anticipated city protests peaceful.

Whatever anyone was saying now about the officer “who took a young man’s life” he had been still in the employ of the City of Chicago’s Police Force up until the State’s Attorney laid the charges.

The irresistible conclusion is that the cover up started from minute one, was systematic and comprehensive and involved several departments reaching to the highest levels of the City Council. It is also argued that the efficiency of the operation and the way the cover up swung into gear is indicative of normal practice in the knowledge that the perpetrators’ backs will be covered by a system that has adapted to this behavior if not outright condoned it. There are 50 police shootings a year in Chicago with 13 deaths last year. This passage of events lends very little assurance to society that all of these were in “self defense”. According to the journalist who blew the lid on the scandal the self defense finding is the usual outcome of the Chicago police shooting internal investigations after 18 months of “investigation”.  

NOTHING WOULD EVER HAVE HAPPENED BUT FOR……

 It was not the traditional media with all their resources and influence that can claim credit for the expose. Jay H. Ell grows more and more disillusioned with the Fourth Estate every day. What was once society’s safety valve has now become rather it’s chief source of entertainment. Once a part of the solution it is now is part of the status quo. This story is just beginning. Are the media going to press for charges against those who wiped out the tapes at Burger King? An exhaustive account is needed from the time of the shooting, where 9 officers were on the scene,  to how this report was put together Council, why the police department after the post mortem report, which flat out negated the bullshit narrative, stuck to their guns and nothing changed when it was patently obvious that at best there had been a false report. The media knew all this way back and were about as proactive as the City Council.

Thus It was left to a few socially conscious citizens who took on the establishment and hammered away till the whole pack of cards collapsed. James Kalven, a free lance journalist, was tipped off by a whistleblower about Van Dyke’s dashboard video cam. The whisper was that it did not tell the same story the police were giving out. Once Kalven had persuaded a court to release the damning autopsy report five months after the event, the unravelling started and everyone else suddenly was really interested. Kalven together with an attorney Craig Futterman relentlessly investigated till they were granted another court order for the release of the video of that awful awful night. This set into motion, a Mayoral and Chicago Police Superintendent media meeting and the announcement of the indictment of murder. The forewarning of the video to be released didn’t soften the savagery of the execution ala ISIS and now joins the archive of all the other police brutalities on celluloid that have been punctuating the news scene for the past 18 months. 

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SOME ACTION AT LAST

The fear is this will all die down and life will carry on as usual. Culture change is not easy and this conduct appears to be ingrained in civic life in Chicago together with all the other misconduct of its elected officials. So much so is political corruption and cronyism the norm around here that Governor Blagojevich maintained that he had done nothing wrong in soliciting bribes in return for granting a politician the right to serve out President Obama’s Senate term. His “maneuvering" was part of normal political horse trading he maintained. The Federal Court disagreed with him and he is taking the matter to the Supreme Court. The Governor and his Counsel obviously believe that in the State of Illinois they have a strong argument.

The good news is that the McDonald abscess has been slashed open and the pus is gushing out in the streets of Chicago. The daily protests by thousands of angry black youth who for years have been making allegations against police brutality are peaceful albeit that they disrupted Black Friday shopping on Michigan Avenue. These protests are gaining strength and appear to be ongoing. Not surprisingly they called for the Mayor, Police Superintendent and Prosecutor to resign and for the Feds to conduct an enquiry. Surprisingly however Mayor Rahm changed course and axed Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and initiated an enquiry into the police department in addition to equipping 1200 police officers with body cameras. 

Everyone is jumping on the bandwagon including Lisa Madigan the Attorney General of Illinois who has called upon the Feds to investigate the Chicago Police Department as has Hillary Clinton Democratic Presidential contender Hillary Clinton.  Heavens knows there is enough to analyze, for example what happened to the 28,000 complaints against the Windy City’s police in the past few years and why has the City paid out nearly half a billion dollars in settlements for police misconduct. 

It appears that finally this may not go away. Sadly what will fan the flames will be the release of yet another shooting. Ronald Johnson a 25 year old black male was shot allegedly because he pointed a gun at the police. The mother has seen the video and there is no gun. She says no money will shut her up……….

It has to be getting serious when the Mayor is under siege and is furiously refusing “to step down”. The Johnson tape is not going to help his cause.