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| NEWS > 11 November 2007 |
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Best efforts wasted on police
THE best efforts of NSW Police Commissioner Ken Moroney and of Police Training College head, Commander Tony Aldred to crack down on unsatisfactory behaviour and lift standards at the college seem to have counted for little.
For documents released to The Daily Telegraph show an appalling pattern of drunkenness, intimidation, sexual misconduct and even threats of violent crime remain prevalent at the college.
The documents show instances of training staff being found drunk on duty, an instructor demanding sexual favours in return of passing grades, guns going missing, and... Read more
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Chicago Sun-Times - United Sta
11 November 2007
This article appeared in the above title/site.
To view it in its entirity click this link.
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Rogue cops: Chicago's financia
If an employee's misconduct cost a private company millions of dollars or caused public embarrassment, that employee would be fired. No doubt about it.
But no such punishment faces Chicago police officers found liable for abusing the people they have sworn to serve and protect. Instead of firing those cops, the city keeps paying the victims -- hundreds of millions of dollars over the years -- for beatings, false arrests or illegal searches. And the cops get to keep their jobs. How much more will it cost before the city gets rid of rogue cops?
''Nothing is ever done'' to abusive cops, said attorney Jon Loevy, whose firm has won millions of dollars against the city in scores of police brutality verdicts in the last five years. This year, according to the Law Department, as of Sept. 30, Chicago had paid out more than $27 million in police misconduct judgments and settlements on claims ranging from sexual harassment to excessive force and illegal search. That's money this cash-strapped and tax-heavy city could use to hire more police officers.
Who are these cops who are costing the city millions of dollars? They include Gerald Lodwich and Scott Korhoven, who were accused by Coprez Coffie of sodomizing him with a screwdriver in 2004 after a drug arrest. His complaint filed with OPS was ''not sustained.'' A federal jury believed him, though, after an investigation showed the officers had several screwdrivers in their glove compartment and found traces of feces. Coffie last month won a $4 million verdict. Lodwich and Korhoven are still on the job.
So are detectives Martin Garcia and Dion Boyd, accused of framing Timothy Finwall in 2001 for attempted child kidnapping. A jury awarded him $2 million in October. And so are the hundreds of officers whose conduct resulted in individual verdicts and settlements of as much as $6 million.
Not since cops clobbered anti-war demonstrators at the Democratic National Convention in 1968 has the public image of Chicago police been so battered. In many low-income and minority communities, where police misconduct is disproportionate, the police image is not Officer Friendly but Anthony Abbate, who was seen on video viciously beating a female bartender. Complaints to the Office of Professional Standards, which is supposed to investigate, are almost always dismissed.
''There is little likelihood that an officer will receive any meaningful discipline -- meaning suspended for seven days or longer,'' said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago and author of a study due out this month that tracked police brutality complaints from 2001-2006 in Chicago. Even in 1999, the start of the study period, the rate of sustained complaints was only 5 percent, meaning 95 out of 100 complaints were not sustained. It's even worse now: Less than 0.5 percent are sustained. No wonder those accused cops continue to abuse civilians with impunity. And the lawsuits keep on coming.
Those high numbers suggest that the Chicago police department is filled with corrupt officers, but Futterman's study showed that 80 percent of the officers had fewer than three complaints. However, 5 percent had 11 or more complaints -- and some had 50 complaints, without ever being disciplined. No wonder rogue cops don't believe they have to change.
It's as though their misdeeds earn them a place in a special inner circle in the department. The more their abuse costs the city, the more exclusive their membership in this club-within-a-club becomes. It's high time that the city of Chicago closed that club and barred the door for good.
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