Chicago cover up...this is really shameful...really.

[hamster]

And the concern over 180 shootings per year is not justified, given that the underlying cause of behavioral breakdown - single-parent families, young mothers ill-equipped for the task, lack of positive parental influence for a lot of kids, poor academic performance due to a lack of parental involvement, etc. - is basically ignored. This is really no different than obsessing over the fact that a Pop-Tart is being burnt because the house is burning down, and not giving a **** about the house.

This is the root cause...period. And cops are the one's that typically have to deal with it,

The Chicago PD is a cesspool of corruption, as is the city gov't. It has been since the Capone days. It was nurtured through the Daly years, and continues under this regime. The cover-up here is due to systemic corruption. I am sure the police union was complicit in some way. So, I am not shocked by this.

 

[bermudasteel]

Berm, I often agree with your posts. However...

When I see you post a thread or a reply to a post being disgusted and shocked that 30 people were shot over Thanksgiving weekend, 11 of which died...and you're enraged about it, and want change...then I will hear your points.

THAT is a cover up...that there is no media outrage, that there is no concern over those loss of lives.

How is is this man's life so much more precious than those? Or those lives lost the weekend prior? Or the weekend before that? Or the weekend to come?

Show equal rage.

Agreed and I've "peeked in" every now and then over here in G&G - and "these stories" - that one included - them seem to get overlooked. That story did upset me too.

 

[Rod Farva]

There is a huge problem when police agencies and LEOs start expanding their power beyond reasonable bounds. Everyone has due process rights and when police begin to violate them without the public screaming about it we are a hairs breadth away from becoming a fascist state. Laquan McDonald was essentially executed without trial for public intoxication, whats next after that? How far are you willing to let police go and how much of your freedom are you willing to let them take to be "safe"? There may not be open racism but there is a racial component, many oppressive tactics and policies are only applied by police in minority neighborhoods. There can only be so much pressure applied to any population before the seeds of mistrust are sown and the population starts to push back. How long will we say "its just a few bad apples" before we upend the apple barrel and pick the bad ones out?

Don't be a boot licker.

I guess add me to the list of those who don't seem to get your point anymore. Nearly everything you say is the same thing the rest of us feel or believe. I say "nearly" only because you continue to seem to believe that the bad cops over reach / abuse has become endemic when it's just not the case.

In their defense the fact is that cops don't deal with good people...... Theirs is a world of witnessing man's inhumanity to man on a daily, sometimes hourly basis, especially in large urban areas. Witnessing the aftermath and carnage of child abusers, rapists, murderers, thieves, scammers, drug addled mayhem, disgusting perversions, laziness and greed. Witnessing children living in squalor because the drugs come first....the list could go on forever. My point is that given those experiences, pressures and stresses that NO man or woman should EVER have to endure, let alone endure on a daily basis, it's actually quite amazing that more cops don't snap. I believe the fact that more don't illustrates quite well the point that the vast majority of LEO's are good people. I have already gone on record as saying that the number of shots in this case are excessive.......maybe the shooting itself was, see my previous thoughts on that. The amount and quality of video I've seen make me less than qualified to judge. If there is widespread corruption and malfeasance in a department it absolutely should be rooted out and destroyed and replaced with new components and people. But corruption doesn't start from the bottom up......it needs the fostering and cooperation if not outright blessing of those at the top. I wouldn't be quick to praise Rahm Emmanuel......if the system is as broken as you say it is he had to know about it and did nothing to end it.....heads HAD to roll here and it wasn't going to be his. If this all makes me a boot licker, pass the gravy.

I get that you fear tyrannical governmental oppression. We all do. But there's another kind of oppression and I hope that people of all skin color recognize it. That's the oppression of a crime riddled environment. It can be every bit as freedom robbing as the government kind and even more so because the folks running that engine of oppression are accountable to no citizen.

DBS has a very good point. What if the young man was walking down the street yelling "Give me liberty, or give me death!"?

Really, Con?

This is the root cause...period. And cops are the one's that typically have to deal with it,

The Chicago PD is a cesspool of corruption, as is the city gov't. It has been since the Capone days. It was nurtured through the Daly years, and continues under this regime. The cover-up here is due to systemic corruption. I am sure the police union was complicit in some way. So, I am not shocked by this.

New Orleans PD is or at least was the same......gotta love me some democrat bastions of gubmint.

 

[Steeltime]

If you demand accountability for that you must demand accountability for this.

Can you point to one post in this thread - ONE - suggesting otherwise?

The disagreement is not about this cop being prosecuted and the Chicago PD being investigated for its role in any potential cover-up, but instead about the depth of the problem of police violence against innocent civilians.

You think that police violence is a significant problem, and that a good portion of the problem can be traced to racism among police officers and their unfounded and ill-conceived "fear of black people."

I and many others disagree with that proposition, where our position is supported by data. I also point out that the overarching, destructive causes of violence in African-American communities are absolutely ignored, while we spend a stunning amount of time debating the very rare occurrence of a police officer engaging in criminal violence towards a civilian.

 

[oneforthebus]

Rahm Emmanuel has fired the police superintendent for this, not a fan of Rahm but he got this one right. There needs to be some more firings and charges for CPD officers who took part in the cover up and tampered with evidence.

Oh yeah Rahm got it right...the family's lawyers approached the city right after Rahm lost his election and was headed for a runoff...what a shocker, Rahm agreed to the hush money without so much as a hearing, before the family had even filed a lawsuit. Gee, however did the investigation take so long? Shouldn't be a mystery to anyone...

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...vote-to-silence-laquan-mcdonald-s-family.html

 

[oneforthebus]

This is the root cause...period. And cops are the one's that typically have to deal with it,

The Chicago PD is a cesspool of corruption, as is the city gov't. It has been since the Capone days. It was nurtured through the Daly years, and continues under this regime. The cover-up here is due to systemic corruption. I am sure the police union was complicit in some way. So, I am not shocked by this.

The police are not the ones who make the decision on whether someone will be charged with a crime. There was no police "cover-up", the district attorney has had this videotape for months.

 

[oneforthebus]

the other part is CPD investigators erasing video from surveillance cameras at a Burger King across the street that corroborated the coroners report that the initial rounds fired hit Laquan McDonald in the back

More misinformation being treated as fact:

http://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago...ing-video-not-altered-in-laquan-mcdonald-case

 

[Ron Burgundy]

The police are not the ones who make the decision on whether someone will be charged with a crime. There was no police "cover-up", the district attorney has had this videotape for months.

Probably because he didn't want a repeat of Baltimore.

 

[oneforthebus]

Probably because he didn't want a repeat of Baltimore.

Especially not right before Rahm was coming up for re-election...

 

[bermudasteel]

The police are not the ones who make the decision on whether someone will be charged with a crime. There was no police "cover-up", the district attorney has had this videotape for months.

Question - everywhere I've read - the police erased the missing data from the Burger King security footage - not the DA's office...correct me if I'm wrong...

 

[oneforthebus]

Question - everywhere I've read - the police erased the missing data from the Burger King security footage - not the DA's office...correct me if I'm wrong...

http://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-...-mcdonald-case

A forensic analysis for the FBI found “absolutely no evidence of tampering” with video from a Burger King near the scene where Laquan McDonald was gunned down by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke last year on the South Side, a source close to the investigation said Monday.

An 86-minute gap in the Burger King tape and the fact that police officers spent about two hours at the restaurant on the night of the shooting trying to retrieve the video is fueling speculation about a police conspiracy to erase that portion of the tape.


“The district manager told us it was deleted,” said Jeffrey Neslund, an attorney for the McDonald family. “It is curious that there were 86 minutes missing. We don’t know for a matter of certainty what happened to the Burger King video, but we know what the employees told us.”

But a source close to the investigation said the FBI had the Burger King video “forensically analyzed.” ...

“They looked at it and found absolutely no evidence of any tampering or any removal of any portion of the tape,” the source said.

“That system that Burger King has is a mess and it would break down in the weeks and months before this incident. There were major gaps everywhere,” the source added.

Why, then, did the officers spend nearly two hours at the Burger King?

“They were trying to get to the video to see if it captured anything. They weren’t trying to delete anything. . . . All that tape would show is [McDonald] running around before the shooting. There was no reason for them to tamper with it,” the source said.

The FBI analysis helps explain why Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy virtually ruled out police tampering last week on the day Van Dyke, who is white, was charged with first-degree murder for shooting McDonald, who is black.

“We have looked at those videos . . . and it doesn’t appear that it’s been tampered with,” Alvarez said on that day. McCarthy said on that same day that reports of tampering were “absolutely not true. And I think the state’s attorney addressed that. There were apparently technical difficulties. But in no way, shape or form is there any evidence that anything was tampered with.”

 

[tapeANaspirin2it]

The investigation happened because people kept making requests for the dash cam video. The FOI/Sunshine law requests were delayed for over a year and finally the tape was released after a judge forced the CPD to release it. That is also part of the cover up, the other part is CPD investigators erasing video from surveillance cameras at a Burger King across the street that corroborated the coroners report that the initial rounds fired hit Laquan McDonald in the back. Further the CPD drug its feet on the investigation hoping it would be forgotten and they could make it go away. Thankfully they couldn't hide their corruption. Rahm Emmanuel has fired the police superintendent for this, not a fan of Rahm but he got this one right. There needs to be some more firings and charges for CPD officers who took part in the cover up and tampered with evidence.

I have said all I will say about this and I'm done with this thread.

DONT BE A BOOT LICKER.

So like I said, the investigation was slow, but it did happen. If there was a cover up, then the dash cam would have been erased and there would be no trial.

Why was the BK video erased? Who knows? Chicago is corrupt.

 

[MT~Forged]

Cops are public servants paid for by public tax dollars, any oversight should be made by a panel of citizens who are paying the taxes. Cops should NEVER investigate themselves or other police agencies.

 

[ark steel]

Cops are public servants paid for by public tax dollars, any oversight should be made by a panel of citizens who are paying the taxes. Cops should NEVER investigate themselves or other police agencies.

For the life of me, I can't see how this doesn't end up just as biased as the current method with the additional "benefit" of costing a ton more. Any 'panel of citizens' will be nothing more than political appointees or elected politicians. You will end up with something different, but, to me, it will just be a different morass of bullshit which cost more and is, in reality, no better than what we already have.

 

[Vader]

The fact is that the DOJ didn't touch this because of Rahm's election. Chicago is ran by Dems and has a mayor that is Obama's best friend. They didn't want this to hurt him. This is typical democratic politics. 2 days after Ferguson the DOJ started investigating. It took them 6 months to even talk about this episode. IF this would have happened anywhere else it would have been investigated the next day.

Also, I'm not familiar with every part of Chicago but I would have minority police walking the beat in minority areas. Yes, it has come to that. Why would a white cop even want to work in a minority area? You're just a target.

 

[bermudasteel]

http://chicago.suntimes.com/chicago-...-mcdonald-case

A forensic analysis for the FBI found “absolutely no evidence of tampering” with video from a Burger King near the scene where Laquan McDonald was gunned down by Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke last year on the South Side, a source close to the investigation said Monday.

An 86-minute gap in the Burger King tape and the fact that police officers spent about two hours at the restaurant on the night of the shooting trying to retrieve the video is fueling speculation about a police conspiracy to erase that portion of the tape.


“The district manager told us it was deleted,” said Jeffrey Neslund, an attorney for the McDonald family. “It is curious that there were 86 minutes missing. We don’t know for a matter of certainty what happened to the Burger King video, but we know what the employees told us.”

But a source close to the investigation said the FBI had the Burger King video “forensically analyzed.” ...

“They looked at it and found absolutely no evidence of any tampering or any removal of any portion of the tape,” the source said.

“That system that Burger King has is a mess and it would break down in the weeks and months before this incident. There were major gaps everywhere,” the source added.

Why, then, did the officers spend nearly two hours at the Burger King?

“They were trying to get to the video to see if it captured anything. They weren’t trying to delete anything. . . . All that tape would show is [McDonald] running around before the shooting. There was no reason for them to tamper with it,” the source said.

The FBI analysis helps explain why Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez and Chicago Police Supt. Garry McCarthy virtually ruled out police tampering last week on the day Van Dyke, who is white, was charged with first-degree murder for shooting McDonald, who is black.

“We have looked at those videos . . . and it doesn’t appear that it’s been tampered with,” Alvarez said on that day. McCarthy said on that same day that reports of tampering were “absolutely not true. And I think the state’s attorney addressed that. There were apparently technical difficulties. But in no way, shape or form is there any evidence that anything was tampered with.”

Very interesting...

 

[MT~Forged]

For the life of me, I can't see how this doesn't end up just as biased as the current method with the additional "benefit" of costing a ton more. Any 'panel of citizens' will be nothing more than political appointees or elected politicians. You will end up with something different, but, to me, it will just be a different morass of bullshit which cost more and is, in reality, no better than what we already have.

How 'bout maybe something like jury duty. You are drafted for a couple month time period. No appointees, just regular citizens. You get to enjoy the lifestyle in the US, time for everyone to start paying for it.

 

[ark steel]

How 'bout maybe something like jury duty. You are drafted for a couple month time period. No appointees, just regular citizens. You get to enjoy the lifestyle in the US, time for everyone to start paying for it.

Maybe. I'm skeptical seeing how some verdicta come out...