What did police academy protesters accomplish with their screams?

I couldn’t help but be amused, yet also a bit embarrassed, by the reports of a City Council committee on Tuesday giving its support towards construction of a new policy academy facility in West Garfield Park.

Police Dept. would like to have new academy facility

The council’s Budget Committee heard from a raucous batch of protesters, many of whom were of the mentality that anything done on behalf of the Police Department was a waste of time and funds.

THE MORE HIGH-minded of them talked of how the measures being used to raise money for a training center, that also would be used by the Fire Department, would be better put to use to come up with more money for mental health and public education programs.

While others just talked of their distaste for the police.

Not that any committee members were swayed by such talk. The Chicago Sun-Times reported how once the protesters were removed from the room where the committee session was being held, the vote was taken and aldermen gave their support for the plan.

Specifically, aldermen backed a measure that would take some $20 million raised from the sale of a fleet maintenance facility on the North Side of Chicago and put it towards the $95 million cost of the training facility for police and fire.

WHICH WHEN COMBINED with the sale of air rights over an existing fire station and the sale of the current police and fire training facilities is expected to produce much of the money needed for the project.

A part of me wonders how many of the aldermanic types who cast votes Tuesday were emboldened in their attitudes against the people who oppose the police academy project.

,

Police dream of this new training facility, ...

Did the raucous behavior wind up strengthening support for the project that some activist-types were trying to say ought to be put somewhere else because they don’t want it in their neighborhood?

Humorous if viewed from the notion that the activists undercut their own argument with their rude behavior. But embarrassing if we view it as politicians being shallow enough to cast a vote out of spite.

ODDLY ENOUGH, THE one argument that didn’t seem to concern many was the notion that the $95 million needed for the new facility isn’t completely covered. The Sun-Times reported that city officials are about $37 million short of covering the tab.

Are people really that convinced city officials are capable of coming up with the cash? City officials say they’ll work with the Chicago Infrastructure Trust to close the funding gap – even though they admit it may involve the city itself having to sell (and repay) bonds to raise the money.

Which would mean taking on some long-term debt.

Not exactly the ideal solution for a city that has other financial problems to address and would prefer to take on as little debt as possible.

PERSONALLY, I DON’T have a problem with the police and fire departments for Chicago taking actions to improve the quality of training they provide to their officers. Such training could result in better-qualified cops and firefighters, thereby improving our public safety.

... replacing the current one on West Side. Images provided by city of Chicago

I’m also skeptical, in general, of people whose argument against something is that they don’t want it built anywhere near themselves. My three-plus decades as a reporter-type person means I have heard it made so many times.

One can always find someone to object to location. If that line of logic were allowed to prevail, nothing would ever get done with regards to any issue or project. In short, Chicago would go nowhere. That isn’t what anybody ought to desire.

But I don’t doubt that the people who got escorted out of a council committee hearing on Tuesday just before approval was given are going to feel particularly spurned. Which also is likely to make their future arguments against the project all the more intense and angry.

  -30-

What are we spending that money on?

People who are hoping for dramatic changes in the way the Chicago Police Department operates must truly be feeling depressed following a pair of reports published in the daily newspapers on Tuesday.

It seems that some $4.5 million has been spent on legal and consulting fees due to actions being taken in response to the 2014 shooting death of a teenager on the South Side by a police officer. The Chicago Sun-Times reports the figures likely will continue to rise in coming months.

THOSE CONSULTANTS AND attorneys were supposed to be coming up with new means and procedures by which the city’s police could operate in ways that would be more respectful of the populace.

Yet these legal actions also go contrary to the sentiments of the new attorney general. Jeff Sessions, who is the appointee of President Donald J. Trump, has made it clear he thinks our police department ought to have fewer restrictions placed on it.

He certainly isn’t going to have any kind of monitor placed over the department, not even if that monitor were someone appointed by him.

Because for as much as Trump likes to rant and rage about crime in Chicago being out of control, I doubt he wants to be put into a position where he’d be responsible for trying to find a solution to the problems of urban violence.

WHICH AREN’T REALLY any more out of control in Chicago than they are anywhere else in the nation.

And the general solution offered up by conservative ideologues to such problems?

It usually is something similar to the way that comedian/actor Redd Foxx’ “Fred Sanford” character would deal with bills that he didn’t have the money to pay. He’d put them back in the mail box, and pretend he never saw them in the first place.

So the fact that law firms and law enforcement consultants are managing to collect millions of dollars in Chicago taxpayer funds out of a dream that they will find some solution to getting the city’s homicide rate to drop back to the levels it was at a few years ago? It just seems like money that could have been better spent elsewhere.

BUT THIS WASN’T the only negative report that turned up this week. The Chicago Tribune looked into the results of the Chicago Police Academy – which would like us to think it provides rigorous training that gives our city some of the finest law enforcement officers in the land.

In fact, they claim to put prospective recruits through an intense screening process that weeds out many interested persons who might want to wear the uniform of a Chicago Police officer.

But once you get in, it seems you’re virtually a shoo-in to pass and get a job. The newspaper found that some 97 percent of people accepted to the Police Academy wound up graduating.

By comparison, some 86 percent of people graduating is more the average, according to a Justice Department study of about 600 police academies across the country.

THE TRIBUNE ALSO pointed out that in Los Angeles, as many as 25 percent of police academy students don’t finish – although in many cases that is because applicants change their minds and drop out voluntarily.

Who’s to say just how rigorous the training for a Chicago police officer truly is? It reminds me of a moment from that 1987 film where actor Kevin Costner gave us his take on Eliot Ness and “The Untouchables” where he and actor Sean Connery’s Malone character were interviewing a would-be cop who stuttered his way through some questioning, causing Connery/Malone to respond, “There goes the next chief of police.”

I’d like to think that was just a cheap-shot gag in a decades-old film. Although with such new findings, who’s to say that our city’s future officers will be the “best and brightest” we’d like to think we could attract.

Then again, with so many other funds going to pay for studies that likely will never be turned to for use, who’s to say what the future of law enforcement is here – largely because we seem determined to let the political gamesmanship set policy rather than what would truly be beneficial to the people at-large.

  -30-