CHICAGO — After three police officers were gunned down in Baton Rouge, La., on Sunday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel sent an email saying it has become "painfully clear our nation must come together."
“We must move beyond words and declarations and work toward mutual respect and trust,” a statement released by the mayor read.
It’s hard to disagree with that, particularly when the recent killings of black men by white police officers, and the senseless murder of innocent cops in Dallas and Baton Rouge have stirred outrage that has Americans divided.
Still, Emanuel’s email declaration isn’t going to cut it.
It’s time for Rahm to “lead from the front.” (That’s one of one of the mayor’s favorite lines about leadership that was first uttered by his former top cop Garry McCarthy during the 2012 NATO protests.)
Chicagoans have had enough of the mayor’s special task force committees and "listening tours" that, so far, have done very little to rebuild the “mutual respect and trust” the mayor seeks for America, and most importantly, the city he was elected to serve.
The Emanuel administration has relied on an abundance of political spin, the strategic (or court-ordered) release of public information and the establishment of mayoral-controlled “independent” agencies, committees and studies to produce an illusion of transparency by baby steps toward something reformish.
If the Chicago police shooting of Laquan McDonald wasn't enough, the recent national outrage over police brutality and the slaying of innocent police officers should make it painfully clear Chicago’s City Hall has a tiger by the tail.
Continuing to offer the public what a lot of people consider a manufactured illusion of police reform is nothing but a Siegfried and Roy act … and we all know how that tiger show ended.
One way to rebuild trust in our city’s Police Department and to do right by our city’s honest Chicago Police officers who bravely patrol our streets is to weed out crooked cops by the bushel.
Emanuel would do his trust-building effort a big favor if he disregarded provisions in the police union contract that for generations have shielded officers accused of brutality and misdeeds from effective investigations and harsh punishment that might change the corrupt behavior of a slim percentage of cops who give the department a bad name.
If the Fraternal Order of Police files a lawsuit, so be it. Let the federal courts, not a decades-old backroom deal made by a powerful mayor and a union boss, decide what the rules should be for investigating allegations of misconduct against a police officer.
That should start by flipping open the lid on police misconduct complaints and the sham “independent” discipline process that has allowed dirty officers, harbored by the "thin blue line" code of silence, to remain on the job despite sustained findings of brutality, false arrest and lies — like the apparently false statements made by officers at the scene of the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald that didn’t jibe with video of the incident — that have eroded trust in the Police Department and cost taxpayers millions of dollars in civil lawsuit settlements.
We can only hope that Emanuel lives by the words about “mutual respect and trust” he emailed to reporters after the post-Baton Rouge tragedy:
“While it may be difficult, we can achieve it together. That is the American way, and it must be our path forward,” the mayor said in the email.
Because, so far, the Chicago Way hasn’t worked one bit.
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