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'Drag On CPD Morale' Behind Murder Spike, U.S. Attorney Zach Fardon Says

By Ted Cox | September 26, 2016 3:54pm
 U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon blamed the city's murder spike on
U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon blamed the city's murder spike on "a drag on CPD morale" and said there are no "quick fixes."
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DNAinfo/Ted Cox

RIVER NORTH — U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon on Monday blamed Chicago's murder spike, in part, on a "drag" on Police Department morale following the release of the Laquan McDonald video late last year.

Citing the police-involved deaths over the last few years of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., Freddie Gray in Baltimore and Laquan McDonald in Chicago, all of which created firestorms of protests, Fardon told the City Club Monday, "We are in the midst of a national reform movement on police and trust."

According to Fardon, Chicago protests following the release of the McDonald video, the announcement of the U.S. Department of Justice probe into the Chicago Police Department and the adoption of a detailed two-page "contact card" for all police stops has led officers to be more reactive than proactive and to make fewer stops — which contributed directly to this year's 40 percent increase in murders and 50 percent increase in shootings.

"I believe there was a drag on CPD morale," Fardon said, adding that it had "created a sense of emboldenment among gangs."

But Fardon added: "That perception is wrong, and it will change with time."

Fardon said it was essential for police officers to regain "credibility with the community" if they were to succeed in their jobs.

"There are bad cops in the world," Fardon said. "I'm someone who believes that the vast majority of officers are not only good, but the noblest of our public servants."

Praising Chicagoans for their "fundamental goodness," Fardon told the City Club on Monday to "back up" and take a long-range view of the reforms necessary to remake the Police Department and rein in the city's gun violence. "It is accomplishable," Fardon said.

"We are in the midst of a brutal year," Fardon granted, but added, "There is some good from all the pain we're having right now."

Calling the ongoing federal Justice Department review of Chicago Police practices "inevitable and essential," Fardon said it was the largest yet conducted on a U.S. police department.

"We're not done yet with this record review," Fardon said. "We are proceeding with a sense of real urgency." He said the overall problem was decades in the making and would require the same to solve.

"Our goal is not quick fixes," he added. "It is sustainable long-term change."

Fardon, however, was light on specifics on how to address the city's gun violence, pleading that he didn't want to prejudice the Justice Department investigation. He also would not commit to having that probe completed by the end of the year.

He labeled the connection between poverty and violence "astounding," however, and called for "a Marshall Plan" to address it on the South and West sides through better schools, jobs and housing.

"Those communities are too long neglected and underserved," Fardon said, adding that they were "isolated, traumatized and terrorized on gun violence."

Fardon focused particularly on the impact gun violence has on children. "We have kids," he said, "shot as a matter of routine."

Since 2010, he said, more than 2,800 children had been shot in the city, 369 of them killed.

He defended film director Spike Lee's label of the city as "Chiraq," calling it "the verbal symbol of the hard reality" that Chicago indeed has "a tale of two cities" — safe and opulent in some neighborhoods, poor and violent in others.

He revealed that his office had organized roundtables with local nonprofit groups in those troubled neighborhoods in a bid to share information and ideas on addressing gun violence.

Fardon said "an illegal gun an hour" is taken off Chicago streets, calling it "an enormous frustration" that "our borders are porous" when it comes to guns being smuggled into the city. He said it called for a national commitment to amend laws to halt those transfers, but quickly added that his office was not permitted to lobby for those laws.

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