The circumstances that led a Chicago police officer to shoot Adam Toledo on March 29, ultimately killing the 13-year-old boy, are still unknown. Officials have yet to release body camera footage of the foot chase leading up to what police describe as an “armed encounter” in Little Village.
However, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has issued a directive that the Chicago Police Department enact a new foot pursuit policy before summer.
“We cannot and will not push the foot pursuit policy reform off for another day,” the mayor said Monday.
Nusrat Choudhury, legal director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said foot chases are extraordinarily dangerous.
“They involve officers chasing people through the streets that are often crowded, sometimes at night, with adrenaline running through their systems, and this is the kind of context that can lead to excessive force and too often does lead to excessive force,” she said [...]
John Catanzara, president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 has ideas on what a new policy should include.
“I would hope the policy starts with a very clear message: Comply with police lawful orders to stop, to drop a weapon, to stop running, give up, surrender, whatever the case may be,” he said. “That should be the headline of whatever foot pursuit policy is enacted, period. The reoccurring theme in all of these incidents are a clear decision by the subject to not comply with lawful orders given by the police and decide to just do what they’re going to do. That triggers all of the subsequent events and starts the dominos falling from there.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul said it shouldn’t have taken a tragedy like Toledo’s death to effect change in the CPD’s foot chase policy.
A new policy should include elements like having police “examine whether alternatives to the foot pursuit are appropriate, whether the offense is serious enough that you want to engage in a foot pursuit that puts the officer at risk and the public at large at risk, many times,” he said.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot is considering a momentous change to Chicago police procedure: requiring officers to get a supervisor’s permission before beginning a foot chase.
"No one should die as a result of a foot chase," she said.
These people are deliciously stupid. Cantanzara requests that the Chicago policy start with a "very clear message" that would-be runners should comply.
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
FOP presidents are historically awful in major metro areas. That kid in Ohio that got insta-shot by a cop on a playground had the area FOP rep talking all kinds of nonsense about how #actually you could see how it was justified.
One of the downsides of the Internet is that it allows like-minded people to form communities, and sometimes those communities are stupid.
In a perverse way I can see possible logic for it if some combination of the below is true:
a. CPD having trouble recruiting and retaining quality candidates and officers
b. Officers less willing to put selves in risky situations because of recent events, or are less willing to act decisively in those situations
c. City cutting back on protecting officers who use lethal force
d. City cutting back on police patrols because of budget cuts (so less likely to get backup)
e. City cutting back on overtime often needed to build and prosecute difficult cases
f. City has determined that the risk of expensive lawsuits is higher than the harm caused by rising crime
g. City has decided that Hamsterdam pockets aren't terrible
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
It's not that hypothetical at this point. Newark has solved this problem. General American police culture is extremely anti-accountability and they play up the deadliness of a job that is safer than being a roofer and where most deaths are traffic-related.
Large city cops and firefighters are extremely well-paid and there's a waiting list of years to get into the pipeline.
One of the downsides of the Internet is that it allows like-minded people to form communities, and sometimes those communities are stupid.
Grandpa's Spells wrote: ↑Tue Apr 27, 2021 5:19 pm
It's not that hypothetical at this point. Newark has solved this problem. General American police culture is extremely anti-accountability and they play up the deadliness of a job that is safer than being a roofer and where most deaths are traffic-related.
Large city cops and firefighters are extremely well-paid and there's a waiting list of years to get into the pipeline.
Background checks take a long time and have a high failure rate, Chicago doesn’t pay as well as many of the safe suburbs and that was true before last years summer of love, and the retention rates of newer officers and trainees is probably not great (which isn’t necessarily a bad thing).
"Liberalism is arbitrarily selective in its choice of whose dignity to champion." Adrian Vermeule
This thread only serves to remind me how much I miss watching the fatties chase perps on the wonderful docu-series COPS. Shout outs to the camera-men on that show.
"Sorry I didn't save the world, my friend. I was too busy building mine again" - Kendrick Lamar
