That Toddlin' Town

Ah, spring.

Yes, a third of the way through April the thermometer reads thirty-five degrees. For those of you calculating in Celsius, that would be 1.6. The wind chill (yep—still talking about wind chill), thanks to the twenty-mile-per-hour winds, stands at twenty-four (or minus 4.4 C).

In the fine northern Illinois tradition, the skies are a featureless sheet of grey.

I look for a ray of sunshine. It doesn't matter if it's literal or metaphorical. Anything will do.

(And no, the minuscule chance of sunburn does not count.)

There is a newspaper story detailing the heroic actions of six cops who selflessly cast personal safety aside to rescue a man who had jumped into Lake Michigan—in January—to rescue his dog. With an Arctic vortex bearing down on the city, the officers picked their way across the shifting sheet of ice.

Grabbing each other's belts, the cops formed a human chain and were able to hoist the man out of the water and across the ice to safety. I can't speak for you, but this is several area codes removed from my comfort zone.

One column over, the clouds close back in. The sunshine is temporary.

The last particles of fallout from the Laquan McDonald shooting have settled on the ground. Four cops who figured prominently in the initial cover-up stand to lose their jobs if found guilty of conspiracy (again).

But in the highly-politicized world of the Chicago Police Department, this is not the clear-cut case their feeble testimony and the mountains of evidence would lead you to believe.

Initially, Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson wanted to fire the four after an official investigation concluded they were guilty of conspiracy. But in the inside-out, up-is-down world of the CPD, your boss can't fire you.

Instead, they were suspended for a year.

Restored to paid positions, their disciplinary hearings were then delayed by the Jason Van Dyke trial. (If you're scratching your head, join the club.) Even after these hearings conclude tomorrow, it will be months before a decision is reached.

There is layer upon layer of review boards and committees that decision must pass through, giving all concerned ample opportunity to concoct another implausible lie depending on how disagreeable they find the outcome.

This puts us at four years since the release of the dash cam video, and five since the actual shooting. When has it ever taken this long for an employer to fire an errant employee or four?

Since they'll be excused anyway, can't we save taxpayers the expense and re-route this through Domenica Stephenson, who can again reject conflicting evidence out of hand and rule that even after being shot sixteen times, Laquan McDonald represented a threat to the officers on the scene, justifying any and everything they did afterwards?

(On a personal note, it is my belief that Stephenson watched way too many Freddie Krueger movies as a child.)

Sunlight becomes even more remote after reading the interviews conducted with CPD officers Janet Mondragon, Daphne Sebastian, Ricardo Viramontes and Stephen Franko.

Like the rationale offered by Jason Van Dyke, Joseph Walsh, Thomas Gaffney and David March, we can be thankful it's not toilet paper, so thin is it and so easily does it dissipate under even the slightest pressure.

It is impossible to differentiate their words from those of the hardened rapists, murderers and drug dealers they routinely encounter. In contrast to the cops on ice story, it is sobering to realize how easily these cops lie and how defiantly they look their interviewers in the eye and invite them to challenge the layers and layers of protection surrounding CPD officers.

It's not too hard to imagine a crime boss testifying before congress, smugly dodging question after question and offering only the most banal, most obvious lies when they do speak. No wonder the city's black population feels itself a target to be used and abused without consequence.

This is the latest battle in an escalating race war.

The same Fraternal Order of Police organization that is behind the knee-jerk protection of even its worst officers is urging official reprimands of Cook County Prosecutor Kim Foxx, she of the equally-mysterious and indefensible exoneration of Jussie Smollett.

Right or wrong, blacks see this as payback for the exoneration of the CPD in the murder of Laquan McDonald.

Outside, the wind continues to blow. There is no sunlight.