The Second Time Around

I don't have to tell you how hard the world is sucking at the moment, do I?

Inflation is taking off like a rocket with an inexhaustible fuel supply. A nation suffering from foreign conflict fatigue can't summon a better response to Vladimir Putin's barbarism than to endure higher energy costs.

And even as we sit poised to collectively turn our clocks forward in recognition of daylight savings time, the thermometer reads but eight-degrees this morning.

Joy.  

But then the news of Jussie Smollett's sentencing drops into your lap like a warm croissant and you are made glad. While Donald Trump isn't in front of a firing squad or in a maximum security prison for committing treason and inciting sedition, at least one turd—Jussie Smollett—has been flushed.

Being the lead actor in a hit TV series wasn't enough for Jussie. The empty maw of his want wouldn't close until Jussie had even more money and even more attention and even more of everything that celebrities wallow in once they become celebrities.

After a failed bid to heighten his influence on the show, Jussie got it in his head to stage a spontaneous hate crime. After all—it wasn't too much of a stretch, was it? As an actor, he'd seen directors put together dramas his entire career. He could do that, too.

Only he couldn't. He fucked up. Central to the case (at least in my eyes) was how an impulsive trip to an all-night sandwich shop intersected with a carefully-staged, pre-planned hate crime.

Hmmm. 

Yeah, that is one hell of a stretch.

Initially, it all went Jussie's way. Kim Foxx, our grandstanding Cook Country State's Attorney, invoked all manner of civic outrage as celebrities poured from the woodwork in knee-jerk support. One even had ties to a former president.

This while the Chicago Police Department earnestly investigated, racking up six-figures worth of overtime in the process.

Yeah, this was a great, big deal.

Then it got weird. As it became apparent things hadn't unfolded the way Jussie said they had, it all just disappeared. The case, the charges, everything. Gone. Like water on a Las Vegas sidewalk.

Foxx issued all sorts of officious-sounding babble that didn't explain anything. The feds took note and began an independent investigation.

This time, the charges stuck. Without the inaction of a Black SA seemingly only interested in decriminalizing crime and any and all Black people caught committing it, logic and objectivity triumphed.

Yes, Smollett provoked a powerful dislike in me. He is a shit. Among public figures, he is second only to president forty-five. Smollett is an inveterate narcissist, a congenital liar and a slavish attention whore.

Which would be fine if it didn't involve municipalities and hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars. Not to mention cheapening actual hate crimes and their victims.

So I offer thanks to the prosecutors and to Judge James Linn for cementing the end of this civic embarrassment in place—once and for all. It's a shame Judge Linn wasn't sitting on the bench for the Laquan McDonald and CPD trials.

With buy-in just short of a Trump-tard, Smollett's family are decrying his sentencing with every bit of mental illness they can muster. My favorite is the statement from Smollett's brother Jacqui, who claims Jussie is going to jail for being attacked.

Ugh-huh.

And how much Kool-Aid was required to embrace that, Jacqui?

Gas is trending towards five-bucks a gallon. Another miserable winter refuses to release its grip on northeastern Illinois. And the once-invincible Bulls have been exposed and now appear decidedly vincible.

But Jussie Smollett is going to prison.

Yay.

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.

...Two Steps Back

It felt like progress last October when former Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke was convicted of second-degree murder. An indictment of an out-of-control police officer is about as rare as World Series celebrations. They just don't happen much.

But in Domenica Stephenson's sweeping, across-the-board exoneration of his three co-conspirators and Van Dyke's own slap-on-the-wrist sentence, that conviction now seems like an aberration. In just three short months it seems like a relic from a different time.

A second-degree murder charge with a six and three-quarters year sentence? Seriously? Van Dyke discharging his weapon sixteen times into Laquan McDonald wasn't manslaughter—it was murder.

And yet in Judge Vincent Gaughan's twisted logic, what will likely boil down to just three years behind bars is somehow appropriate. 

And if not seething disdain for anyone who dares challenge a cop in court, it is impossible to justify or understand Stephenson's ruling. Its abject dismissal of the prosecution's evidence was more appropriate for a Soviet-era court. Or one in Salvador Allende's Chile.

Combined with Gaughan's, they send an ominous message to the citizens of Chicago. They give carte blanche to an organization that has earned its reputation for being something less than ethical and above board.

Excuse my misanthropic streak, but no individual, organization or political entity should ever possess unlimited power. Or immunity. Truth is, we can't handle it.

Van Dyke's actions weren't conducted in a heat-of-the-moment, life-and-death exchange of gunfire in a shadowy gangway. They were the deliberate result of an irresponsible cop squeezing off sixteen shots on a spacious, well-lighted street as McDonald walked away from him.

They were as purposeful and deliberate as David March, Thomas Gaffney and Joseph Walsh's falsification of the events and circumstances surrounding that night.

Chicago can't afford another black eye. Already plagued with a reputation for political corruption and wanton gun violence, these rulings do little to alleviate either.

Van Dyke murdered. March, Gaffney and Walsh lied. Letting them off scot-free only deepens the perception that something ain't quite right in the City of Chicago.

In the chilling words of the ex-cop quoted in Mary Schmich's Chicago Tribune column yesterday, “People get the police that they seek, and God help the city of Chicago.” As it apparently needs to be pointed out, no one sought Jon Burge. No one sought Anthony Abbate. No one sought Patrick Kelly.

No one sought Jason Van Dyke. Or David March. Or Thomas Gaffney. Or Joseph Walsh.

No one in their right minds would. And yet we got them.

Chicago needs a better police force. Not a court-protected one.

One Step Forward...

I was heartened when Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago cop who unloaded sixteen shots into a young African-American man, was found guilty of second-degree murder.

Worse than the shooting itself was the reaction by the Chicago Police Department. Their first response was to cover it up. Bury the video. Concoct a cover story. Lie on the reports.

This. Didn't. Happen.

Never mind that one of the most incriminating pieces of evidence in a criminal trial is whether an offender attempts to cover up their crime, thereby indicating an awareness of right and wrong.

By virtue of a concerted effort to misrepresent what happened on South Pulaski on October 20, 2014, the Chicago Police Department clearly knew they had overstepped their boundaries. That they had, for lack of a better word, fucked up.

And they almost succeeded.

It took a lawsuit to get the dash cam video released. And when it was, it was as damming and as incriminating as the CPD had feared. There was Jason Van Dyke, a.k.a. John Wayne, Sylvester Stallone, Arnold Schwarzenegger and Dwayne Johnson all rolled into one, pumping sixteen shots into a confused and at-loose-ends black kid walking away from him.

But Van Dyke and his fellow officers maintained that McDonald had turned on them and wielded the knife in a threatening manner.

There was just one problem. The video somehow missed that.

Circling the wagons, they resolutely persisted in their lie. Despite filing reports that contradicted everything portrayed in the video, Detective David March and officers Thomas Gaffney and Joseph Walsh were exonerated yesterday by Judge Domenica Stephenson.

She argued that the angle of the video was such that it made it impossible to determine what officers at the scene saw. (Which must be the reason Van Dyke is facing a prison sentence and the wearing of body cams by police officers is being mandated across the nation.)

In her ruling, Judge Stephenson unequivocally backed every single action taken by the Chicago Police Department that day, including (one has to assume) the doctored reports filed by its officers. She stated the cops at the scene had every reason to believe an attack was imminent and that deadly force was warranted.

Judge Stephenson, let me ask you: when was the last time you considered a person walking away from you a threat?

This isn't a ruling based on the case at hand. This is judicial editorializing. This is an opinion piece. Domenica Stephenson is outraged by the prospect of Jason Van Dyke in prison and to even things up has cleared his guilty-as-hell co-workers of any wrongdoing whatsoever.

Wow.

I'm not anti-cop. They are an unfortunate necessity in a society where people frequently act with something less than kind regard for their fellow human beings.What I am against is the abuse of authority. Be it a CEO, a president or a cop. 

In fact, little else makes me as angry.

Which is why I find Judge Stephenson's decision so infuriating. These cops lied—plain and simple. It's in writing. Gaffney, March and Walsh lied to protect a co-worker who was way out of bounds. I don't care what the FOP's whore says. March, Gaffney and Walsh counted on the time-honored code of silence to save their asses.

Thanks to Judge Stephenson, they needn't have worried.

Tell you what. The next time you're ticketed by a red-light camera, go to traffic court and cite the March/Gaffney/Walsh defense. That the camera isn't an accurate depiction of events as seen by you.

Baliffs and lawyers and judges need a good laugh, too.

And if you're an African-American living on the south or west sides of the city, I don't blame you at all for feeling the fix is in. That the police frequently have a little extra law on their side.

In light of this ruling, it will be very interesting to see what kind of sentence is handed to Van Dyke today.

Stay tuned.