Minneapolis: the Un-Chicago

 Five and-a-half years ago, I watched in disbelief the video of Laquan McDonald's murder at the hands of Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke. Given the obviousness of the event, I assumed a conviction and a long jail sentence were forgone conclusions.

What I failed to remember was that this was Chicago, where the fix is always in. While it's true that Van Dyke was convicted, he received a slap-on-the-wrist sentence of just six and three-quarters years for shooting McDonald sixteen times in the back.

(Which I think you'll agree is what you and I would have received had we done the same.)

Even more stunning was the dismissal of all charges by judge Domenica Stephenson for the four cops central to the police-sanctioned cover-up. Combined, these cases represented an abyssal failure of justice, and if Chicago cops didn't feel immune from prosecution beforehand they certainly did afterwards.

So I am relieved that Minneapolis was able to conduct a trial unblemished by political influence and pandering.

Of course, it helps that the circumstances were very different. McDonald's murder came late on a Monday night on an empty stretch of Pulsaki Road. Floyd's came mid-afternoon in a neighborhood populated with stores—and shoppers

While the Chicago police sat on the McDonald footage until a court order forced its release, that was never an option for the Minneapolis PD. Cell phone video was posted to social media within minutes.

And finally, the defense's argument that Floyd's medical conditions killed him—not Derek Chauvin's knee pressing on his neck for nine minutes—was ludicrous. Seriously? Turned inside-out, that argument implies George Floyd would have died that day even had he not encountered Derek Chauvin.

Wow.

They must've thought they were addressing a CPAC convention, because I can't imagine another forum where such lunacy would be given a second thought. Never mind a first one.

The mind reels.

So congratulations to all concerned. Again, it is deeply satisfying to see reason and evidence triumph over political expediency.

With so much yet to be done, I fear this post is premature. Chauvin has yet to be sentenced (as a first-time offender with only a second-degree murder conviction, he's probably looking at a little over a decade in prison) and the trial of his accomplices won't happen until August.

As a hard-bitten cynic I'd say plenty of track remains for this train to go off the rails. 

But it is my desperate wish that communities of color and the police departments who serve them could meet, speak honestly and discover a mutual sense of respect and understanding. Of when police need to do certain things and why, and perhaps even discover a better way forward.

 

Rayshard Brooks Is a Martyr? Seriously?

The dynamics of a police shooting are so skewed when viewed by, well, us. We often only see law enforcement's reaction rather than the provocation which initiated it, giving us a really crappy and incomplete idea of what actually happened.

Again, I don't send three-figure donations to the Fraternal Order of Police. But neither do I subscribe to the idea that every single police shooting of a black man is unjustified murder.

Atlanta's Rayshard Brooks makes a nice case in point. And for a change, there is lots of video available.

Okay. Rayshard had too much to drink. Now he's ferociously hungry. He's jonsing for a double cheeseburger (never frozen) with fries and pulls into the local Wendy's drive-through.

Everything is sweet and dandy.

Except for one thing. He passes out. The police are called.

They administer a completely legal and by-the-book sobriety test, which includes a breathalyzer sample. Brooks fails.

Again, all of this is completely legitimate and above board. There is no profiling. There is no stereotyping. Rayshard is drunk and behind the wheel of a car. It's open and shut.

Even 2020 Americans can agree DUI is not a good thing, right?

But as the police attempt to handcuff Rayshard, he resists. He hits the cops seeking to make an entirely-justifiable arrest and manages to steal one of their tasers. He runs away.

When the cops pursue him, he fires their taser at them.

Seriously, Rayshard? You're snagged passed out behind the wheel of your car and you're going to fire tasers at the police for catching you? Really? Put down the meth pipe, bro. You're really fucking messed up.

Let me ask you, good readers of The Square Peg: what are police to do when they encounter a law breaker who gives every indication of doing whatever he needs to do to extract himself from the situation?

Invite him (or her) out for beer and pizza?

Buy them the newest, most up-to-date video gaming console in the hopes it will keep said offender off the streets?

Realize it's break time and head for the nearest Dunkin' Donuts?

Or detain them for arrest and pending charges?

We need to think very, very carefully about what we are asking of our police. I, for one, don't want them neutered when they encounter a law-breaker. Or a violent felon. 

Do we really want anyone who resists arrest to be let off the hook, scot-free? Really? Is that the desired outcome?

I don't like laws and regulations any more than you do, but I will admit that yes, we kinda sorta need them. A society needs a framework within which to exist. And we need really skilled people to keep us within it. 

For whatever reason, Rayshard Brooks couldn't man-up to the simple, uncontestable charge that he was DUI. He escalated the entire stop by fighting, stealing an officer's taser, running away and then and firing that taser at police, which I hope we can all agree is a fairly aggressive act.

Sadly, the officer chasing Brooks didn't enjoy the same option, as his taser had been, well, you know.

Rayshard, I'm sorry you weren't the sharpest knife in the drawer. I'm sorry you panicked. If you hadn't, you'd probably still be alive today. But you're not.

Even worse, an engorged society already filled with legitimate indignation over police brutality has unthinkingly included you in their pantheon of social injustice victims. But we know differently, don't we? 

Let's be clear, people. Rayshard Brooks is not Laquan McDonald. He isn't Ahmaud Arbery. Not George Floyd. Nor Breonna Taylor. Bestowing martyrdom on a man who wanted to fuck with the police for (correctly) arresting him is questionable at best and blindingly ignorant at worst. 

Exactly what are we telling our children?

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.

Not Quite Breakfast at Tiffany's

Dear Tiffany Van Dyke,

Your husband murdered—in cold blood—a confused, aggravated but ultimately harmless young man by shooting him sixteen times as he walked away from your spouse.

Realizing the potential fallout of his actions, your husband's employer buried any and all evidence of the event. His co-workers concocted a lie and submitted it in writing to the Chicago Police Department as fact.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel aided in the cover-up, knowing the dash-cam video was inflammatory and would unite opponents of an overly-aggressive police department. Closer to home, this would also have a negative effect on his bid for re-election.

All was well until the court-ordered release of the video thirteen months after the fact.

It was as inflammatory as your husband, his co-workers and his employer feared. The murder was as brutal as it was senseless.

Even uglier were the lies your husband, his lawyer and his co-workers persisted in. They gave the city and the Chicago Police Department a black eye neither could afford, cementing in the public imagination the idea that our law enforcement feels itself above the very law it was created to enforce.

Your husband's flimsy and preposterous arguments thankfully gave way to justice when he was found guilty of second-degree murder. For a brief, shimmering moment, right appeared to have triumphed over wrong.

At sentencing, your mate dodged yet-another bullet (please excuse the pun) when he inexplicably was handed a sentence more appropriate for car theft. It was a slap in the face to anyone who has ever been a victim of the Chicago Police Department and its over-zealousness.

Yes, the family name has been besmirched. Yes, your husband is temporarily out of a job. But knowing the intransigence of his supporters, I am confident he will have an offer waiting when he walks in just three short years.

Conversely, his victim will be dead forever.

I was hoping we had heard the last of your husband. And of his hideous crime. That we could flush this from our system and move on.

But after being transferred to an out-of-state prison, your spouse was roughed-up by some of his fellow inmates, which unfortunately isn't an uncommon occurrence in jail.

You had the temerity to wail in front of a media assemblage that “...the number-one fear for my husband has always been his safety, that someone was going to get him and hurt him and the worst has happened.”

Interesting words, indeed. 

Has it occurred to you or those mercenaries you have on retainer that Laquan McDonald and his loved ones could have said the same? That you have unwittingly expressed the very thoughts that have been on their minds for the last four and-a-half years?

And if it has, what are your thoughts? What is your reaction?

Tiffany, not to belabor the point, but your husband is a very lucky man. He is serving a soft sentence in a minimum-security prison for a crime that would have netted you or I or practically anyone else a lifetime behind bars.

Please. No more press conferences.

Kindly go away, will you? 


Sincerely,

La Piazza Gancio 

...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.

Happy to Be Wrong

Several months ago, I expressed doubt that Jason Van Dyke, the Chicago police officer who shot an eighteen year-old African-American male sixteen times in the back, would ever see the inside of a prison cell.

Given the numbing regularity that cops are exonerated in such cases, I had little reason to think otherwise. But justice prevailed, and Van Dyke was found guilty yesterday of second-degree murder and sixteen counts of aggravated battery—a count for each bullet.

This isn't a celebration. Perhaps 'relieved' would have been a better word choice for the title of this post. I wonder if Van Dyke had it to do over again, would he have reacted differently? He has to know that as a former cop in prison, his life will be very difficult. I pity him.

Yet it has become a cliche to say cops have tough jobs. We all know that. As officers of the peace, their job is to de-escalate situations, not escalate them.

And the behavior exhibited by the responding officers, from Van Dyke's over-reaction to the conspiracy of the cover up to the stream of lies about what transpired on Pulaski Road that night doesn't speak well of the Chicago Police Department.

To be sure, Laquan McDonald was a troubled young man with only a faint sense of direction and purpose. He is another victim of the most hideous incubator of young lives the United States can offer—the ghetto.

But that is not in and of itself a crime.

As is the nature of things, we don't hear about the school bus that safely delivered two dozen schoolchildren to their homes. Or the construction crew that successfully secured dozens of support beams to the framework of a sixty-story high-rise.

Or of the cops who routinely arrest the bad guys while safeguarding the good ones.

But like surgery, when police work goes wrong it is often fatal.

Consider the cost of this event. A young man dead. A cop's life destroyed. Families left with a giant hole at their center. Police who must routinely confront the worst our society has to offer left with a chip on their shoulder.

The best we can hope for is that this proves to be a watershed moment. One that shines a light on the ocean of men in our ghettos who have little to live for, and the effectiveness of the police who encounter them every day.

Retail Racism?

Back in the early-nineties, while attempting to nudge a part-time gig in my chosen field (book publishing) into a full-time one, I worked a second part-time job in retail. Fortunately, it didn't demand that I sell Dockers at Sears or patio furniture at Montgomery Wards. 

I worked in a record store.

It was ideal in a way, having a foot in both the book and music worlds. But working six days a week and literally morning, noon and night for two or three days per without health insurance or paid time off was wearying.

But not so wearying that I didn't notice thieves in my record store.

“Teresa? Watch that woman in the jean jacket and long skirt, will you?” I ducked beneath the counter. Despite being an amazingly attractive man, I knew the men and women eying me weren't seeking a hook-up.

Nope. They wanted to know when it would be safe to stuff a CD down their pants. Or under a jacket. Or in a bag suspended between their legs beneath an oversized skirt. At the time, only cosmetics were pilfered more often than CDs in the United States.

“Oh my god!” gasped Teresa. Bingo.

I accosted the woman outside. I took her by the arm and urged her towards the store. Just then an Oldsmobile Ninety-Eight squealed to a stop in front of the store. “LaWanda! Get in!”

Raised in an environment where I was taught it was wrong to manhandle women, I wasn't as forceful as I should have been with LaWanda. She broke free and made it to the car.

I memorized the license plate and called the police.

This scenario played itself out many times. Most-disturbing to me was that the thieves were almost always African-American. And by almost always I mean over ninety-percent of the time.

An idealistic but naive co-worker chastised me for watching African-Americans more-closely than Caucasians. He called me a racist.

I shrugged my shoulders. 

Was I acting on accumulated experience? Or was I profiling? Maybe it's just that African-Americans were really crappy thieves?

I ask because in the wake of the recent brouhaha over a denied restroom visit at a Starbuck's in Philadelphia and the attendant accusations of retail racism, I have to question the M.O. of the offenders.

There exists a persistent and unfortunate ethos in the ghetto that demands that its inhabitants constantly prove their “blackness”. This usually involves acting in such a way that is one-hundred and eighty-degrees removed from the societal norms of white America.

Once upon a time, I had a big, giant chip on my shoulders about employers. After being unjustly removed from a job I loved because I didn't bestow a sufficient number of pliant kisses on a director's ample bottom, I grew my hair and dressed in jeans and inflammatory political t-shirts as I waited for responses to my resume.

I was hurt. I was angry. I was frustrated. I wanted my appearance to scream “I am not a cubicle drone! I am not an office automaton!”

In the words of our greatest president, mission accomplished.

On visits to retail establishments (especially upmarket ones in fancy neighborhoods), I was treated accordingly, no matter how innocent my intent. Since I didn't conform to the norm I was regarded as a threat.

Like all sentient organisms, human beings learn from experience. If a yellow snake with red stripes inflicts us with a painful and life-threatening bite, we will act very, very carefully the next time we encounter one, our motivation being to stay alive.

To that end, one of the men involved in the Philadelphia Starbuck's incident speaks of dressing in hoodies and Timberland boots, the better to prove he is an “authentic” African-American and not some media-manipulated Oreo.

To which I say great. Have at it. Dress like a thug—get treated like a thug.

It's just that simple.

But before you label me as a racist or accuse me of endorsing mindless conformity, read on.

In 2018 America there is a deep and collective sense of angst. We are a society undone by terrorism and random gun violence and the willful chaos of the Trump White House and the seething bipartisanship that underlays every facet of our lives. 

Then there is the looming spectre of climate change and a vague unease about the future and who it will include—and exclude.

None of us know what really happened at the Starbuck's in Philadelphia. We don't know what the manager's frame of reference was. We don't know how she felt. We don't know how the denied men looked at or spoke to her.

There is no complete audio or visual record of the incident.

But I doubt that manager called the police solely because the men were black. She called the police because she felt threatened. And being responsible for the safety of virtually every person in that store, acted in kind.

She is no more a racist than I was, or am.

In addition to being anxious, we are angry. And often seem to view everyone who isn't a clone as a potential enemy. Nurtured by reality TV and the anonymity of the Internet, we confront. As our TV listings confirm, every interaction is a potential 'War'.

So there are African-Americans who refuse to kowtow to any perceived influence or dictate of white America, it being in their minds a symbolic act of surrender. Of giving in. And their defiance has reached epic proportions.

Not that they don't have an abundance of reasons for doing so. Only someone without a soul would deny that African-Americans have been treated with something less than fairness by the citizenry and government of the United States of America.

But in 2018 America we throw accusations around like confetti. We rarely stop and ask is this truly legitimate? Is this going to dilute the pool of genuine grievances?

The shooting of Laquan McDonald by the Chicago Police Department is absolutely worthy of strident and nationwide protest.

Not being able to loiter at a Starbuck's because you're dressed like a thug? Not so much.

When every perceived slight is met with the same towering rage, I hear the rivets on the Titanic popping. I hear the cables on a suspension bridge snapping. I hear the carefully-constructed infrastructure of our civilization giving way.

In our blind, freely-distributed and frequently disproportionate anger I hear the Tower of Babel being built.