Chicago Police Contract

One of the most unexpected benefits of my current position is my exposure to law enforcement professionals from a multitude of other departments; local, county, state and federal. It has taught me a number of things, primarily, that the men and women who serve us in law enforcement are a credit and a boon to America and secondly I come from a good department.

I have gotten to know a number of Chicago Officers while I was going through my master’s program and then met even more now we are all working together to pull illicit drugs off the street. They are being disserved by the Daley administration. The officers have been without a contract since 2007 and yet other city services find a way to increase their pay and benefits package (See Chicago Aldermen). Mayor Daley has made the simple calculation that it is cheaper to keep the money with the city and eventually pay out retro checks then to settle the contract quickly, well unless he can get the union to make substantial cuts into the proposed benefit package. This is coming dangerously close to the Cook County Model in which when one contract is finally negotiated, they have to instantly begin new contract negotiations because once the new contract is approved and signed it has expired.

I brought up the problem that Chicago PD is going through to a group of my non-law enforcement friends and immediately the response was, “Well they should be taking a pay cut like everyone else.”

That got me thinking about the unique characteristics concerning Police contracts.

First, the general purpose of the employee contract rather individual employment/ at will employment is to; theoretically, remove the politics and personal gain issues that affect private sector employment. If you are in negotiations as a group, then individual actions can not improve individual employment keeping Officers actions on the street for law enforcement purposes and not for personal gain.

Second, everyone regardless of individual performance gets paid the same. In patrol for instance the lowest ticket writer gets paid the same as the highest. The only change in pay comes with either positions (investigators get paid the same as other investigators but higher than patrolmen), promotion or time on the job.

Third, the reason the Officers do not deserve a pay cut is primarily due to point two. When economic times are positive Officers upward mobility in both position and pay is restricted. Promotion comes only through a testing process that is conducted only once every couple of years. The Officer also does not get increases based on performance but rather negotiated raises throughout the year. In the private sector when a company is successful and the employee is performing at a high standard, their compensation is improved whenever the company deems fit. I get all kinds of calls from my friends wondering why I picked this profession when I could be making so much more money in the private sector. When times are bad I get calls to the reverse. The bottom line is that public sector pay is a slow line increasing up and we can not take advantage of the good times and are not hurt as badly during the down times. However if a pay cut is implemented for a contract employee it is a permanent loss since you do not get a corresponding pay increase when times are good to offset the loss.

Finally, the last in this post but certainly not the last element concerning contracts is the retro check. When a post due contract is finally signed and ratified the pay that the Officer should have received is calculated and put into a check. The problem for larger Police departments unions is sometimes the money that the city can make in interest and alternate use is greater than what they will eventually issue in retro checks. So in essence there is little hurry for the city to negotiate when they are essentially making money by holding up the contract negotiations.

These are just the concepts I brought up that night and there are a multitude more to choose from but I can see how frustrating it can be to work for years without knowing how much you are making and what is your benefits package.

The bottom line is Chicago Officers deserve a contract.

The Sinners and Me

Anyone who interacts regularly with the criminal mind quickly discoverers two quirky mental processes that they pretty much all exhibit.

The first is that they will always ask you not judge them by the act that has brought them into your temporary sphere of influence. They all will insist that they are basically good people except for, the car they stole, the drugs they sold, the wife they hit...etc.

The second is that criminals see the world through their criminal actions. For example, higher end illicit drug dealing is not really about the drugs but much more about a lazy short cut to achieve wealth. This person views everyone through the lens of greed. A well dressed investigator will walk through the room and the drug dealer will always tell you that, while they do not know that officer they can tell they are on the take. Or the drug dealer will suggest that if you had been in his or her shoes you would do the same things that they did. It simply does not compute to them that you may have chose to suffer in poverty than sell cocaine/heroin etc. I have seen this for the rapist (world view-restrained lust), abuser (world view- powerlessness) and a multitude of other major crimes. One of the primary reasons recidivism is so pervasive is due to the inability of the person to shift their decision making from a egocentric self serving paradigm to an altruistic one.

I always make a point of telling the person that I am being forced to work with that it is their actions that are the true indication of what type of person they really are. A "good person" does not sell drugs, strike their wife, steal from their job etc. If they want to be considered a "good person" he or she needs to start doing positive things now and if they show a consistent pattern of positive behavior then I will shift them from the category of "bad person" to "good person". I have had many people who have no remorse for what they have done get visibly upset and cry because the police officers have decided the are a "bad person".

As for the other quirk of lack of the ability to consider an alternate perspective, I long ago gave up trying to convince them that I or anyone else would have proceeded with a different series of decisions then the ones that they choose that led to their capture. It only leads to an endless series of unprovable scenarios for both parties.

What a hypocrite I am. If another person observed me going through my day would they view my actions as the actions of a follower of Jesus? Or would they take the totality of my day and then place me in the "bad" category. This stance of mine is really developed from the prospective that I am better then the person that I am dealing with...that I am not a drug dealer so I am not only better than they thus I am "good". How does that stand when the standard Jesus set is perfection? What I should have been saying is because of the love that Christ has for me, I have been given the honor of making less negative decisions than you. We are all sinners, we are all "bad people" but I can hang my sins on the only one that is blameless and perfect that can take the sins away from me, rather then you who keeps then wrapped around you like a cloak of evil ready at any moment to pull you down to the pit.

We are all "bad people". The only split category is "saved" and "unsaved".

Matthew 5:27-29

27"You have heard that it was said, 'Do not commit adultery.'[a] 28But I tell you that anyone who looks at a woman lustfully has already committed adultery with her in his heart. 29If your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. It is better for you to lose one part of your body than for your whole body to be thrown into hell.

Job Security

In an economy that is still heading into a deeper recession it is good to know that my clientele is still out there needing our life style management aid programs. There are two main ones...the right cuff and the left cuff.

Psalm 74:22 Rise up, O God, and defend your cause; remember how fools mock you all day long.

Another fallen officer...May he rest in peace.

A Chicago officer was shot and killed last week. Here is the article about him in the Chicago Tribune. I want to point out that the family would put up with his killer till she caused them too much trouble and then kick her to the streets so that should would become our (the police) problem. I wonder how the officer's future would be different if his killer's family had properly executed their responsibilities rather then dumping them on all of us.

Slain officer a beat cop to the core
By Angela Rozas and Robert Mitchum | Chicago Tribune reporters
11:26 PM CDT, July 2, 2008

When Chicago Police Officer Richard Francis got roughed up by a drunk a few weeks ago, injuring his back, his fellow officers told him to take it easy and ride out the rest of his year or two on medical leave before retiring.

But soon, Francis, a 27-year veteran of the department known to many as "Buzz," was back at the Belmont District roll call. He told his brothers in blue that they would have to push him out. When he did finally leave, he would do so quietly. They would never know he retired—he would simply not be there one day.

Early Wednesday morning, while on a seemingly routine assignment on patrol alone, Francis was shot and killed in a struggle with a woman who had caused a disturbance with a CTA bus passenger less than a block from his police station, police said.

The woman, whom sources say sometimes slept at the police station and was often erratic and incoherent, shot him in the head with his service weapon before she was shot several times by responding officers at about 2 a.m. Francis died about an hour later in Advocate Illinois Masonic Medical Center. The woman, 44, remained in critical condition Wednesday night.
It's a tragic loss for his family. It's a terrible loss for the Chicago Police Department," Police Supt. Jody Weis said. "It's a stark reminder of what the dangers this department and its officers face everyday."

Colleagues say Francis, 60, was the quintessential Chicago street cop, the officer you met if you ran a red light in Lakeview, got rowdy at a Roscoe Village bar, or got arrested and won a personal tour of the back of his squadrol.

Francis walked with an identifiable gait, the product of a bad knee from an unruly arrest he made years ago. But the leg never got him down. Nothing much did.

He loved his job manning "the wagon" on an overnight shift populated by officers half his age. "Life is beautiful," he'd tell anyone who would listen, even when it wasn't. He had a lot of loves: his wife and two stepchildren, his basset hounds and several motorcycles.

"Buzz was stubborn," said Norman Knutson, his most recent partner of eight years. "He drove his partners crazy. He was a character, and everybody loved him. He stuck on the job because of the camaraderie with the guys."

"He was just one of those guys who came to work every day, didn't complain, didn't whine and did a good job and went home to his family," said Belmont Area Deputy Chief Bruce Rottner. "Those are the guys who never get in the papers, never get accolades, never get awards, but those are the guys that are the backbone of the police department."

Despite his seniority, Francis chose the overnight shift because he liked the quiet pace and the time it gave him during the day to help care for his adult daughter, Bianca, who has special needs.

A longtime bachelor, he married his wife, Debbie, 10 years ago and took to family life, recalled Tom Casey, a friend who knew Francis since 1st grade. Francis paid college tuition for his wife's other daughter, Amanda, and spent most of his time off with family, colleagues said.

Francis joined the force in his 30s after graduating from St. Gregory's High School and doing a tour during the Vietman War in the Navy's elite Seals program. After the Navy, he worked as a building engineer at the Union League Club downtown.

Francis was inspired to become an officer by Casey's father, who was a Chicago police officer and a mentor to Francis after his own father died when he was a boy, Casey said. He worked patrol in the Monroe and Near North Districts before joining the Belmont District eight years ago, earning 35 honorable mentions and a commendation from the department.

He loved country music, to the chagrin of his partners, and happily sang along to oldies rock 'n' roll. He teased his partners, chattering on the police radio by adding "Nam" to every other word, a reference to his Vietnam experience, Knutson said.

Even though his primary job was to transport arrestees, his love of the law wouldn't let him abide any lawbreaking, and he would pull over anyone he saw disobeying traffic laws, Knutson said.

"He was a stickler for traffic laws," Knutson recalled. "He didn't really want to write people up, but he just wanted them to know what they were doing wrong. He hated criminals, and he hated traffic violators, but if you were in dire need, he went above and beyond."

Francis had a sense of humor about his work, too, and would often pick up trash left in his wagon from a previous shift and send it in office mail to the officers who worked the previous shift.

"He'd say just clean it out," recalled Belmont District Officer Dennis Mushol, who at one time worked the wagon before Francis. "Everybody loved him. Everybody is just numb here."

Francis recently transferred back to a regular beat car and was working alone near Belmont and Western Avenues just feet away from his police station when he saw a CTA driver waving him down, police said.

When he stopped, the driver and a passenger told him the woman was causing trouble. He radioed for backup and got out of his vehicle. The woman, 4-foot-11 and an estimated 290 pounds, approached him. As he tried to usher her away, she became irate and struggled with him, grabbing his holstered gun, police said. She shot Francis as other officers arrived and rushed forward, they said.

She may have fired at those police officers as well, sources said, before they fired several shots, wounding her. No charges were filed against her by Wednesday night.

The woman, who according to court documents has no criminal record, was familiar to officers at the Belmont District, sleeping occasionally in the women's bathroom or in chairs in the district, police sources said. A current address for the woman matched an East Garfield Park shelter where staff did not remember the woman but said that Chicago detectives had come by Wednesday, showing photographs.

Some police officers said privately that they believed Francis should not have been working the beat alone that night. A departmental agreement dating to the 1960s suggests that officers should not work in cars alone after dark for safety reasons.

But the policy isn't binding and allows room for officers to be placed alone in cars unless they complained. Few do, officers said. As a result, many officers work patrol alone, especially in lower-crime neighborhoods.

Knutson said he rode with Francis' body from the hospital to the morgue, trying to honor the years the two spent together working their own squadrol.

"I didn't want to go . . . but how many times did he and I take people to the morgue?" he said. "He was my partner. I had to go with him."

Tribune reporters Dan P. Blake, Monique Garcia, Karl Stampfl, Mary Owen and David Heinzmann contributed to this report.