6/1/20
Much to the credit of the politicians who normally are
not the most ardent defenders of the police, we’ve heard a lot of at least rhetorical
support for our police officers in the wake of the riots that have devastated
cities across the country in the wake of the murder of George Floyd by
Minneapolis cop Derek Chauvin. The
politicians told us repeatedly, and correctly, that the police showed “amazing
restraint” in the face of intense, unyielding instigation and antagonization. And those two words don’t tell the half of
it. Cops were pelted with full beer cans,
rocks, hammers, bags of urine and feces, or as Mayor Richard J. Daley put
it back in 1968, “bags of something that begins with an “s” and ends with a “t,” a much more gentile use of the “begins with”
and “ends with” ploy than current Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s recent application
thereof directed toward President Trump, but I digress. Cops were dragged through the streets by
their vests. Cops were spat upon and
called pigs. Cops went to emergency
rooms with broken bones. And yet no cops
submitted to the urge to whip out the old billy club (er, sorry, baton) and provide
the self-styled anarchists a cranial re-adjustment. And don’t think many of the cops wouldn’t
have loved to do the rioters such an anatomical courtesy. But this wasn’t 1968…in more ways than the
immediate analogy would indicate, but that is grist for another mill.
The cops’ restraint was especially amazing when one
considers that these men and women were working double shifts and consequently
were intensely sleep deprived. Lack of
sleep brings out the worst in all of us, and doubtless the temptation to strike
back against the thugs was intensified by the toll fatigue extracted on these
officers of the law. And still these men
and women just took it. Whether that was
the best policy is grist for yet another mill, but take it they did.
The source of this restraint was doubtless the police
officer’s sense of duty; even when they would rather not, police officers do what
the commanders tell them. Another
factor, however, surely was the economic and social circumstances of your typical
police officer. S/he knows that everybody
on the street has a camera; hence, everything the police officer does will be
filmed. And that film will be edited, usually
with the help, or at least the connivance, of the media to put the police
officer in the worst possible light, putting his job, and maybe more, at risk. Considering that a typical Chicago cop
is likely to have a mortgage that is
four times his salary on his or her house in Mt. Greenwood, Edison Park,
or Chatham; you’d be amazed at how much even modest homes cost in the
city’s copper canyons, largely due to Chicago’s residency rule, which is
one of the reasons that rule will not be going away any time soon, but, again,
grist for another mill. The officer is also likely to have a couple of
kids in Catholic School, at least partially due to the city’s continuing
failure to do much to improve the quality of its neighborhood public schools. S/he really needs this job and can’t afford
to lose it because s/he is perceived to have somehow mistreated some wild-eyed
thug intent on wreaking havoc for the sake of wreaking havoc. And the cop knows for damn sure that Lori
Lightfoot and the other pols in this city do not have his or her back in
any but a rhetorical sense; when the heat gets turned up, the cop gets thrown
under the green limousine. So even those
cops who would just love to gift some miscreant with a permanent reminder of
his lark in May of 2020 don’t do so; too much is at stake.
The cops’ economic circumstances also render laughable
the age-old argument of the thugs, or even of the protesters, that they are
somehow for the “working class.”
Who is more working class than cops?
News flash to the idiots: These men
and women were not born in Winnetka to investment banker parents. They took the job because it was in their
family, they had a profound sense of duty, and/ or they simply needed a good
job and didn’t have the economic wherewithal to go to the colleges and universities
many of the protesters and trouble-makers are able to attend through the
largesse of their decidedly non-working class parents.
Notice that yours truly has drawn a distinction in this
piece between the thugs and the protesters.
Anybody with eyes, ears, and at least a moderately functioning brain can
see that there is a big distinction between the two. The protesters have a legitimate, or at
least a debatable, beef; the thugs are just there to cause trouble, enjoy a
lark of sorts, or to engage in pre-mediated and highly organized looting. There is much argument regarding the proportion
of thugs to legitimate protesters. I
don’t know what that proportion is, but, unlike many of our learned media and
political observers, I won’t venture a knee-jerk guess and say something like “The
overwhelming majority of the people out here are legitimate protesters.” I suspect that is true, but I don’t know that
and neither do the popinjays who piously proclaim such pap and pabulum. But I do know something about the proportion
of thugs to protesters: It was large
enough to have caused the destruction we have been witnessing over the last several
days.
There is another proportion that should be brought into
play here. While I can’t be as certain
about it as I am about the thug/protester ratio outlined in the last paragraph,
I can be more confident about it than the pediculous poltroons in public life
and the press can be in their assurances that “the vast majority” of those on
the streets were serious protesters rather than malevolent, near psychopathic thugs,
rich kids out on a lark, or organized criminals…
The proportion of cops who think that Derek Chauvin
is an absolute a...hole and a murderer who deserves to spend most, if not all,
of the rest of his life in jail is far higher than the proportion of legitimate
protesters in the crowds that burned down much of many of our cities over the
weekend. Take that one to the bank.
See my two books, The Chairman, A Novel of
Big City Politics and The Chairman’s Challenge,
A Continuing Novel of Big City Politics, for further illumination on
how things work in Chicago and Illinois politics.
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