Month: January 2013

Police… and Their Integrity.

Pretty interesting piece running over in the Daily Herald.  If you’re not aware, there was a very major bust of some suburban Chicago (not anywhere in Kane County, thankfully) undercover cops who had purportedly found a way to make a little “extra income” while on the job.  Apparently the McHenry City Police Department isn’t the only office with this sort of issue.  Pretty sad.  Especially considering the cops want you to believe they’e better than regular people.

The gist of the Daily Herald article is pretty simple:

But who bears the responsibility of ensuring that officers working undercover don’t cross the line between acting like a criminal and becoming one?

I’m not going to go on a long rant about this.  I do that enough about stuff I can’t change.  I’ve got an idea, though.

People have asked me why I don’t like the cops. I really don’t have a problem with that profession.  I have friends who are cops.  I respect a lot of cops.  I come across cops all the time that are decent people doing great work.

What I have a problem with is “Meatball Police Culture.”  It’s something that, I’m sure, they start to hear at the Police Training Institute.  That’s that cops are the “thin blue line” between good and evil.  Between “us” and “them.”  If it wasn’t for the thin blue line, all of “them” would take over and kill “us” (or vice versa depending on where you stand), right?  If you don’t support the thin blue line, you’re automatically one of “them.”

Dammit, line up and get your cute thin blue line products and support the men and women keeping “them” away from “us.”

The profession can’t embrace that attitude.  It only causes itself more problems.  Cops are people just like anyone else.  It’s not “us” against anybody or the cops collectively against anybody else.  It’s easy to not keep an eye on your own buddies when your attitude is that it’s you and your buddies against the world.  That’s what the Meatball Culture does.  It’s cops looking out for cops against both “us” and “them.”

I’ve got a case right now where, on video, an Illinois State Police Trooper stops a car for a tinted window.  When he walks up to the car, he’s got his hand on his gun.  The cop is visibly agitated, swears at my client, and yells several times as though he might pull his gun out.  I guess you might need to know what side that driver is on before you can be sure you don’t have to shoot him, right?

If cops were that skeptical towards each other, maybe the debacles at places like Schaumburg and McHenry wouldn’t happen.  If a large number of cops didn’t act as though they were a righteous tribe solely tasked with keeping “them” off of “us” perhaps they’d have more energy to police the police, and less energy to harass Star Trek fans.

Just a thought.

It’s so sad.

The subject of one of the most popular posts on here is in the news again.  Back in April you may recall that the McHenry City Police Department had an officer get charged with misconduct stemming from that officer’s purported theft from the department evidence lockup.  I was a bit cranky about the press release put out by the chief of that department:

The fact is that I feel bad for the whole situation.  The life Hojnacki knew is over- whether or not he’s guilty.  If he stole money or didn’t steal money, that’s sad.  The intensity of a criminal arrest for a cop is off-the-meter when compared to a non-cop.  It’s possible to be empathetic without condoning what somebody has done or is accused of doing.  It seems they don’t teach that in Police Chief school.

Well, it’s not a “purported” crime anymore.  According to the NW Herald Mr. Hojnacki has entered admissions to a couple of the charges, with sentencing to follow.  What does the Chief have to say about that?  Lots, I guess.  He’s not going to tell us yet, though:

“I want to speak, but there’s a gag order and I’m respecting that gag order,” he said.

I feel so sad for the Chief.  I’m sad that he has things he wants to say and he can’t.  That must be frustrating.

I’m also sad that he’s Chief of a department that seemingly had no real control over the integrity of its evidence.  I’m sad that it seems anybody could walk into his evidence vault and take whatever they wanted (“Hojnacki was not assigned to the evidence vault and was not an evidence custodian, McHenry Police Chief John Jones has said.”).  I’m sad that, in a moment of weakness, any officer in that department could have compromised the evidence and possibly effected a lot of criminal cases.  It saddens me to think that the blame in that office doesn’t seem to run all the way to the top.

Like I said in the original post, Hojnacki has made a mistake and it has cost him far more than it would a non-police officer.  What has allowing this to happen cost Jones?

Maybe if he hadn’t been bound by the gag order, Jones was going to come out and tell us how he messed up.  How all of this was allowed to happen.  How he’s completely changed the way they keep their evidence.  How anybody who wants to get into that evidence vault has to go through him, or somebody he trusts.  How he bought a mirror and he looked in that mirror and realized the guy in that mirror is no better than anybody else.

Maybe.

Probably not.