via DNAInfo
This article is fascinating just to see the level of deflection on display. This guy is either in an eight-foot thick echo chamber, or he just doesn't want to believe that this a natural backlash against institutional oppression and harassment by the Chicago PD. Some choice quotes:
If you want to know how maddening it can be to deal with the Chicago PD, I'd highly encourage you to read Vice's City of Silence about two men who were viciously beaten by off-duty cops, and then intimidated and exhausted into giving up their crusade for justice. It's bleak and makes my blood boil.
This article is fascinating just to see the level of deflection on display. This guy is either in an eight-foot thick echo chamber, or he just doesn't want to believe that this a natural backlash against institutional oppression and harassment by the Chicago PD. Some choice quotes:
"The perception of a lot of police officers in the City of Chicago is that nobody has their backs," Dean Angelo Sr., president of the local Fraternal Order of Police, said in a luncheon address to the City Club on Tuesday. He spoke of a "deafening silence" in support of police as they deal with an "enormous level of confrontation, a level of disrespect we have not seen."
Angelo blamed the "Ferguson effect," referring to last year's police protests over the shooting death of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Mo., and said people who record officers with their phones are "hoping for a payday." He also said new demands for increased paperwork contributed to why Chicago Police "are down over 150,000 street stops" this year.
Angelo insisted there were "only" 404 police shootings over an eight-year period ending last year, while there were 13,000 cases of assault on officers over that same time frame.
According to Angelo, the "humanization of policing" is the untold story in the media. "We're human," he said. "We're just like everybody else."
Angelo has been under fire, most recently for hiring Jason Van Dyke as Van Dyke's murder case in the shooting death of Laquan McDonald plays out in court.
Angelo also took issue with the release of Shaquille O'Neal, who was freed after a video emerged showing a police officer kicking him in the head in an arrest.
"We are more than tired of being considered by some to be second-class citizens and not worthy of the same protections under the law guaranteed to any other citizen," Angelo wrote in a letter posted on the union's Facebook page in which he signed off: "Be safe and God bless the Police."
O'Neal was subsequently arrested again and charged with aggravated battery.
If you want to know how maddening it can be to deal with the Chicago PD, I'd highly encourage you to read Vice's City of Silence about two men who were viciously beaten by off-duty cops, and then intimidated and exhausted into giving up their crusade for justice. It's bleak and makes my blood boil.