When the veteran Chicago police officer joined the department, he expected to stay long enough to earn two star patches on the lower left sleeve of his uniform, signifying 40 years on the job.
Even as he grew older, his enthusiasm was unwavering. He prided himself on continuing to work in some of Chicago’s most dangerous neighborhoods, figuring that’s where he could make the most difference.
Now, though, with about 20 years in uniform, he wants out, fed up with how dramatically his work life has been upended in the months since the release of the video showing an officer shoot Laquan McDonald 16 times. Like many others he works with, this cop believes his proactive style of policing has become a relic of the past because of real fears over lawsuits, firings, even indictments.
He and other officers interviewed by the Tribune say the anti-police furor that erupted over the vivid footage continues to sink morale, hamstring officers and embolden the criminal element, contributing to a shocking jump in violence this year to levels unseen in Chicago since the late 1990s.
“The bad element knows that policemen aren’t willing to do the job the way they did it (before),” said the veteran cop, a supervisor who’s getting his resume in order and like the others asked not to be named because he wasn’t authorized by the department to speak. “They’re right in tune with how police are policing.”
Two key measures of police activity appear to back up concerns that cops have pulled back on their aggressiveness. While arrests have generally been on the decline in recent years, they have dropped sharply so far in 2016, to 72,069 through Oct. 20, a 24 percent decline from 95,213 a year earlier and the fewest in at least five years, according to department records obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request. Even worse, the records show, street stops over that same period have plunged to 91,438, down 82 percent from 513,161 a year earlier — though a longer, time-consuming form that officers must fill out for each stop has played a significant part in the drop.
In addition, department records show an uptick in the number of officers leaving the force this year. By early October, 465 officers retired or quit this year, already more than in all of 2015 as well as in each of the two previous years. Department and union officials largely attribute the increased departures, though, to older officers retiring before a key health insurance benefit expires with the next police contract in June.
In an interview with the Tribune, Superintendent Eddie Johnson said he believes officers have grown cautious on the street, fearful of being the next viral sensation, but he rejected the notion that they are backing off their responsibilities. He acknowledged, however, that these are the most trying times for police in his 28 years with the department.
“I’ve never seen the level of disrespect out there on the streets,” he said. “… I’ve never seen that before. So it is a tough time right now. But we’ll get through it.”
The factors behind the surge in violence this year in Chicago are a complex mix, but the one new element at play would appear to be the fallout from the Laquan McDonald video. While studies on the subject are lacking, some crime experts said anecdotal evidence suggests a possible correlation between low police morale and the uptick in violence.
“Loss of control and autonomy in the workplace has long been associated with lowered morale,” said Arthur Lurigio, a professor of psychology and criminal justice at Loyola University Chicago. “Fewer street stops lead to fewer arrests and decrease the visible presence of police in neighborhoods, which leaves a vacuum in authority that can embolden would-be criminals and gang members.”
Violence has surged throughout the year, with homicides soaring 58 percent to 681 through Nov. 20, while shooting incidents have exceeded 3,200, a 49 percent jump, according to official department statistics.
Hesitant and uncertain
The 2014 shooting of the 17-year-old McDonald as he appeared to walk from officers with a knife in his hand has continued to rock the Police Department since the release of the video a year ago. Longtime Superintendent Garry McCarthy was fired, the U.S. Justice Department launched a probe of police practices that is still ongoing and Mayor Rahm Emanuel, trying to stay ahead of the federal investigation, has pushed through reforms on police training, officer discipline and other department shortcomings.
In February, the Tribune published a front-page report that the increasingly hostile climate in the weeks after the release of the McDonald video led to a precipitous drop in morale among officers who reacted by taking a far more cautious approach on the street.
The new round of interviews suggests little has changed in the nine months since, though the election of Donald Trump, who heavily carried cop precincts in staunchly Democratic Chicago, has officers hopeful that the president-elect’s law-and-order stance will shift national sentiment back to pro-police.
Officers of different ranks — from patrol officers to high-level supervisors — had a consistent message: that the heightened scrutiny that has taken hold since the release of the McDonald video last November continues to make their job difficult. They have grown frustrated, worried that their interactions with uncooperative suspects will be video-recorded, posted online and misunderstood. They fear an unfounded citizen complaint could cause their firing or other harsh punishment.
They also chided the news media for nonstop negative coverage that they believe is fueling the poor public perception of law enforcement.
“There’s much more scrutiny, there’s much more second-guessing,” said one veteran sergeant assigned to citywide duties. “It’s almost like we’re the bad guys.”
Given the uncertainty and concern, some officers say police have stepped back on their aggressiveness. Some said they’re only responding to 911 calls over the radio, not relying on their street smarts to act on their own.
“Unfortunately, it’s more reactionary than proactive,” one patrol officer who primarily patrols parts of the North Side said of police work. “… You have to wait for the crime to be committed.”
A police supervisor told the Tribune about a recent incident when his officers hesitated during a violent confrontation with a gun offender. Two of his officers called for help over the radio as they fought to wrestle away a gun from the suspect. Other cops who arrived on the scene were met with taunting and jeering from the man’s friends, who pulled out their cellphones to capture the scene on video.
Even though their colleagues were struggling with an armed suspect, the officers froze, unsure of what to do and worried their actions might be misread, maybe even lead to the next video sensation, the supervisor said.
“The deck is stacked against us,” he said. “I don’t know how I can bolster morale.”
In a recent incident highlighted by Johnson, an officer said she had held off on using lethal force against a man who viciously attacked her. The officer suffered a concussion after her head was repeatedly slammed onto pavement.
Johnson said the officer told him she hesitated because she was concerned her actions would be unfairly scrutinized in the media.
Citing that example, Dr. Robin Kroll, a clinical psychologist who has treated Chicago police officers, believes officers are far more apprehensive and hesitant amid the onslaught of criticism.
“There is nothing more conflicting than being hesitant about doing what you believe is right, particularly when protecting life,” she said.
Dennis Rosenbaum, a professor emeritus of criminology at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said it has become increasingly difficult for police to be proactive on the street amid so much criticism.
“It’s much easier to stay below the radar, respond to calls, engage in what we call reactive policing,” said Rosenbaum, who has worked with Chicago police officials on research projects. “For an individual officer on the street, they need to know that somebody has their back and if they feel that they’re going to get thrown under the bus when they do something, why would you proactively get out of your car or stop a group of kids who … seem to be up to no good?”
When they do make street stops, some officers said, those targeted have become more confrontational than ever before — and others at the scene feel less restrained to join in as well.
One patrol officer working an overtime shift on the West Side recalled a traffic stop that quickly became volatile.
“You stop a car and the next thing you know a (passer-by) who doesn’t even know the driver shouts at the police,” he said. “It just turns into chaos much faster. …They’re as defiant as can be. It’s beyond what we’ve ever seen.”
A cop with more than 20 years on the job said a teen cursed at him last month and pulled out his cellphone to record the scene as the officer ordered him to leave a Loop Red Line subway station after he hassled commuters for cigarettes.
“I’m not losing everything for some kid half my age,” said the officer, who ticketed the teen for solicitation. “I do really try to de-escalate. …There’s no sense in going through a battle. We’re not blowing our pension.”
The officer questions, though, how much impact police can have on crime with all the reforms being forced on the department. Officers can’t rely on hunches anymore, he said.
“An officer’s sixth sense is gone,” he said.
A North Side sergeant said some cops — many of them nearing 20 years on the job when they’ll qualify for a pension — “are looking for a way out” of the department.
“You have to be a complete idiot if you don’t think the climate doesn’t have a role in the rise in crime and murder,” he said.
Beginning to stabilize
Officers are increasingly concerned that no one — even higher-ups in the department — has their back.
Some worry that even complaints they’ve been cleared of could be reopened — as the Independent Police Review Authority, under new leadership since the McDonald video, has done in a few higher-profile investigations of officer misconduct. Or that personal texts could be subpoenaed from days earlier if the officer is involved in a shooting — as happened to one who fatally shot an allegedly bat-wielding college student and accidentally killed a bystander as well.
And officers continue to complain about the forms they must fill out for every stop, the result of a new state law and an agreement with the American Civil Liberties Union over concerns of racial profiling. Not only are the forms time-consuming — taking officers from street duties for as long as 20 minutes for each — but the added detail has also raised the stakes for officers fearful of being called out for a questionable stop.
The U.S. Justice Department probe has some officers worried as well about being singled out in its findings even though the investigation is taking a broader look at departmental problems.
Even Johnson, whose surprise appointment as superintendent in March was well received within the department, has already drawn flak from some cops for coming down too hard on an officer for an incident captured on video. Johnson, who rose through the ranks, indeed has a tough balancing act to pull off, trying to win back community support, particularly from minorities, while at the same time standing up for the-rank-and-file officers who are on the front line in the fight against rising violence.
In the interview, Johnson quipped, “Police officers hate two things: change and the way things are.”
But some cops say they lost trust in the superintendent when he stripped an officer of his police powers in June after a Facebook video captured him stomping on the head of a parolee as he came to the aid of another cop wrestling with the 23-year-old on the street in the midst of an unruly crowd.
Johnson acknowledged the danger confronting the officers but felt the head stomping had gone too far and violated department policy and training.
“Trust me, I’ve worked the streets long enough to know you’re going to do what you can to protect your partner,” he said. “But … he used an inappropriate tactic.”
Other officers have also raised concern with what they regard as Johnson’s cozy relationship with activists who have been among the most critical of police.
Johnson, Chicago’s first permanent African-American superintendent in 13 years, defended his dialogue with the activists, saying, “It’s to make sure that I can keep this city calm.”
In the interview in his office at police headquarters, Johnson said he believes the department is beginning to stabilize after months of turmoil and introspection.
But he expects morale to take another blow when the Justice Department completes its probe. In other civil rights investigations of big-city police departments, the federal government has cited endemic problems and sought court consent decrees to force changes.
Johnson, who likes to call himself a beat cop who just happens to be superintendent, said he tries to keep in touch with the mood of the rank-and-file by meeting in focus groups once every two weeks.
Officers are concerned about being judged before all the facts are known about a controversial arrest or incident, Johnson said. The added scrutiny has made officers hesitant — and gang members are taking advantage, he said. But officers, Johnson said, get upset by claims they’re not doing their jobs.
“I think they want to be the police. They just want to make sure that they don’t get in trouble for being the police,” he said. “So sometimes they’re cautious about how they do things until they reconcile that ‘I’m doing the right thing for the right reason and I won’t get in trouble for it.’ But … it’s a difficult thing right now being a police officer, not just in Chicago, but across this country.”
Despite the sharp drops in arrests and street stops, department brass point to 5 percent increases in both gun arrests and traffic tickets through late October to show that officers remain engaged.
Plummeting street stops
This is one issue the department appears united on with the union representing its rank-and-file officers.
Dean Angelo Sr., president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, has been outspoken about what he calls an unprecedented level of disrespect for officers on the street. Angelo has strongly denied that police are lying down on the job in frustration or anger over the increased scrutiny but said officers have been handcuffed in their ability to get the job done by what he calls “anti-police correctness.”
In an interview with the Tribune, Angelo said he believes the increased number of officers leaving the department is largely a result of retirements by officers who want to secure full health coverage — commonly known as “55 and out” — before the benefit ends the middle of next year.
But officers “are fed up,” he said. “They’re treated like second-class citizens.”
At crime scenes or traffic or street stops, officers are being swarmed by people with cellphones in their faces, recording their actions, said Angelo, citing a couple of recent incidents in which multiple citizens’ cameras had captured the same scene.
“We have police officers who are concerned about being the next headline, the next YouTube video,” he said. “So are they scaling back a little bit? Some. But there’s also saturation teams, the gang teams, the (tactical) teams, the gun teams, narcotics units that are out there working their rear ends off.”
Angelo has been especially critical of the laborious paperwork for every street stop that is slowing down officers’ work on the street — and affecting the rise in violence.
The Police Department agreed to the more detailed reports on every street stop in part to avoid a lawsuit after the ACLU discovered that Chicago officers made more than a quarter-million stops during a four-month stretch in 2014 — far more than New York police had carried out during the height of that department’s controversial stop-and-frisk practices. The ACLU said Chicago cops often gave vague explanations on the old “contact cards” about why they made the stops, making it difficult to know if their actions were legal. But the ACLU found evidence of racial profiling — African-Americans were stopped at a disproportionately higher rate than Hispanics and whites, especially in predominantly white neighborhoods.
Under McCarthy, the department had pushed street stops as a way to tamp down crime. But with the hassles of the longer form and the added attention on street stops, officers have clearly pulled back, the plummeting numbers show.
McCarthy, who had signed off on the ACLU deal while superintendent, has since suggested that the more complicated forms have contributed to the end of proactive policing.
“How can that not result in bad things happening?” he told reporters recently of the plummeting numbers of street stops.
In a recent speech, U.S. Attorney Zachary Fardon cited the precipitous drop in street stops along with the McDonald shooting scandal and the Justice Department probe as exacerbating an already unacceptable level of bloodshed in Chicago.
“I believe there was a hit on CPD morale and a drag on officers’ willingness to conduct stops,” Fardon told the City Club of Chicago in September. “Some gang members apparently felt that they could get away with more, so more bullets started flying.”
But others strongly disagree.
Karen Sheley, an ACLU staff attorney who led the 2014 study, said the sharp drop in street stops this year shows that officers are being smarter about who they stop and why. She said there’s no evidence that far fewer street stops have contributed to the rise in violence.
“There are a lot fewer stops, but they seemed to be based, hopefully, on reasonable suspicion instead of on a blanket program of stopping everybody in the community,” she said. “… That was so damaging to community relations.”
Craig Futterman, a University of Chicago law professor who helped push for the release of the McDonald video, noted that New York was forced to drastically curtail stop-and-frisk policies yet violence has remained at record low levels there.
Like many criminologists, Futterman chalked up the surge in Chicago’s violence to a combination of cutbacks in human services, public school closures, the aftereffects of the teardowns of public housing complexes and easy access to illegal guns.
He applauded the efforts to reform the Police Department but acknowledged that forcing officers to adapt to the changes isn’t easy.
“I certainly credit and sympathize that there are rank-and-file officers who are bewildered at this time,” Futterman said. “This is part of the cost of maintaining a system that has allowed decades of unchecked police abuse.”
Twitter @JeremyGorner
