Suicide of a City

By depriving cops of union rights, is Chicago’s radical Democratic Party clearing the way for chaos at the Democratic Convention?

In what is perhaps the most stunning example of the lengths to which Chicago’s media machine will go to maintain their fraudulent attacks on police officers, city scribes and broadcasters united last week to ensure Chicago police officers would not enjoy the same labor rights as virtually every other unionized employee in the city.

It was a startling display. Shedding any sense of reporting responsibility, Chicago media figures uniformly drummed up their knowingly false claims about police corruption to apply pressure on City Council members to reject the right of arbitration in police discipline cases.

Though police won a long-coveted right to rulings determined by an arbitrator, in a 10-5 vote, a City Council subcommittee rejected a contract provision granting officers the right to arbitration. This clause would remove police from the dreaded machinations of the civilian Police Board and the investigative agency, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).

In the days leading up to the vote, the entire media establishment in Chicago rallied their propaganda machine, based largely on refutable lies, to send a message to Chicago’s City Council members that granting the arbitration would compel them to face the media’s wrath.

The media tropes were the usual nonsense. Citing the massive payouts on police misconduct lawsuits was the main theme. The vast majority of these lawsuits are themselves media fictions. The Achilles heel in these settlements, what betrays they are generally nothing more than media deceits on a magnitude never seen before in the country, is the fact outlets like the Chicago Sun-Times and Tribune regularly violate the tenets of journalistic ethics by refusing to cover the myriad evidence cited in the federal courts that demonstrate these allegations are laughable.

The silence of these media activists in cases involving serious crimes, many of which are committed against Chicago’s black residents, is perhaps the most revealing and dire sign that the media, not police, are the greatest threat to public safety.

The other fiction broadcast by the media and many public servant lapdogs was the claim that arbitration hearings are done in “secret.” An oft-repeated canard, civilian oversight investigations are themselves one of the most biased and secret processes in the city. These civilian probes are so confidential, the threat of an independent judge on police misconduct claims sends the members of these organizations and their media lapdogs into a frenzy.

Secret, huh? Consider this: COPA ruled a fatal police shooting involving two officers was not justified and recommended the officers be fired. Armed with the COPA ruling, an attorney for the family of the offender who was shot marched into federal court and filed a lawsuit against the officers. A judge rejected the lawsuit that the shooting was justified -- a ruling that signaled a clear rejection of the COPA kangaroo court. Unsurprisingly, Chicago media refused to cover the bombshell story.

How’s that for “secret,” one might ask City Council talking heads opposed to giving officers the right of arbitration?

The civilian oversight process of officers in Chicago is an example of how government institutions all run by one political party can become comparable to a kind of secret police waging war on political opponents.

There is little doubt among police officers that many of the lengthy suspensions and terminations handed down against police that arise from the civilian oversight process would garner either outright rejection from an arbitrator or strikingly diminished punishments than what the civilian oversight process recommends. With arbitration, the handcuffs that prevent police from protecting the public are removed and the anti-police movement in Chicago suffers a major blow. An arbitrator’s independent rulings would reveal the city’s oversight agency for what it is: An arm of the anti-police movement engaged in an “ends-justify-the-means” attack on police.

Additionally, it would also be a devastating blow to the Chicago media, which relies on manufactured COPA investigations to provide a never-ending stream of stories attacking the police and to deflect the public from the rampant duplicity of the media.

As it is, the radical Democratic Party ruling Chicago and much of the nation are living proof that bias makes people ignorant. It also reveals that they are relentlessly self-destructive. In cities where Democrats hold power, chaos, violence, corruption, and media deceit prevails. Their adherents fail to see that rejecting arbitration just might do them irreparable harm.

The reason is that many Chicago police officers who were the victims of violent attacks during riots initiated by the political left over the last three years were not only not defended by the county’s top prosecutor, Kim Foxx, they were the victim of fictitious investigations and punishments by COPA and the Chicago Police Board. Massive suspensions were initiated against officers who themselves were victims of attacks from protesting leftists.

In the aftermath of these riots and the staggering betrayal of police officers, the brain trust of Chicago’s Democratic Party somehow thought holding the Democratic convention in Chicago was a brilliant idea. Few, if any, of the Democratic elite in Chicago took into consideration how these same Democrats framed so many officers over the last three years. In many ways, the party and the city are in worse shape than the days of the previous riots. Various factions of the Democratic Party are fighting over issues like the war in the Middle East and in Ukraine, along with a host of other issues. They are blocking streets with protests, painting graffiti, and attacking people.

Need people remind the Einsteins of the Democratic Party what occurred in the aftermath of the Democratic convention that was held in Chicago in 1968? The Windy City exploded in chaos and violence on national television. Whichever side the public took after watching the riots, following the unraveling that took place in Chicago in front of the country, Richard Nixon was swept into office in an electoral landslide. Few doubt that the riots in Chicago lit a fire under the “great silent majority” that propelled Nixon into office.

The stakes are perhaps even higher for the 2024 election. The violence and civil disorder that threatens to emerge in the Democratic convention in Chicago could be of such a magnitude that even the most carefully scripted and censored media will be unable to cover it up. It would be a clear window into the soul of the current Democratic Party.

Do the city elders and their media hacks expect the police to risk their livelihood and perhaps even their freedom in protecting the city after they were so badly betrayed in the last riots? How assertively could police maintain order knowing that COPA and Chicago Police Board members are the disciplinary forces they face? How much order can they maintain?

Without the right of arbitration, Chicago’s leaders are putting everything on the line and could be paving the wave for their most dreaded outcome: a public so disgusted with the chaos that could unfold at the convention they turn to Donald Trump, just as they turned to Nixon in 1968.

Are they foolish enough to risk it?