Father Nangle vs SCC

The Chaplin does us the honor of writing a rather largish article in the May 08 FOP Newsletter mentioning the blog quite prominently in the title and the page-and-a-half essay:

• Enter the second city cop blog. The first time I visited it, I found it exhilarating. The writers were hitting the nail right on the head. They were aware of the issues, and I admired their writing style. They were identifying some of the institution's problems, they knew where the slippage was, they knew police officers' pains, and they wanted to make improvements.

Thanks Padre. We appreciate that you gleaned what we were trying to accomplish here.

The article doesn't pull any punches, but it misses a point we've made since day one:

• Then I hit the "comments" button. There was some great police humor there, and there were million dollar insights that only could come from the real police. But there were snipers and haters and character defilers, and I was ashamed inside myself to think these were "my people." I've never once been ashamed of my department or my people, but then I'd never hit the "comments" button before.

This is, and always has been a public board. It isn't always police here, though a sizable number are, in fact, police. Much of our traffic, upwards of 40%, is from outside Chicago. Some of it is retired guys, much of it isn't. We can't and don't intend to prove that anyone who posts here is CPD, because the minute that happens, the mayor, the press, the politicians and the bosses are going to be on someone's ass for something.

It's a decent read and the Father makes some good points. When we began, we let this site run unattended 23 hours a day and the filth that people posted was a thousand times worse than what you read here today. When we spent more time censoring than enjoying, we put the current moderated comments into effect. We still take out comments daily that delve into racial degradation, sexual politics, gratuitous baiting of all types and ad hominem attacks. But we aren't going to just shut down the comments and feedback because someone wants to point out the rank hypocrisy that permeates so much of this job.

We do the best with what we've got and we're juggling a lot more than just blogging on this end.