Another Dunphy Article

Jack Dunphy is the pseudonym an LA copper writes under for numerous national publications. He has a keen eye for all things police related and a sharp sense of being able to detect what's what. He writes another exceptional article here pointing out shortcomings in the J-Fled strategy:

• This was the theme of a bizarre press conference held this month in Chicago, where a collection of so-called gang leaders addressed reporters and aired their grievances on a number of subjects including the police and economic conditions that, they claim, offer poor young men no choice but to commit robberies, burglaries, and various other crimes, and to shoot each other with a staggering degree of regularity.

  The press conference was a response to a meeting Chicago Police Superintendent Jody Weis held with gang members on August 28, during which Weis and prosecutors are alleged to have threatened to prosecute gang crimes under federal RICO statutes if Chicago’s street violence is not curtailed. The gang members claim they were tricked into attending the meeting, having been summoned under the pretense of a routine parole hearing.

  “We don’t have to be tricked into meetings and then told, you’re going to govern people who can’t be governed,” said James Allen, a self-described “minister” with a West Side gang.

  Whether some deception might have been required to lure certain people to the meeting should be of little interest, but the rest of Allen’s statement rings true. In handing down an ultimatum to “gang leaders,” Supt. Weis has displayed a degree of naivete that is troubling to see in a man in his position.

It's not really surprising when you look at J-Fled's background in law enforcement. His attitude toward local authorities is, unfortunately, the rule rather than the exception in the federal bureaucracy. And this refusal to acknowledge the abilities, strengths and talents in handling the day-to-day realities of policing works to the detriment of the whole.

Dunphy concludes:

• Chicago Tribune columnist John Kass was at the gang press conference and, unlike most of his fellow reporters, saw it for the charade it plainly was. “[E]veryone [got] what they came for,” he wrote. “The leaders got publicity. The reporters got to ask pointed questions and demonstrate that they’re not pushovers.”

  Kass knows, as Chicago street cops know, that for all practical purposes there are no genuinely “former” gang members, only older ones pretending to be. And they also know that gang members will cease their predatory ways not when they are given jobs, but rather when they come to fear the consequences of the life they have chosen. They don’t get off the corners because they like the cops, they get off the corners because they’re afraid of them. It’s really just that simple.

And that ain't happening until the city starts hiring.