MORE Lieutenant Media

The Huffington Post, one of the more liberal orientated sites on the web, has evidently decided to make the essay-writing lieutenant one of its main features. Chicago based lawyer and blogger Matt Farmer is the latest to take up the cause:

• If you draw a paycheck from the City of Chicago, it's usually not a good career move to criticize Mayor Daley and his top brass. But that didn't stop Lieutenant John R. Andrews, a twenty-five year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, from speaking out last month about Good King Rich and his court in an online essay entitled: A City at War with Itself: Chicago -- Fast Tracking to Anarchy (Understanding the Organizational Paralysis of the CPD and the Mission to Recovery).

  Andrews' title is far more complicated than his message, which, in a nutshell, is this: (1) CPD is woefully understaffed; (2) street cops are regularly outgunned by bands of thugs who no longer fear the police; (3) the corrupt culture of Chicago cronyism has left a lasting stain on the department; and (4) as a result of all these things, morale on the force is at an all-time low.

  Andrews, by all accounts, is not a loose cannon. Nor is he a guy in search of his fifteen minutes of fame. He's just a career cop who knew he was taking a risk by posting his controversial essay on a personal blog.

  He told the Chicago Sun-Times' Neil Steinberg that he has had "zero disciplinary problems" during his quarter-century as a Chicago cop. Nevertheless, after blogging about Daley, Superintendent Jody Weis, the family Carothers, and others, he's become the target of a CPD internal affairs investigation. Go figure.

  It remains to be seen whether the mayor and his men will be successful in their attack on the messenger. But one thing is clear -- they've had remarkably little success attacking Andrews' message.

And speaking of messages, Andrews will be continuing his media blitz on the WGN 720 AM Jim Laski show at 7PM tonight. Tune in and give a listen - Laski is a bit of a better interviewer that Roe Conn who tends to interrupt his guests and throw them off track by chopping up their responses.