CPD vs County

A ridiculous feud is escalating once again:

• In July, a 14-year-old resident at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center used a metal ceiling tile from his room to slice the leg of an employee who was trying to restrain him. But when center officials asked Chicago police to take a report of the incident, they refused, center officials said.
  
  For the last several months, Chicago police have stopped responding to calls of trouble at the detention center on the West Side. The Police Department said it should be the responsibility of the Cook County sheriff's office, but the sheriff's office and the center contend police had long been responding to calls at the facility and should continue to do so.
  
  Caught in the middle are staffers who fear for their safety and say the dispute has hurt their ability to curb violent behavior by the residents.

Sounds like a staffing problem on the part of Cook County. We don't run the jail. That is the purview of the sheriff. Our detectives investigate homicides and suicides at the jail because (A) it occurred in Chicago and (B) County can't really investigate it's own backyard - it would look too much like a cover up. Same thing in a supposedly secure juvenile detention facility.

J-Fled made the correct call in July:

• In a letter obtained by the Tribune, police Superintendent Jody Weis wrote July 21 that the department would no longer respond to calls — except for emergencies. Weis said the department needed to reallocate resources and complained that the facility had limited officers' ability to investigate crimes at the center.

The facility personnel had interfered how exactly?

• Dunlap said he believes the relationship began to sour after an incident in October 2009, when police officers brought a youth, who was bleeding from his head, to the facility to be detained. Dunlap said tempers flared when center officials and the police disagreed about whether the boy had been seen by a doctor and could safely be admitted. When police attempted to leave the boy behind, Dunlap said, he authorized his staff to lock the officers in by an exit to prevent them from leaving. Police threatened to send a SWAT team to rescue the officers.
  
  The boy was eventually taken back to the hospital, where a doctor stitched his wound, Dunlap said. [Police Spokesperson] Biggane declined to comment, saying she couldn't confirm the incident.

Ah yes, the "hostage taking" incident. You can consider this one "confirmed." We wrote about it on 13 October 2009 in this post here. A number of county civilians should have gone to jail at that point. And wonder of wonders, does anyone recall who the Watch Commander was that threatened to call SWAT, have them breach the door and arrest everyone within? We'll give you a hint - he's the lieutenant currently embroiled in a First Amendment brouhaha with J-Fled over manpower and policy issues.

Cook County, even more so than Chicago, is a cesspool of wasted money and artificial shortages. If they don't want to pay money to keep their workers and inmates safe, then that's their issue. Leave the CPD out of it.