Reprimands for Everyone!

Without citing a single General Order, Department policy, ordinance or rule, the push to repair morale continues unabated:

• Chicago police are investigating whether numerous officers improperly looked up internal reports concerning allegations that two patrol officers sexually assaulted a woman while on duty last month, a department spokeswoman said Friday.

  The department's Internal Affairs Division is investigating "who accessed reports for what purpose," police spokeswoman Lt. Maureen Biggane confirmed in an email.

  Officers found to have looked up the reports without justification could face discipline ranging from a written reprimand to a day or two off without pay, police sources said.

  Patrick Camden, a spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police, which represents rank-and-file officers, said the department can block access to sensitive reports but didn't do so in this case.

  "That's almost like a tacit admission that it's not a problem to take a look at this particular arrest report or case report," Camden said.

It's good to see the Orange One getting the correct side of the story out there. The Department has the ability to lock out unauthorized viewing, but didn't, leading to the conclusion that this wasn't a real priority. And as some people pointed out, we were encouraged from Day One at the Academy to review reports to learn how to write good paper. We have gone through numerous training sessions where case reports were handed out to demonstrate the proper method to write something that would stand up in court. And we're old enough to have sat through a few promotional exams where the "in-basket" portion of the test included a dozen or more case reports to review for accuracy and completeness.

All of these are valid explanations and every one of them ought to be utilized during an appeal of any "reprimand" handed down for this bullshit move. The Department had the tools available to lock this down and failed.