Vulture

An article that slipped by us the other day:

• Former Chicago Police Superintendent Richard Brzeczek said there is no question the department's code of silence is real. In an exclusive interview with NBC 5 Chicago, Brzeczek said it’s like a "cancer" and exists today as well as during his tenure.
  
  At 37 years old when he served in the early 1980s, Brzeczek was the department's youngest superintendent. He was a controversial top cop for a controversial mayor: Jane Byrne.
  
  Although he lives in Florida now, Brzeczek is currently in Chicago testifying as an expert witness in a trial involving the code of silence, which he says "has always existed in the police department."
  
  "It existed during my time," Brzeczek said. "The bad thing about it is the majority of police officers are good people and in their heart they don’t like it."

Brzeczek left how many years ago? Thirty-three? And he claims a "code" exists today based on what exactly? His vast experience with it? Because a quick search of our brains and the internet reveal a guy who reveled in the so-called "code of silence."

• Richard Brzeczek made it to the top very fast. He made it to the bottom even faster. It took him 37 years to become superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. It was a goal he set for himself even before he joined the force. It took him just four more years to blow it all.
• By the time he was 42, he had been in and out of two psychiatric hospitals. He had been fired from his law firm and humiliated in his run for Cook County state`s attorney against Richard M. Daley. He was unemployable, an alcoholic and a depressive. He had no money, no insurance, no friends and his family was sick to death of him. Two affairs had destroyed his former ``Brady Bunch`` existence.  
• A Cook County grand jury on Thursday indicted former Chicago Police Supt. Richard Brzeczek on 24 counts of theft and official misconduct stemming from trips he took to attend meetings that the state's attorney alleges never took place.
• "You just have to marvel at him. He was not only a good police officer but a terrific administrator," said William Hanhardt, chief of detectives under Brzeczak and a 33-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department.

You think that maybe a "code of silence" helped Brzeczek along during his meteoric rise and fall? We do. And while we certainly applaud his recovery from self-destruction and admire his family for sticking by him when everyone else was headed for the door, we find it a wee bit hypocritical for him to be deriding a culture that enabled him thirty-three years ago and assuming with no proof that the same culture exists today.

Being silent because you don't know the facts of a certain instance is not a "code of silence" to protect corruption. Crooked cops don't commit their crimes in full view of everyone else on the department - why not? Because they'd get caught and jailed a lot quicker. What they do manage to do is find people of a similar moral level and operate in conjunction with each other - Hanhardt, Marquette 10, Broken Star, Flagg, SOS, Gangs - these were teams of individuals who kept a code among themselves because they were all co-conspirators, and they operated away from the prying eyes of decent cops and supervisors. That shouldn't paint the whole Department with their corruption, though the media and others do their best to make it seem so.

And of course, vultures like the former superintendent, who was guilty of the same behavior he now decries as only a recovering alcoholic or former smoker can preach.