This is something:
- Interim Chicago Police Supt. Charlie Beck on Tuesday told officers that he will not make any merit promotions during his time leading the department.
In a Tuesday email to officers, Beck said, “I continue to hear that members have been dissatisfied and discouraged by the merit promotion system.”
Beck added that he will recommend his successor also not use the much-maligned system and will encourage the department to hold promotional exams every two years in the future.
Mr. Beck, we address you directly now. Hopefully someone points you to this posting as a sort of educational missive - perhaps Mayor Lightfoot can read it, too:
- "Merit" was put into place to correct imbalances in certain representations. The fact is, not a single piece of paper, directive or order ever delineated what constituted "merit," so everyone correctly assumed it was political in nature. And then, as it continued, you had "merit" people picking "merit" people, people who were owed favors, until now there isn't even a handful of the brass that ever earned a score high enough to get promoted on their own. We're including the cheaters across the years, especially from HQ. The last "merit" board even disregarded it's own rules and voted on their own "merit" picks.
- As greedy people are wont to do, the 30% for "merit" wasn't nearly enough for the politically connected. Secret study groups were formed where the actual test was taught to certain people, so now, in addition to the 30% "merit," cops had to compete with 20-or-30% more who "made it by score," which was far from the truth. Check out a certain Chief of Patrol - his admin sergeants scored one and two on an exam for lieutenant....and then his next admin sergeant scored number one again. Either he was the best judge of talent in the history of the CPD or the test that he helped write ended up in someone's hands.
- The most recent lieutenant exam was a doozy. Gene Williams led a secret study group that placed six people, all from IAD and all friends of the then First Deputy's wife, in the top ten - a statistical impossibility seeing as not a single one of them had gotten promoted to Sergeant on their own! The First Deputy's wife allegedly had a perfect score - again, an impossibility given her previously un-promotable score. Add to that the four or five husband/wife teams that had near matching scores and ranking, and the strange number of sons and daughters (and spouses of same) of a certain Captain (who just happens to be the cousin of the current First Deputy) scoring miraculously high on tests, and one has to wonder if any of it is legit.
- This means that instead of 70% of the slots being awarded to high scorers and (supposedly) more capable people, we were scrambling for 40% of the slots...40% on a good day. It was probably even less than that.
What did all of this mean? Well, we can say with a high degree of certainty, that upwards of 90% of CPD scandals centered on or were led by a "merit" pick. We hope you don't doubt us. Special Ops, Broken Star, Flagg's crew, pederast "merit" Sgt Elkins, "merit" Sgt Lesner's gun, Johnson's IRS scam, "merit" Sgt Elizondo, the continuing Escamerit follies, Johnson's johnson, the list is near endless and in every case, a "merit" supervisor or someone brought onto a team by a "merit" supervisor, even if the supervisor avoided direct responsibility.
You really want to see what's what? Head over to the Confidential Section of IAD. You're the Superintendent - you own it. Sit down and read those files. Hopefully, you'll be appalled at the "merit" bullshit that gets covered up on a weekly basis. The trouble is we wouldn't know who to tell you to trust to walk you though it all. We used to know a couple dozen cops we'd trust with anything and everything. Sadly, that number has dwindled to about half-a-dozen.
So, does this new policy survive Beck's three months? Or Lightfoot's single term?
Labels: department issues, good news