Batten Down the Hatches...Again

Anyone here ever take Phil Cline's Search Warrant class? Offered a few times a year in the 1990's and 2000's, it was so popular, that he continued to teach it even after being made Superintendent. It may have been required for everyone going to the Narcotics Section and most Tact Teams took it as a prerequisite for going to Tact. 

We don't think anything similar has been offered for over a decade now....at least not that we remember seeing.

The past few few days of media coverage shows exactly how this lack of training has been a major failing of the Department. There appears to have been little if any prep work, nothing resembling a briefing and next-to-zero surveillance to verify an uncorroborated informant. There will be Department fallout, starting with people getting stripped. 

Where it goes from there, is anyone's guess, because it has now become political. Very political. 

Because Groot got caught lying:

• A contrite Mayor Lori Lightfoot acknowledged Thursday she was made aware more than a year ago of the botched raid on Anjanette Young’s home.

  Two days earlier Lightfoot’s office issued a statement saying the mayor only learned this week of the now-infamous police operation in which the social worker was handcuffed while naked as officers searched her Near West Side home.

  “We will do better, and we will win back the trust that we have lost this week,” Lightfoot said.

  Lightfoot said she had “come to learn that, in November 2019, the case was lifted up to me as another example” of bad searches by CPD officers. But she doesn’t have any recollection of it. And the first time she saw the video was Tuesday morning.

Gee, who else claimed to have never seen a video? Some other short asshole if we recall correctly. It's almost like lying is part of short asshole DNA.

And when caught dirty, short assholes lash out, stupidly:

• John Catanzara, president of the Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7, is facing possible dismissal from the Chicago Police Department for offensive posts on social media, it was disclosed at the monthly meeting of the city’s police disciplinary panel.

  The case could be decided by the full Chicago Police Board in the coming months.

This looks exactly like a  political prosecution...or persecution. It has its own danger of making the FOP president look sympathetic. Groot has spent boatloads of time demonizing the police and the Officers' most visible leader. Attacking this way, at this time, after almost four years without a contract and in the middle of a hot war of words, makes Groot look weak and it gave the FOP an opportunity:

• On Friday, Catanzara offered to resign as a cop, under one condition. “I will resign my spot at CPD effective immediately if they give our officers the retro pay they deserve. Period. You want me gone from the police department? There’s the gauntlet. Call my bluff. I dare you,” Catanzara said.

Groot isn't in control of the narrative any more, and the only way to regain it might be to give the membership what Catanzara just demanded.

Interesting times indeed.