A Certain Win

This went mostly the way it was predicted to go:

• A Cook County judge ruled Thursday that rank-and-file Chicago cops facing the most serious disciplinary charges can bypass the Chicago Police Board and have their cases heard by an outside arbitrator, but he found the proceedings should be held in public.

  In his 26-page ruling, Judge Michael Mullen said arbitrator Edwin Benn’s decision that such arbitration cases should be held behind closed doors “was neither arbitrary nor capricious,” but Mullen sided with the city in deciding that Benn’s finding ran contrary to “a dominant and well-defined public policy.”

  Mullen found that closed-door arbitration would violate a federal court order mandating sweeping reforms to the police department's policies and practices, namely a requirement "to increase and promote transparency in matters of police accountability.

To be realistic, we kind of expected something like this. Everything the city has done, said, and legislated for the past eight or more years has always been couched in terms of "transparency," so a hearing held out of the public view was going to be a stumbling block.

But the biggest issue, and the one the FOP wanted most of all, was getting cases away from the politically corrupted Police Board and in front of a neutral arbitrator who would actually be versed in the way Supreme Court decisions have been going for decades:

• that an officer's actions must be judged on what "a reasonable police officer" would decide and not a political hack beholden to those who appointed them, along with the constantly shifting political winds.

Not a total victory, but a good win. It remains to be seen what form this process will take now. Video hearings where the public could observe, but not participate or interrupt?