Tag Archives: FOP

Chris Southwood, Illinois FOP President on Van Dyke: “If the decision to shoot in the first place is lawful, there’s no crime in this case”

President of the Illinois Fraternal Order of Police Chris Southwood offers his take on the Jason Van Dyke trial to Big John & Ramblin’ Ray. Southwood touches on the legality of the shooting, as well as the difficulty of being a police officer in those situations.
(Image courtesy of fidelitybluelinemortgage.com)

Kevin Graham, FOP President: “(The prosecution’s) case is based on one video”

The President of the Fraternal Order of Police Kevin Graham shares his opinions on the Jason Van Dyke trial with Big John & Ramblin’ Ray. Graham touches on the state of moral within the CPD, why he is not surprised that the prosecution may be ready to rest its case already, and his response to Jeff Session’s criticism.

Dean Angelo on “DOJ Friday”

Dean Angelo is the head of Fraternal Order of Police and joins the show to talk about the impending release of the Department of Justice’s report on the Chicago Police Department.

Ray Stevens asked on Friday morning, “When this report comes out [will there be] more handcuffs on police than offenders?”

“Hopefully not,” Angelo responded. He explained that the FOP tends to deal with a morale issue every once in awhile especially with the uptick in an anti-police trend sweeping across the country.

“We’re expecting some hits, and hopefully, there is something in there that benefits our members for promotions,” Angelo explain. He has optimism that there will be observations made of the positive occurrences in the department and that the report will not solely focus on the indiscretions.

© WLS-AM 890 News 2017

Official: Chicago to hire 100s more officers

(CHICAGO) A city official says the Chicago Police Department will hire more than 500 additional officers as it struggles to deal with the city’s uptick in gun violence.

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson is expected to announce the hires Wednesday.

The official, who was briefed on the plan, spoke with The Associated Press on the condition of anonymity because the person was not authorized to discuss it ahead of the announcement.

The department has more than 12,000 officers currently, and hasn’t had a hiring push of this magnitude in years.

Chicago has seen more than 500 homicides already — higher than all of 2015.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on overtime for officers rather than hire more in recent years. Emanuel spokesman Adam Collins declined to comment.

Copyright 2016 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

CPD violating due process of seven cops facing firing, FOP says

(CHICAGO) Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo on Monday accused the Chicago Police Department of violating the due process of seven officers who stand to lose their jobs for allegedly covering up the police shooting of Laquan McDonald.

In his long-awaited response to a scathing report by Inspector General Joe Ferguson, Police Supt. Eddie Johnson has moved to fire the seven officers for allegedly violating Rule 14, the Chicago Sun-Times is reporting.

That’s the “If you lie, you die” rule that prohibits officers from filing false reports or lying under oath during the course of an investigation.

Angelo complained that none of the seven officers have been told how they lied. That, he said, is a violation of due process.

“They committed a Rule 14 violation based on what? What specifically did they do? What did they say? What did they write that puts them in that category? I don’t know. They don’t know,” Angelo said.

“No one is being served with specifics of what they did wrong. No one told them, `You said this and you should have said that.’ Is that fair? Is that what we’re looking at now? Everybody is concerned about `transparency.’ That’s the new word of the day. Where’s the transparency of this?”

Anthony Guglielmi, chief spokesman for the Chicago Police Department, said that under the city’s contract with the officers, the department will provide them with a breakdown of their potential rule violations once administrative charges for separation are formally brought before the Chicago Police Board, which determines punishment for cops.

“Last week, the Bureau of Internal Affairs met with each of the Chicago Police officers to notify them they were being relieved of their police powers for possible rule violations following the Inspector General’s investigation into the Laquan McDonald case,” Guglielmi said.

“The Chicago Police Department is committed to the highest levels of transparency and works very hard to balance the release of information with the integrity of investigations and the public’s right to know,” he said.

Dean Angelo, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. | Sun-Times file photo

Angelo said the FOP will represent all seven officers before the police board. He said their defense is being hampered by the union’s inability to get its hands on the inspector general’s report.

“From what I understand, the report is 15,000 pages long. Everyone is concerned about transparency, but no one else has eyes on that report,” Angelo said.

“It’s very frustrating when we have no specifics. Everyone is reaching [and saying], ‘They don’t comply with the video.’ But there’s something called `due process.’ It’s hard to go through allegations when we don’t know the specifics. We have got everybody represented at this stage. We will be going forward and representing them once we know what we’re representing them for.”

The Chicago Sun-Times reported last week that Ferguson recommended that 10 officers be fired for giving accounts of the McDonald shooting that did not jibe with a dashcam video that shows white police officer Jason Van Dyke unloading 16 rounds while the black teenager was walking away from police with a knife in his hand.

Chicago Police Department Deputy Chief David McNaughton resigned last week.| Sun-Times file photo

Three days later, Johnson followed Ferguson’s recommendation by moving to fire seven of the officers, including Van Dyke’s partner Joseph Walsh.

Two others, including Deputy Chief David McNaughton, resigned last week.

Johnson “respectfully disagreed” with Ferguson’s recommendation on the tenth officer, arguing there was “insufficient evidence to prove” a Rule 14 violation.

Sources identified the police officer spared the ax as a woman. Several female officers were mentioned in the police reports issued by the city earlier this year.

McNaughton was the incident commander in charge of the shooting scene on Oct. 20, 2014, the night when McDonald was killed.

He found that Van Dyke’s use of force was proper. McNaughton had written that McDonald was approaching Van Dyke when he was shot and the officer was in fear for his life.

Police Supt. Eddie Johnson has moved to fire seven police officers in connection with the Laquan McDonald shooting. | Ashlee Rezin / Sun-Times

Van Dyke’s partner, Walsh, said McDonald continued to advance on them, ignoring commands to drop a knife in his hand. He swung the knife at the officers in an “aggressive manner” when he was 12 to 15 feet away, Walsh told investigators.

But a video from a police vehicle showed that the knife-wielding McDonald was walking away from the officers — parallel to them — when he was shot by Van Dyke.

Van Dyke was charged with murder on Nov. 24, 2015, the same day the city released the video to the public. The charges stemmed from a separate investigation by the Cook County state’s attorney and FBI.

The recommended firings of the seven officers do not end the inspector general’s investigation, sources have told the Sun-Times. Ferguson will now turn to what then-Supt. Garry McCarthy and his executive staff knew about the discrepancies between the video and police officers’ accounts, and what they did about it.

Chicago police Officer Jason Van Dyke is charged with murder in the death of Laquan McDonald. | Nancy Stone/Chicago Tribune/Pool photo

Although Van Dyke was immediately stripped of his police powers and placed on desk duty after McCarthy viewed the video, the inspector general will look into why other officers — including the ones who Johnson recommends firing — were not also placed on desk duty pending an investigation of their actions.

In December, Mayor Rahm Emanuel apologized for the “systematic breakdown” that culminated in the “totally avoidable” police shooting death of McDonald and acknowledged the “code of silence” in the Chicago Police Department he once tried to keep out of a court record.

Ald. Roderick Sawyer (6th), chairman of the City Council’s Black Caucus, has argued that the alleged cover-up of the Laquan McDonald shooting is the latest and most egregious example of that code of silence.

Sawyer said last week he will not be satisfied until police brass who saw the dashcam video on Oct. 21, 2014, the day after Laquan McDonald was killed, also are held accountable.

On Monday, Emanuel was asked whether he agrees with Sawyer.

“I’m going to be cautious [about] the mayor speaking up about what other investigations should be done. They’ll be done on the merits and whether they’re worthy,” Emanuel said at an unrelated news conference to tout the early installation of air-conditioners in Chicago Public Schools.

“I think the superintendent took the right actions. [I] gave him the latitude to take the right actions that he thinks was appropriate and he made clear that the ultimate goal here is to restore trust in the police department and to also restore trust with the community, because that’s ultimately how we get public safety.”

-Chicago Sun-Times

Chicago FOP Pres. Dean Angelo Talks Body Cameras

The Chicago Police Department will be deploying 2,000 additional body cameras in seven police districts by the summer. Chicago Police currently use about 30 body cameras in one district on the Northwest Side, and complaints about police officers are way down so Eddie Johnson says it will help increase public trust. Dean Angelo, the President of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police joined John with reaction to the additional piece of equipment.