Lies Lies Lies

The New York Times has an article about the difficulties of being J-Fled. It is claptrap of the highest order. Get a load of some of this crap:

• The next few months of warmer weather will be crucial for Jody Weis, whose job running the police department is as close as it gets to “Mission Impossible” in Chicago.

  Ever since he took over the department in early 2008, Superintendent Weis’s assignment has been to calm police officers who are angry at many things, including working without a contract since 2007 and a federal misconduct prosecution that put a Chicago policeman in prison with a 40-month term.

A prosecution undertaken at the behest of J-fled, which is conveniently left out of the entire article. After that whopper of an omission, anything else can be dismissed out of hand as a white-wash, a cover-up or dishonest reporting. But then, what do you expect from the New York Times?

• In an interview in early April, Mr. Weis acknowledged that he had a rocky start as the second outsider ever to run the Chicago force. But he said that his relations with officers suspicious of his background as a former F.B.I. agent had reached a “turning point” and that he had presided over a reduction in crime.

  “Overall crime went down across the board in every category,” Mr. Weis said of statistics for 2009. “We’ve kept that pace up. We’re in the 15th consecutive month where crime has actually dropped compared to earlier years.”

Every category? We recall at least one category that was up - arson or CSA. But a reduction that took place during one of the cooler spells in a decade or more. Mother Nature deserves as much, if not more credit than J-Fled. And oddly, this article appeared the day after statistics show that we're 16 or more murders ahead of last year.

• In the hourlong interview in his offices at police headquarters, Mr. Weis defended his leadership. “I try not to dwell on particular failures,” he said, “but I think that we could have done a better job of communicating my vision to folks. There will be a certain percentage who will never embrace me because of where I came from,” he said, adding that in recent months morale has improved because of policies he initiated.

Well, let's see. Where is that morale survey from last year? Any chance that it will ever see the light of day? The lieutenant in charge of it allegedly lost her spot at Headquarters when she insisted the results had to be released, even if it put J-Fled in a bind because he had promised to resign if he was the cause of low morale. Obviously, J-Fled stepped in it by promising to leave a $330,000-per-year spot over a survey that shouldn't have meant beans, but it proved him a liar and a coward even before the Englewood incident.

• One problem he inherited was an unpopular work schedule that had many officers working six days without a break. He pushed to change the schedule so that they now work four days followed by two days off.

  “We went to it officially in January, and the officers have been coming up to me and thanking me because, you know, four days go by pretty quick,” Mr. Weis said. “You’re sharper. We’ve seen a decline in the number of complaints against our officers. They are not mentally drained; they are not run down. And it gives them greater safety on the street.”

The FOP had been trying to get rid of the 6-days-in-a-row for decades. J-Fled taking credit is a case of coincidence, not anything he did. And the decline in complaints is almost certainly a due to a decline in proactive police work tied into the morale survey that is probably moldering in the deepest basement in HQ as we speak.

• The Cozzi episode remains “one thing he will never be able to overcome,” Mr. Donahue said.

  Police officers like Mr. Donahue believe that Mr. Weis referred the case to his old federal allies. But the police chief said the F.B.I. was already looking into the incident when he took office.

Once again, an outright lie. J-Fled admitted in our presence and the presence of dozens of other officers at the Lane Tech meeting that he referred the case to the US Attorney for investigation. Period. End of story. Any obfuscation or recasting of what was said at the Lane Tech meeting is a lie.

• When Mr. Weis, who has been given the nickname J-Fed by some officers, went to Englewood to hold a news conference on April 2, a shooting occurred a few blocks away as he was speaking to reporters. When Mr. Weis decided to return to headquarters instead of going to the scene of the shooting, John Northern, a retired Chicago police sergeant, publicly accused him of cowardice, and a police blogger started referring to him as “J-Fled.”

  “The scene had been secured,” Mr. Weis said. “The victims had already been taken to the hospital; the officers are there talking to witnesses and trying to develop some possible leads. I think if I show up there, I take them away from their work.”

On the original Channel 2 video, you can see everyone, including J-Fled reacting to the shots. When shots are fired, the place for any police officer to be is either at the shots fired or going to the shots fired. Nowhere else. We don't care if you're a PPO, a seasoned officer, a sergeant, lieutenant, captain, commander or deputy. You go to (A) render aid and (B) apprehend the shooter. Anything else is cowardice, plain and simple.

The OEMC timestamps show that the first 007 District cars didn't arrive for over 5 minutes. So J-Fled's statement that "The scene had been secured" is a lie. His hearing the shots shows it. The victim was still lying there bleeding out. And the assumption that "I think if I show up there, I take them away from their work" is about the most arrogant thing we have read in a long time. Are we supposed to snap to attention and salute when J-Fled shows up on the scene? Maybe form up into ranks for a quick inspection?

We've been on the scenes of dozens of shootings, and the smartest thing we've ever seen certain supervisors do is stay the hell out of the way. Your basic street cop knows how to tape a scene, they know to grab up a witness or two for the detectives, some even write down every license plate in the vicinity and most even get a quick flash out for units in the area. Any of that would have helped tremendously at the scene. And exactly none of that was done by the closest available units.

And that should tell you everything you need to know about J-Fled.