Outside the Beltway

A Good Question

· Monday, July 23, 2007 · 3 comments

In this post about the unprofessional nature of the Chicago Police Department Radley Balko asks a very good question.

You know, regular citizens accused of wrongdoing often get their names published in the newspaper. Why not police officers? And why in particular not police officers who’ve garnered ten complaints over five years?

Sounds like a damn good idea to me. And keep in mind that this is part of a larger story about the widespread unprofessional nature of the Chicago PD. We aren’t talking about a few officers, or even a few dozen, but about 662 officers in a department of over 13,000 (about 5% of the force has ten or more complaints filed against them).

FILED UNDER: Law and the Courts, ,
Steve Verdon
About Steve Verdon
Steve has a B.A. in Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles and attended graduate school at The George Washington University, leaving school shortly before staring work on his dissertation when his first child was born. He works in the energy industry and prior to that worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics in the Division of Price Index and Number Research. He joined the staff at OTB in November 2004.

Comments

  1. Bithead says:
    Monday, 23 July 2007 at 10:19

    On the other hand, you’ve just given those who would like to defeat the police department (regardless of their doing the job correctly or not) a tool with which to do it. Somehow I have difficulty accepting that as a good thing.

  2. Steve Verdon says:
    Monday, 23 July 2007 at 12:09

    On the other hand, you’ve just given those who would like to defeat the police department (regardless of their doing the job correctly or not) a tool with which to do it. Somehow I have difficulty accepting that as a good thing.

    Oh well. I think the police have brought this problem on themselves with the “thin blue line” mentality.

  3. Wayne says:
    Monday, 23 July 2007 at 19:34

    I for one would like to see that regular citizens accused of wrongdoing not have their name publish until they are found guilty.

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