Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board Condemns Chicago Police Officers’ Right to Free Assembly
The Sun Times’ animus toward Chicago police officers is the city’s worst kept secret.
In a completely predictable and thoroughly embarrassing overreaction on May 17, The Chicago Sun Times Editorial Board worked themselves up into a lather over a Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 7 call to its members to demonstrate at City Hall on Wednesday May 23, 2018.
Responding to a May 16 FOP letter urging officers to demonstrate at a session of the Chicago City Council over the city’s mistreatment of fellow police officers, in a deeply illiberal and obnoxious opinion piece, the Sun Times Editorial Board insinuates the FOP is fostering an act of subversion and there is something ignoble about officers demanding Mayor Rahm Emanuel come to the defense of the Chicago Police Department. In addition to questioning the nature of police objectives and the desire to see police voices suffocated, through a malignant mix of vitriol and ignorance, the Sun Times’ editorial tacitly implies the Chicago Police Department is not a force for good, is a department whose members regularly inflict incalculable harm on Chicago residents, and whose members neither uphold justice nor contribute to a stable city. According to the Sun Times Editorial Board, members of the Chicago Police Department are enemies of the people, should be treated as such, and are undeserving of the fundamental right to assemble in public.
Under the Sun Times Editorial Board’s deformed logic, First Amendment protections do not apply to members of the Chicago Police Department.
There are several layers of foolishness to unpack in the Sun Times’ editorial. Among its numerous dishonest arguments is the criticism it levels at the FOP for organizing members to exercise their right to peaceably assemble. Opening its aggrieved commentary by describing the protest as unneeded “theatrics,” an early Sun Times’ passage chastises the FOP for its method of making use of buses to transport officers to City Hall to form protests.
“But busing police officers in from three sites around town to put on a show at City Hall strikes us as irresponsible at a time when relations between the public and police are in the pits,” the Sun Times opines.
To the surprise of no one, the Sun Times censures the FOP for contracting with a for-hire firm to transport members to City Hall. A curious rebuke, it is with dizzying hypocrisy the Sun Times was able to unearth a wrong with the form of transportation for police when, against the backdrops of the release of the Laquan McDonald tape, several tenable police shootings, and the inauguration of President Donald Trump in January 2017, not a word of disapproval was found in the editorial pages of the Sun Times against artificial grassroots activism by paid, professional protesters arriving by bus to demonstrate in Chicago. In contrast to the planned police protest, the Sun Times’ silence between 2015 and 2017 was akin to making a totem of those who hurled brickbats at police as troubadours of social activism demanding justice and social equality. A stunning journalistic deceit, the Sun Times’ muted voice in the aftermath of these several instances was a ear-splitting round of applause favoring so-called activists and a cheap attempt to pose anti-police protesters as secular saints.
Moreover, during those same demonstrations, the Sun Times rarely, if ever, used its editorial page to upbraid the radical and sometimes violent gang of anti-police agitators, many of whom referred to police as “pigs” and racists, at times called for police to be killed, and who routinely provoked police officers during rallies. Similarly, there was scarcely a word of admonition for protesters who denied shoppers access to retail stores, committed damage to businesses and property, or, in a series of rolling clashes with police, assaulted and injured police officers. In the skewed worldview of the Sun Times Editorial Board, anti-police protesters are morally unimpeachable, and police officers exercising their right to assemble at City Hall are a public nuisance whose motives are to be impugned.
In another excerpt emanating the foul odor of cant, the Sun Times assails police and shifts their argument to an impending consent decree. Continuing their handwringing over police officers’ scheduled protest, the Sun Times’ editors declare:
“(Protests are unneeded) when City Hall, after way too much resistance, finally is engaged in hammering out a much-needed court-monitored consent decree that, one hopes, will get to the heart of our city’s most intractable policing problems, such as how to better de-escalate confrontations with people who are mentally disturbed.”
By way of a direct reference to the shooting deaths of Laquan McDonald and Quintonio LeGrier, both of whom were armed, in a mortifying display of illogic, the Sun Times has the temerity to mention police confrontations with the unbalanced but fails miserably to note the mass of fatal encounters with police in Chicago occur with either armed individuals with murderous intent or those who threaten bodily harm on unarmed citizens or police. Rather than candidly recounting the multitude of incidents in which police officers were sadly compelled into using lethal force, the Sun Times prefers to drown Chicago police officers in accusation and innuendo. A dogged refusal to print the truth about fatal encounters with police, the Sun Times’ dismissal of this pivotal fact and the implication that police officers deliberately target the vulnerable, or habitually engage in random cruelty reveals the newspaper’s desire to slander police. In the warped worldview of the Sun Times Editorial Board, when a resident of Chicago is shot by a Chicago police officer, it’s just the boys in blue acting predictably.
Likewise, in a shameful affront to the department, the Sun Times mentions the looming consent decree. Describing it as “much-needed,” the Sun Times conveniently forgets (or never understood) the Justice Department’s probe of the Chicago Police Department was not the result of widespread police brutality or a police force steeped with racism, but rather the outcome of former President Barack Obama’s and former Attorney General Eric Holder’s clinical obsession with targeting urban police departments. Under the Obama administration, 12 cities were coerced into accepting federal oversight, four times as many than during the Bush White House. To the Sun Times’ credit, it does indirectly assign blame on Mayor Emanuel for his dilatory tactics over a final agreement on the consent decree. A rare departure from its pattern of effusively praising the mayor, the Sun Times reluctantly admits the fault belongs with City Hall. Regardless of its small criticism of Emanuel, the fact the Sun Times is willing to blindly accept as gospel an Obama-era report largely based on anecdote lends credibility to the broad speculation the newspaper prefers to depict the police department in its editorial pages as Viking hordes reigning destruction in Chicago neighborhoods.
Continuing its string of broadsides against police officers, the Sun Times gleefully quotes Superintendent Johnson’s skepticism with the planned demonstration.
“We’re not alone in questioning the wisdom of FOP President Kevin Graham’s planned stunt. And, like Supt. Eddie Johnson, we sure don’t think it’s “the best way” for the FOP to forge at least the beginnings of a working relationship with the new heads of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and the Police Board,” the Sun Times editors roar.
The irony here, of course, is the Sun Times finally has a use for a police officer. After devoting an entire opinion piece attacking the FOP and rank-and-file for its appeal for support from their employer, the editors seize on a pithy soundbite from the superintendent to build support for their criticism of police. While Superintendent Johnson’s position is worthy to note, the sole purpose of the Sun Times circulating Johnson’s quote is not so much to suggest he is at odds with the force as much as it is to bolster the legitimacy of the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA) and the Police Board. Organizations which are inveterately hostile to police officers, both are the outgrowth of the relentless howling and hateful statements from individuals and groups opposed to law and order in Chicago, and both were created with the unspoken aim to compete with internal reviews conducted by the Chicago Police Department.
In its bloodlust against police, the Sun Times concludes with a logic so deeply misleading it scarcely merits parsing:
“Most Chicago Police officers love this town. We know that. Most of them grew up here, have chosen to make their lives here, and became cops for that very reason — to do good by a town that’s done good by them. They’re in it for themselves, but also for the rest of us. They’d really love to tear down that Great Wall of China.”
Most police officers love Chicago? Most? Police officers in Chicago enter the profession because they are besotted with the Windy City. A career with challenges welcomed by police, those who serve enter the profession because they have a distinct desire to benefit the community in concrete ways and perform humane work. Moreover, they serve because they are inspired to work for something considerably more important than themselves: They aspire to serve others, interact with residents, and generate security in neighborhoods where it is needed. Unfortunately, it is exceptionally rare when this reality is acknowledged in the Sun Timeseditorial pages.
Worse, the editors at the Sun Times metaphorically refer to the fissure between police and residents as the “Great Wall of China.” A scatterbrained comparison, what the editors refuse to confess is the daily’s own contribution to the abyss which divides Chicago police and citizens. That the Sun Times has consistently taken such a decidedly anti-police stance is deeply worrisome: The editors fail to recognize the impact of their words or how its words are interpreted by its few remaining readers. But what else is new? An editorial page which tirelessly launders anti-police propaganda over reasoned opinion, the editors of the Sun Times have made a conscious decision to construct deceitful narratives in regard to police behavior and allot blame in the fight against crime on police because it suits their political prerogatives and prejudices. Had the Sun Times published a responsible editorial piece, it would have created enough space to advise its readers in order to avoid needless confrontations with police, it is crucial the public listen, obey, and not demonstrate anger or direct hostility toward police officers. In sum: The public needs to understand they have a legal obligation to obey a police officer’s commands. Unfortunately, even in its deepest and most meticulous thinking, the Sun Times’ editors are neither intellectually honest nor brave enough to print these words.
A contemptible bunch of fools, by engaging in soft warfare against Chicago police, the editors at the Sun Times must bear some responsibility for the unraveling of police effectiveness on the streets. Crude smears doubling as fair and forthright commentary and the stable stream of anti-police invective broadcast in the Sun Times’ editorial pages encourages resistance to police authority, discourages cooperation among residents with police, and deprives police of their obligation to perform assertive, vigilant policing in high-crime neighborhoods. The Sun Times’ anti-police position is beyond tunnel vision; it is an obsession. It’s wrong; it’s costing lives; and it’s an aberration of which the Sun Times should never recover.
A newspaper which rarely offers intelligent, impartial, and rigorous examinations of police matters, it is chiefly the Sun Times’ printed words in its antipathetic coverage of the department which influence its shrinking flock of subscribers, most of whom remain are unsympathetic to police, predisposed to question police intent, or Progressive zealots. Disgracefully, the Sun Times views their anti-police stance as “pro-justice.”
The Chicago Sun Times has ceased to be a dominant force in Chicago media.
All of this is, of course, unsurprising for the Sun Times. A newspaper possessed with Jon Burge, Robert Rialmo, and Jason Van Dyke, the Sun Times has little appetite for the truth. Operating in a bubble, the Sun Times’editors are suffering from an outlandish form of self-conceit: They see themselves as practical, empirical, a board compelled by wisdom as opposed to emotion, and fact over Progressive dogma. Imagine the upheaval in the Sun Times’ editorial board room if Chicago police officers had demanded the newspaper be denied the right to publish their editorial.
An utterly irrelevant news source, and one which surrendered credibility long ago, the Sun Times has been dying a slow death for over two decades. A newspaper which routinely lectures and hectors police, its fortunes have sunk so low it recently published its daily edition with a blank front page in a silly and farcical attempt to grovel for subscribers. While many are enjoying the slow, painful demise of the newspaper, once the Sun Times does cease publication, Chicago residents won’t have to endure any more of its editorial board’s dishonest lectures on civility.
The right to assemble is a cornerstone of American civic life. The Sun Times doesn’t get this.
[Chicago Sun Times] [Photo courtesy WGN Radio]
