Daley for “Stop and Frisk”

In an op-ed in the Chicago Tribune William M. Daley, brother of former Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley, son of the late Mayor Richard J. Daley, and former Obama Secretary of Transportation, comes out in favor of stricter gun laws in Illinois and, I believe controversially, in favor of “stop and frisk laws”:

Those of us in less crime-prone neighborhoods shake our heads in dismay. But as citizens of Chicago we have an obligation to act with greater outrage and urgency.

First, Illinois must require mandatory prison time for illegally carrying a gun in the state. People lawfully owning licensed firearms need not worry. The General Assembly has been studying and preparing to change gun laws while people keep dying. Enough! Act!

In 2006, New York increased its mandatory penalty for carrying a loaded illegal gun to 31/2 years in prison. Many factors affect violence, but one fact is stark: New York City, with a much larger population, had fewer than half as many homicides last year (334) as Chicago did.

Gun laws can and must be justly enforced. NFL standout Plaxico Burress spent nearly two years in prison for carrying an unlicensed handgun (with which he accidentally shot himself in a New York nightclub). He rightly was treated the same as any nonfamous, nonwealthy person.

Second, we must give police wider leeway to stop and search suspects for illegal guns. Many people wrongly believe a federal judge in New York City ruled that stop-and-frisk policies are unconstitutional. In fact, the judge specifically said such tactics can be legal if they don’t amount to racial profiling.

A study of New York City’s stop-and-frisk policy, published last year in a Columbia Public Law Research Paper, concluded that targeted police stops “based on probable cause or (indications) of actual crime” were associated with “significant crime reductions.”

Civil libertarians will cite the recent U.S. Department of Justice report that sharply criticized Chicago police conduct. Those findings will help drive reforms, but they must not prevent us from taking new steps to reduce gun violence.

In many ways his comments repeat the fantasies that Chicago’s politicians have been promoting for years. “If only you got rid of the guns.” You can’t get rid of the guns. Mandatory penalties might put a few more young black men in jail but they won’t make the streets safer—there will be lots more gang members as long as the reasons that young black men join street gangs are not dealt with.

One of the reasons that the streets on the South and West Sides are not safe is that the people who live there don’t trust the police. How can they be expected to trust a police department whose members murder their neighbors in cold blood, torture them, aren’t punished for their crimes, and in any of a thousand other ways violate their rights and break the law?

Here’s my question for Sec. Daley: how will “stop and frisk” laws improve the relationship between the CPD and the people of the South and West Sides? My guess is that they will aggravate an already bad situation.

Remedying the Chicago Police Department is up to the city government and the CPD. Tougher penalties and “stop and frisk” laws won’t do that.

4 comments… add one
  • Janis Gore Link

    “Among other things, the policy requiring officers to fill out cumbersome “receipts” for routine stops must be discarded immediately.”

    Less accountability? The communities will surely welcome that.

  • Guarneri Link

    Lord, more fantasies. What next, Rahm Emanuel scolding Trump to fix Rahms problems?

  • Look, he’s got a problem. Nobody believes that Richie didn’t know about Burge’s torture regime any more than anybody believes that Rahm didn’t know about the video of Laquan McDonald’s execution by a police officer.

  • Jimbino Link

    I’m a U of Chicago-educated white guy who grew up on the South Side, and I too was persecuted by Chicago cops–one forced me to leave a McDonald’s parking lot where I was quietly eating my hamburger for no reason. Of course I refused and ended up dragged to the police station. Since I was both White and Irish, they let me go, and I grew up knowing that racism there was rampant.

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