Entries associated with the tag "Law Enforcement":

From the website of the Chicago Reporter:

"Nearly half of Chicago police officers sued for fatally shooting civilians were previously sued for misconduct. Some say that should be a warning sign, but is anyone paying attention?"

For those who are, the Reporter and ColorLines magazine have developed a database of police shootings since 2000.

Lead reporter Jeff Kelly Lowenstein:

"The Chicago Reporter examined 85 fatal police shootings since 2000 and identified 17 wrongful death suits filed in federal court using the victims’ names. Though the Chicago Police Department does not disclose the names of officers who shoot civilians, the Reporter found the names of 20 officers who were identified in the lawsuits as a shooter. The Reporter’s investigation into the officers’ previous litigation history found that nine—or 45 percent—of them had been sued previously in either federal or circuit court."

Bear in mind that there are 13,000 Chicago cops. So this group is neither characteristic of the department nor too large to get the careful attention it deserves.

"These police officers’ actions, which have cost the city more than $7 million, resulted in lawsuits that were filed at the same time when most fatal police shootings appear to be declared justified."

• Chicago's downtown is bigger than midtown Manhattan, better-educated than downtown Boston, has more homeowners than any other, and grew faster than downtown Atlanta between 1990 and 2000. More from Penn planning prof Eugenie Birch at the Brookings Institution and at her home school.

• Louis Sullivan's 150th birthday is September 3, and the Chicago Historical Museum knows all about the festivities. (Hat tip to Lynn Becker.)

• I know they play a lot more games, but I'm still astonished to learn from Crain's that the Kane County Cougars (the what who?) put more bodies in the seats than the Bears did last year. Final: Cougars 518,394, Bears 496,965.

• Have you been to the world's largest and greenest laundromat?  Me neither. Would you believe it's in Berwyn? (Hat tip to Sustainablog.)

• The astute Salim Muwakkil writes in In These Times that the arrest of "terrorism" suspects in Miami is "a case of governmental entrapment even more threatening than the NSA spying program." It looks to him like "a reprise of the FBI’s infamous COINTELPRO program that ran from 1956 to 1971 and was designed to 'neutralize' black nationalists and other domestic dissidents."

• Are conservatives and libertarians no longer BFF? And why did anyone ever think they could be?