Union to Chicago’s police: Pass up overtime as protest

CHICAGO — Chicago’s police union is asking officers to not volunteer to work overtime during the Labor Day weekend to protest the “continued disrespect” toward officers and the killings of law enforcement personnel nationwide.

The Chicago Police Department typically deploys thousands of officers on overtime to counteract the spike in shootings that usually occurs during long holiday weekends. But in a recent flier sent to rank-and-file officers, the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police Lodge 7 advises against officers volunteering for duty.

“There is a new level of concern that families now have when their loved ones leave for work in law enforcement that they didn’t have a month ago,” union President Dean Angelo said, referring to the recent fatal shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge. “And we are saying, put your kids at ease, don’t take that extra day at risk if you don’t have to.”

The flier said taking a stand would also “show unity and … protest the continued disrespect of Chicago Police Officers.”

The request may be largely symbolic. Labor Day is the last of three warm-weather holidays when extra officers flood the streets, and the department said it will order officers to work overtime if not enough volunteers step forward.

“There will not be any operational impacts to the deployment of police on Labor Day weekend,” department spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said.

But the flier underlines serious problems for the department, which has come under criticism for using excessive force, since the November release of a video showing a white Chicago police officer shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.

That shooting helped to expose statistics that show officers in the city are rarely punished for on-duty shootings. The officer involved in the McDonald shooting, Jason Van Dyke, was the first in decades to be charged with murder for an on-duty shooting.

And between 2007 and two months ago, the Independent Police Review Authority that investigates police misconduct found that only two of some 400 police shootings were unjustified.