Lightfoot’s angry words fall short in police scandal
After stumbling out of the gate early in theweek, Mayor Lori Lightfoot began saying most of the right things about the scandalously botched police raid on socialworker Anjanette Young’s home and the heavy-handed legal strategy the city used to try to cover it up.
Herwords of regret, anger and determinationwerewell-chosen, but it’s what Lightfoot failed to say that stood out: “You’re fired!”
Corporation counselMark Flessner has got to go.
Neither Lightfoot nor Flessner, her appointed top lawyer, were in office in February 2019, when about a dozen Chicago police officers, acting on a searchwarrant that contained awrong address, battered down Young’s door and handcuffed her naked in the middle of her living room while they searched her home.
Police bodycam videos of the incident showthe mistakewas compounded by the seeming indifference most of the officers showed to Young’s nakedness and to her repeated protestations that they had the wrong house. “Inhumane” is the adjective that came most quickly to mind when I watched the video online, but other terms of dismay, disgust and fury followed.
Lightfoot and Flessner inherited this scandal when they took over several months later, however. And the fact that a spectacular video of apparent police misconductwas under a confidentiality orderwas a public relations land mine justwaiting to go off. When WBBM-Ch. 2 investigative reporterDave Savini got his hands on it anyway, Flessner’s office made mattersworse by going to courtMonday seeking an injunction to prevent the station from airing it.
Lightfoot says shewas unaware of the suppression effort until it broke in the news and that she opposed it. And she said she had no memory of having learned last year of the problematic raid. I’ll take her at herword on that. Maybe I’m naive or too forgiving, but I’m inclined to believe that a mayor managing a city through
one of the craziest, most difficult years in historywasn’t current on every looming scandal.
But Flessner. He either knew or should have known that his officewas attempting to hide an outrageous video fromthe public and thwart the media, similar to howformerMayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration attempted to conceal the video of an officer gunning down LaquanMcDonald in 2014. That alleged cover-up arguably ended Emanuel’s political career, and this one could still certainly harm Lightfoot’s future.
Whether or not it’s perfectly fair to have the buck stop on Flessner’s desk, heads have to roll and soon. Declarations of umbrage and sympathy are nice. But to underscore the gravity of the offense against Young, the necessity of getting searchwarrants right and a renewed determination to be transparent about alleged police misconduct, Lightfoot needs to demand Flessner’s resignation and urge the firing of the officers who treated Young so shabbily.
The countdown is on
Many countdownsites on the web will remind you that Sunday marks 31 days until the inauguration of Democratic Presidentelect Joe Biden.
But Jan. 20 will mark more than simply the end of the administration of Republican Presidentreject Donald Trump. Itwillmark the end of a four-year span in which Republicans didn’t care about debts and deficits, were nonchalant about the moral character of the president and shrugged off the shady business dealings of the president’s children.
The transition is underway! Leading Republicans are aghast and troubled that Biden’s incoming deputy chief of staff Jen O’Malley Dillon used a profanity to refer toGOP leaders in a recent interview with Glamour, evidently blocking fromtheir memory all the vulgar language Trump has used in public. They’ve also discovered a concern for slips of the tongue, lapses in memory and
curious locutions that didn’t trouble them when itwas Trump doing the gibbering.
Just one month nowuntil Republicans will again commence bleating about the dangers of an imperial president ruling by executive order, complaining loudlywhen the president takes leisure time and flyspecking the first lady. Thirtyone days until every death from COVID-19 becomes the president’s fault, until meeting with foreign dictators is once again dangerously unacceptable and until no congressional investigation is too “endless” to pursue for years. At every opportunity, GOP leaders will bang on once again about the value of truth and the necessity for dignity in the White House.
It will be rich. I can’twait.
The most addictive podcast ever
Whenever Iwake up in the middle of the night— for no apparent reason or for an obvious reason— I reach formy phone and feed the curious monkey onmy back: What’s new? What’s happened? Any fresh hell breaking out somewhere in theworld thatwe’re all going towake up to?
The relentless “NPRNews Now” podcast is there to tell me with a fresh, usually reassuring five-minute national newscast that’s updated onmy podcast app every hour. The headlines in the wee hours are often comfortingly stale, recycled from the evening news roundups I’ve checked before bed. But every so often there’s a late-breaking development, an ominousmove in the foreign markets, an explosion, fire or storm.
Podcasts typically update once aweek, sometimes once a day. “NPRNewsNow” has been updating once an hour since 2018, but I got hooked on it only at the end of the fall political campaign and during the post-election drama, when it seemed like the news simply never slept. Had another state been called? Another court returned a rejection of some far-fetched Trumpian claim?
I thought I could handle it. I thought I could quit any time. But nowthat things have calmed down a bit, I still can’t fight the urge for a news fix, right there, so close at hand, so easy, so tempting…
Re:Tweets
The winner of thisweek’s reader poll to select the funniest tweet about 20 holiday-themed finalistswas “Nothing personal Santa, but after everything that’s happened this year I just can’t take another white guy in a red hat,” by@RickAaron.
The poll appears at chicago tribune.com/zorn where you can read all the finalists. For an early alert when each new poll is posted, sign up for the Change of Subject email newsletter at chicagotribune.com/ newsletters.