FOP challenger backs Sessions’ anti- reform tack
The man who could be the next president of the Fraternal Order of Police on Wednesday threw his support behind Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ decision to review and retreat from police reform agreements nationwide.
Chicago Police Officer Kevin Graham said the U. S. Justice Department investigation, triggered by the police shooting of Laquan McDonald, was “politically motivated” and “part of a larger movement to put the handcuffs on the police in the Obama administration.”
“AG Sessions recognizes that the police are generally doing a good job and must be allowed to continue to do so,” Graham was quoted as saying in a press release issued by his “Blue Voice” slate of union candidates.
“We think this decision is a step in the right direction to restoring law and order and diminishing violent crime in the city.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Supt. Eddie Johnson have promised to implement the sweeping reforms outlined in the DOJ’s scathing indictment of the Chicago Police Department, even though it is now clear that Sessions is not interested in pursuing a consent decree mandating those changes.
Graham strongly disagreed.
“Chicago Police are being hammered with new disci- plinary measures constantly. Members are not receiving due process rights. And the media is not telling the truth about many cases in which the police are accused,” Graham was quoted as saying.
Graham also blasted incumbent President Dean Angelo for cooperating with a DOJ investigation he should have opposed and for encouraging his members to speak with Justice Department investigators “without legal representation.”
“How does it look when we cooperate with this investigation and then Attorney General Sessions comes in and criticizes it? If ... Sessions sees these investigations [ as preventing] the police from doing their job, why didn’t our own FOP president?” Graham was quoted as saying.
Angelo countered that hundreds of officers volunteered to talk to the DOJ to give the report balance. They aired their gripes about broken down equipment, inadequate training, outdated technology and about a merit promotions process riddled with politics, he said.
“If not, you would only have had politicians, reverends, community activists, arrestees and ex- offenders. They would have been the only voice of that document,” Angelo said.
Leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police is up for grabs in the April 12 runoff.