{"id":176337,"date":"2020-07-09T19:27:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-10T00:27:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/07\/09\/a-win-for-justice-and-transparency\/"},"modified":"2020-07-09T19:27:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-10T00:27:00","slug":"a-win-for-justice-and-transparency","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2020\/07\/09\/a-win-for-justice-and-transparency\/","title":{"rendered":"A Win for Justice and Transparency"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that, notwithstanding a contract with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, state law prohibits the destruction of police disciplinary records<\/a>, so this contract provision is unenforceable.<\/p>\n

In response, I expect the police to ignore the law and destroy the records anyway, because, for them, laws are only for other people:<\/p>\n

Chicago police misconduct records that are more than five years old will remain available to the public, the Illinois Supreme Court ruled Thursday, turning away an attempt by the city\u2019s police union to have them destroyed as a matter of course.<\/span>

<\/span>The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police had sued, contending that such records should be eliminated after five years under the city\u2019s police collective bargaining agreement. A court arbitrator had called for the city and the FOP to come to an agreement on the issue, but the city had successfully challenged that decision at the appellate level.<\/span>

<\/span>The state\u2019s high court found 6-1 that the arbitration outcome violated clear public policy in the state\u2019s Local Records Act, siding with City Hall.<\/span>

<\/span>\u201cIn sum, we find there is a \u2018well-defined and dominant\u2019 public policy rooted in state law concerning the procedures for the proper retention and destruction of government records,\u201d the majority wrote.<\/span>

<\/span>\u2026\u2026\u2026<\/span>

<\/span>FOP President John Catanzara on Thursday said he \u201ccouldn\u2019t be more disappointed\u201d with the court\u2019s decision, and said he is instructing the union\u2019s lawyers to see if there is a way to take the case to the U.S. Supreme Court.<\/span>

<\/span>“It goes against every ounce of logic there is,” Catanzara said. “The contractual rights that were in our collective bargaining agreement for the better part of four decades were set in stone.”<\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n

And that provision was probably illegal that whole time, so Mr. Catanzara can go Cheney himself.<\/p>\n

Provisions like this has allowed cops to literally get away with murder for years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Illinois Supreme Court has ruled that, notwithstanding a contract with the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police, state law prohibits the destruction of police disciplinary records, so this contract provision is unenforceable. In response, I expect the police to ignore the law and destroy the records anyway, because, for them, laws are only for other …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[407,465,526,374,442],"class_list":["post-176337","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","tag-justice","tag-labor","tag-law-enforcement-misconduct","tag-politics","tag-union"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176337"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=176337"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/176337\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=176337"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=176337"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=176337"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}