Chicago Wins 'Most Corrupt City' Award Due In No Small Part To Its Awful Redlight Camera System

from the we-won-we-won dept

We've talked a great deal about my home city of Chicago, largely for the myriad of awful, corrupt practices it has put in place around topics that we cover here. For instance, we have an alderman trying to shore up the city budget by taxing the shit out of Uber and Lyft, our Mayor thought it was a great idea to have his own private email accounts to conduct business, and a red light camera system so hilariously geared towards bilking money from citizens that the courts have tossed out huge swaths of the tickets it generated, which led the city to decide to make it barely less corrupt by a measure of tenths-of-seconds worth of leeway for drivers crossing the intersection.

Now, you might be thinking that all of this effort to be corrupt and insidious seems like a waste. Wouldn't it be far easier, you might be thinking, to simply run the city in a sensible way? Wouldn't that actually require less effort and be better for the people of Chicago? Perhaps, but then Chicago wouldn't have received the prestigious award of "most corrupt city", as it did this past week.

A report released Tuesday ranks Chicago as the most corrupt city in the country and Illinois as the third-most corrupt state.

"What we find is a very dreary picture. In nearly every sector, whether you talk about aldermen, you talk about Chicago schools, you talk about contracts, in every area corruption is still rife in the city of Chicago," said Dick Simpson, lead author of the "Continuing Corruption in Illinois" study and a University of Illinois Chicago political science professor.

We did it! Suck it, every city in New Jersey! My hometown is the corruptest place in the land. And, as the UIC report notes, Chicago won this much sought after award in no small part to the very red light camera system we mentioned above.

Chicago's red light camera scandal sent an assistant transportation department commission to prison for bribery and extortion.

"What that means is that it's harder to get businesses to come here because of its corrupt state, we're losing population and corruption is one of the reasons we're losing population. We have undermined faith in government," Simpson said.

Asked to comment on the UIC report, Mayor Rahm Emanuel responded by noting how awesome a job he's done at not being corrupt, despite that not being the framing of the question at all. But that's the kind of response you can expect from Rahm, who has overseen the most corrupt city's government for more than seven years now. It has been under his watch that the camera system has flourished into the corruption monster it now is, not to mention it being under his watch that the Chicago Police Department has become the butt of a national joke.

So pop the champagne, fellow Chicago residents. It took a lot of hard work and effort, but we made it!

Filed Under: chicago, corruption, illinois, rahm emanuel, red light cameras

Chicago Mayor Promises To Turn Over Emails From His Private Accounts Following Courtroom Losses

from the getting-right-in-on-the-eighth-or-ninth-floor-of-the-inevitable dept

Not only is the use of private email accounts to route around public records requests a common practice, it's also an accepted practice. Politicians aren't going to sell out their own in the name of transparency, so there's likely as many private email accounts handling official business as there are government employees. Everyone from former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg to Gen. Colin Powell has used private email accounts to handle government communications they'd rather not be made public.

The same goes for Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel. For years, journalists and government transparency groups have been trying (and suing) to get the mayor to turn over city-related emails contained in his personal accounts. To date, the city of Chicago hasn't budged.

But we're living in a "new" era of Chicago-brand transparency -- the aftermath of the city's concerted cover-up of police recordings of the Laquan McDonald shooting. The mayor pledged the city would be more open and forthcoming in the future -- not a difficult promise to make considering there was nowhere to go but up.

Roughly a year after that announcement, one layer of opacity has been peeled back by the mayor's office. Given that it was prompted by multiple lawsuits and unsympathetic court rulings, it's probably best to hold any applause until something more proactive is witnessed.

As a result of a BGA [Better Government Association] investigation and legal action, The City of Chicago and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have agreed to release all of Emanuel's private emails related to city business—subject to any applicable legal exemptions—and institute a new policy that will ban city employees and officials from using their private email accounts to conduct city business.

The city's change in practices comes in response to Freedom of Information Act requests and lawsuits filed by the BGA, and separately by the Chicago Tribune, and follows more than a year of hard-fought litigation and rulings by two Cook County judges that public officials’ emails are not outside the scope of FOIA simply because they are on a private account.

If this clenched-teeth transparency sounds familiar, it's probably because Mayor Emanuel -- like the president he briefly worked for -- has promised unheard of levels of transparency…

Emanuel claimed from the start of his tenure at City Hall in 2011 that his leadership would be among the most transparent in the nation.

and delivered almost none of it.

But accessing public records at City Hall—especially documents about hot topics of those pertaining directly to the mayor himself—has often been met with delays, obfuscation or court battles.

And so it goes. This is an important victory for the public, moved along by court rulings stating pretty much the same thing Chicago's administrative branch is only now conceding: official business is official business, whether it's carried out on official email accounts or not. The new policy prompted by lawsuits and court losses orders city employees to push any work-related emails received on personal accounts to their city of Chicago accounts or face whatever form of discipline the city deems appropriate. The latter half of this sentence will dictate the success of the first half, so it's up to city employees to keep other city employees honest. Considering this is Chicago, birthplace of the mobbed-up politician, I expect it will be several more years before the city even begins to approach the lofty transparency goals its own mayor has shown no interest in attaining.

Filed Under: chicago, emails, foia, private emails, public records, rahm emanuel

Chicago's Mayor Promises New Era Of Transparency After Shooting Video Forced Out Of City's Hands By Court

from the [airquote]-REFORM-[/airquote] dept

A Chicago police officer shot Laquan McDonald as he walked away from him, carrying a knife. Officer Jason Van Dyke emptied his service weapon in McDonald's direction less than 30 seconds after his vehicle arrived on scene. McDonald was hit 16 times, with a majority of those coming after he was already laying on the ground.

The dashcam video -- buried by the city for 13 months as it fought Uber-driving citizen journalist Brandon Smith's FOIA lawsuit -- directly contradicted reports written by multiple officers.

The report quotes Van Dyke saying: “(Laquan), raised knife across chest over shoulder, pointed knife at (me)…(I) believed (Laquan) was trying to kill (me).”

Van Dyke’s partner and driver, Officer Joe Walsh, raced around the car, pointed his weapon but didn’t shoot. He told an investigator he: “believed (Laquan) was attacking Van Dyke with knife attempting to kill (him).”

In the video released two weeks ago, Van Dyke and Walsh are seen driving up, as McDonald walks down the centerline of Pulaski Road, the officers getting out of their SUV and Van Dyke almost immediately opening fire on McDonald as he angled away from them.

Officer Dora Fontaine said:”(Laquan) raised (his) right arm toward (Van Dyke) as if attacking (him).”

The dashcam video was buried so the official narrative could take hold: a threatened officer killed a man in self-defense. To aid in this, a nearby Burger King was raided by officers to confiscate footage caught by its CCTV cameras.


This footage was eventually released as well, but every recording from every Burger King camera included an 80-minute gap covering the time the shooting took place.

The released dashcam video flipped the narrative. It was no longer Officer Van Dyke defending himself from a dangerous suspect. It was Officer Van Dyke dumping 16 bullets into a person walking away from him. Van Dyke was charged with murder shortly before the video was released. Had the court not ordered the release of the video, it's very likely Van Dyke would still be employed by the Chicago PD and not facing any criminal charges.

The mayor's office immediately went into damage control mode, immediately throwing Police Superintendent Gerry McCarthy under the nearest bus. Notably, Mayor Rahm Emanuel claimed McCarthy was a "distraction," rather than the failed "leader" of a police force that ran its own "black site" and has been synonymous with abuse and corruption for years.

Critics also noted Emanuel had fought the release of this video for months, dating back to his re-election run where he claimed its release would "taint" a federal investigation.

Rahm Emanuel wants to have it both ways: defend his city's frequently horrendous police force and be the bold reformer who will finally clean up the cesspool it's become under his (and his predecessors') watch. Consequently, he's failing at both.

The police already see Emanuel as a fair-weather tool of the media and general public -- much like most politicians. The public's view of Emanuel is nearly identical, even if it's more concerned about the city's cops, rather than for them.

His apparent complicity in the recording's cover-up make his new claims of unprecedented transparency very suspect. So do his actions.

Brandon Smith, who forced the video out of the city's hands, wasn't notified by the city that the video was being released. He ended up locked out of the press conference announcing the release because he had no press credentials. Officials issuing statements on the release never mentioned his name.

This doesn't sync up with the mayor's public statements:

Mayor Rahm Emanuel proclaimed the arrival of a fresh new era of sincerity and openness concerning policing in Chicago. "I know that personally, I have a lot of work to do to win back the public’s trust, and that words are not enough," the mayor told the City Council.

Referring to the video of the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald by Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, Emanuel said: "Every day that we held onto the video contributed to the public’s distrust. And that needs to change."

And he wasn't content to wait for change, he made clear: "It starts today. It starts now."

"Now" is a meaningless word in Mayor Emanuel's mouth, as Steve Bogira of the Chicago Reader points out.

The mayor fought for months to suppress the video showing the slaying of the 17-year-old McDonald. And now he's continuing to fight to suppress videos of the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman almost three years ago.

The video Bogira is seeking involves Officer Kevin Fry, who has a history of shooting unarmed citizens and being named in civil rights lawsuits. Chatman was carrying an iPhone box. In 2007, he shot an unarmed 17-year-old because he believed he was reaching for a gun. It turned out to be the teenager's belt buckle. In that case, the teen who was shot received a $99,000 settlement.

Emanuel's new transparency apparently hasn't filtered down to the PD. Bogira notes its FOIA denial tactics remain largely unchanged.

The police department is on even shakier ground in withholding the Chatman videos. There is no ongoing criminal investigation: the state's attorney's office in May 2013 declined to prosecute Fry, citing "insufficient evidence of criminal intent." Nor is there a pending disciplinary investigation: in June, IPRA closed its investigation of Fry, concluding that his shooting of Chatman was justified.

Bogira may be expecting a bit too much from a PD likely besieged by FOIA requests, but he's not wrong to call out the mayor for talking big about reform while doing nothing to ensure his works are followed by meaningful actions. The new transparency will likely last only as long as it has to -- until the furor dies down, the DOJ packs up and heads back to Washington, and everyone can go back to pretending gunning down citizens is just the natural side effect of everyday police work.

Filed Under: chicago, foia, gerry mccarthy, jason van dyke, laquan mcdonald, police cameras, rahm emanuel, transparency

Complete Failure: Chicago's Speed Camera Traps Fail To Bring In The Revenue Mayor Emanuel Counted Upon

from the fast-cash dept

Speed cameras, just like their red-light camera brethren, have been pretty well established as nothing more than revenue machines for local municipalities. Their application results in a myriad of issues, such as the fact that the cameras don't work, not to mention that the cameras don't work, oh, and the cameras don't work and the companies behind them might try to fudge the evidence if you dispute a ticket. The excuse for these cameras that don't work has always been that they are designed to make the roads safer under the theory that if motorists know that the cameras exist, they will be less likely to speed. That supposed justification is belied by two facts. The first is that some people who have tried to warn motorists that the cameras exist have been dragged to court for doing so, which sort of defeats the entire supposed purpose of the cameras. The second fact that disproves the justification is that Chicago just can't help going all Chicago on itself.

Local reporters have the glorious story of the latest Chicago budget crisis that has Mayor Emanuel scrambling for only one reason: Chicago motorists are way better behaved than he'd planned for in his previous budget.

You heard that right: Good behavior is bad for the budget. Real bad, reports CBS 2 Chief Correspondent Jay Levine. CBS 2 has learned the speed cameras caught far fewer speeders than expected. According to the Mayor's 2015 Budget Overview, there have been "lower than expected violation rates."

How much lower? Fifty million dollars lower. Emanuel's administration had figured on $90 million in fines to help balance this year's budget, but they can only count on $40 million. That's a $50 million shortfall, putting pressure on the next spending plan.

Think about the logic here for a moment: Rahm Emanuel wrote a spending budget for the third largest city in the country that relied on a certain revenue number from speed cameras. Where's the incentive for better behavior on the road in that? There is none. The fact is that Chicago drivers are far better behaved than the city expected. That's an outcome you'd think the city would be celebrating. Instead, it's considered a negative, because the speed cameras were never about safety, they were only a method to fill the city's coffers to the tune of milliions of dollars. That isn't so much public policy as it is an extortion racket that happens to have failed.

"It was a combination of the camera company’s salesmanship and the city's greed," says camera critic Barnet Fagel.

You may not want to forgive the camera company their sales tactics, but how much do you really want to fault them? They're a large company beholden to nothing beyond the profit motive. They can't be expected to have the best interests of a city's population at heart. The Chicago city government on the other hand? Most citizens likely didn't elect Mayor Emanuel out of a sense of sadomasochism or the theory that we all just have a bit too much money in our pockets. Stories like these are among the reasons that Emanuel isn't considered invulnerable in the upcoming mayoral election.

Filed Under: budget, chicago, rahm emanuel, speed cameras

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel On City's Illegal Recordings Of Conversations With Journalists: 'Much Ado About Nothing'

from the we're-here-to-write-the-laws,-not-follow-them dept

Chicago city hall officials are in a bit of trouble for recording phone conversations with Chicago Tribune reporters without their consent. A city attorney is downplaying the incidents, insisting that there's no "widespread practice of such tapings" and promising that "steps are being taken" to prevent this from happening again.

Why is this a big deal? Because recording a conversation without the consent of all parties is a felony in Illinois. But what happens when city hall officials, who should be familiar with these laws, violate them? Not much. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's response is that committing a felony is nothing to get excited about.

Asked about the recordings at an unrelated news conference Monday, Mayor Rahm Emanuel said the issue was “much ado about nothing.”

“My view is, like all, we have a press conference here, I expect my staff to have a record of it,” he said. “And if I have a phone conversation, an interview, I expect to have a record of it as well.”

But the commission of a felony is a very big deal if committed by regular citizens. Radley Balko says it's all about who's doing the recording... and who they're recording. 

So remember when Chicago police were arresting people for recording them, and charging them with crimes punishable by 10 or more years in prison? Remember the woman who was arrested and charged because she attempted to record Chicago PD internal affairs police browbeating her when she tried to report a sexual assault by a Chicago cop? Remember all that stuff we heard from Chicago PD and Cook County DA Anita Alvarez’s office about protecting privacy?

That's not an isolated event. Earlier this year, two men filed a lawsuit against the city of Chicago, alleging they were battered, strip-searched and falsely charged after filming a traffic accident caused by a police car. Late last year, a man was arrested for recording the police and charged with illegal eavesdropping and is now facing a sentence of up to 75 years in prison. Another man was arrested and told he was facing 15 years in prison for daring to record a traffic stop.

The good news is that the courts have rejected some of these cases, stating that the law these citizens were arrested for breaking may be unconstitutional. For now, the law still stands. And the recordings done by members of city hall are illegal. The claims that the recordings were simply inadvertent errors rather than part of something more nefarious don't wash when you take a look at what was being discussed when the recordings occurred.

The issue reached a public forum last week when a court filing in a wrongful death lawsuit against the city raised questions about whether a city spokeswoman had recorded Tribune reporters without their consent as they conducted a phone interview with Chicago police Superintendent Garry McCarthy in October 2011.

And in separate incidents this past September, city spokespeople twice recorded a Tribune reporter as he conducted phone interviews with a top city official involved in Emanuel's controversial speed camera program. The spokespeople acknowledged that they independently recorded the interviews without asking the reporter for consent.

Odd that the illegal recordings would have occurred during discussions about possible law enforcement malfeasance. Emanuel's press aides openly admit that recordings take place during media interviews about "controversial topics," but most of these interviews are done in person, making the recording obvious. No effort was made to inform these reporters that their conversations were being recorded.

Last month, the city turned over to the plaintiff's lawyers an audio recording and transcript of the conference call showing no evidence that McCarthy or Hamilton sought consent to record the Tribune reporters.

"Absent from the audio and the transcript was evidence of the parties' consent," according to a court filing last week by the plaintiff's attorney, Craig Sandberg.

Not only is the required consent absent, but the recordings seem to be missing as well:

Gerould Kern, senior vice president and editor of the Tribune, declined to comment Friday about the recordings. Instead, he cited the letter sent by Tribune Co. attorney Karen Flax to Patton, demanding that city officials cease recording Tribune reporters without consent. The letter also asked that the city preserve copies of all recorded conversations and turn them over to the Tribune.

In its response Saturday, the city said it was unclear whether there would be any tapes to turn over.

As Balko points out, the double standard on display here is egregious. Ordinary people get cuffed, threatened, charged with felonies and in some cases, beaten and strip-searched. City officials don't even get a slap on the wrist. Instead, they get the mayor's assurance that their illegal recordings are a whole lot of nothing for anyone to be concerned about. Even the "mysterious" disappearance of the requested recordings fails to raise an eyebrow. Just one of those things that happens to evidence that incriminates politicians and members of law enforcement.

The growing gap between the governing and the governed continues. Those on the enforcement side treat many laws as optional. Those governed and policed are still forced to comply with the laws, no matter how (to paraphrase Frank Zappa) badly written and randomly enforced.

Filed Under: chicago, double standard, rahm emanuel, recordings, wiretapping