How much does
race, stress play into Chicago police misconduct?
By AngelaCaputo,
Thursday at 2:47 pm
How deep does
misconduct run in the Chicago Police Department? Is race a factor? Do officers
themselves ever feel they've been targeted by abusive cops?
I wasn’t expecting
straight answers when I cold-called Officer Richard Wooten on his cell phone.
Getting a police officer to talk about misconduct among his peers seemed like a
long shot.
Not only was I naming names in a
follow up to my investigation into repeat offenders within the CPD
for The Chicago Reporter, but I was also exposing a pattern of brutality
in the Gresham District where Wooten lives and works.
I was stunned when
he invited me over.
We sat down in a
commercial building on 75th Street, the headquarters of a private
security company Wooten owns. I couldn’t squeeze our entire interview into our
latest story, “Abusing the badge.” But here’s more from
our conversation:
Is race a factor
in police misconduct?
Race is a factor.
The police department is not, by a long stretch, racist, [but] we do have
racist people in the department. That’s just the way it is, no matter what you
do, where you go, what profession.
We had officers
out in Englewood [7th District] [that] I didn’t agree with how they policed. I
apply it to the stress factor, but I also apply it to not knowing the race of
the people that you’re dealing with. You have people who have never seen a
black person, never went to school with a black person, never lived around a
black person, but then they’re assigned to a black neighborhood. And that black
neighborhood is such a crime infested area, it’s totally different from what
they come from. Sometimes they can misjudge a person’s character because they
begin to look at everybody the same.
You know how many
times I get stopped? I was taking my son to a football practice a few years
ago, and a police officer pulls up to the right of us… I was driving [my
Cadillac] through Englewood at the time, and he probably thought I was a young
guy. So he pulls us over, and he asks for my driver’s license and insurance.
All of a sudden you see the whole thing kind of twist around. ‘You speeding?’
‘No, I’m not speeding. I just pulled out from the light.’ Some officers out there,
very small fraction of them, get out there and they pre-judge.
Why are most
police misconduct cases concentrated in certain neighborhoods?
I worked in
Englewood for ten years. And what I saw was that the people that were working
the hardest got the most complaints. Then people realize that the city wants to
settle, so they continue to make these complaints. I’m not defending these
officers. There are some officers that do things that should not be done. But
anytime someone gets out there and works hard, you’re going to get sued. That’s
just the nature of the job. When I was in Englewood [7th District],
I was sued three times.
It happens in high
crime areas. And in high crime areas, you have more unemployment, more drug
incidents. The police are always running. They get burnt out. And when you get
burnt out, your stress levels go up. They should do a rotation, just to give
people breaks. You can only stand so much before you burst.
How has the police
department changed since you joined the force in 1993?
Everyone is trying
to point the finger and the responsibility from themselves to the police
officers. So people are using it as more of a social service. I took two kids
to school the other day, [who] were walking around their neighborhood with a
20-year-old guy. It’s like we have to go pickup and babysit now. I spent a
whole hour with those guys, when other calls on the radio are coming
out….That’s the problem we have. We’ve been put in to the position of not being
the police.
We [also] have a
younger department now. We have a lot of officers that have come on this job
because it’s a good paying job, but at the same time a lot of them don’t have
the patience. So when you’re put in a high crime area, that stress kicks in,
and they’re ready to leave. But because [they’re] new [they’re] stuck there for
a while. …You have a lot of officers that take a lot of stress, [and] take
stress home with them. It’s very difficult when …you work in a high crime area
where you’re going to respond to 20 or 30 calls a day.
What’s happening
now in the 6th District, where you work? How is Auburn Gresham
changing?
Churches don’t
have the resources like they used to have. You have all these churches that
only open their doors on Sundays … but they don’t have any interaction within the
community.
I grew up in
Auburn Gresham, and now I’m a police officer in that area. I see where my
community has come, and what transition it has made. Crime has taken hold. If
you had social issues, either you talked to a pastor or you talked to a counselor.
Those things don’t exist in our communities anymore.
Right now we have
several community organizations that are focused on making the community more
aware, being very proactive, fighting crime themselves. What we realized is
that the police department cannot do all the things that are required.
Had enough?
Write to the Speaker of the House, U.S. House of Representatives,
Washington, DC 20515 and demand federal hearings into the police problem in
America. Demand mandatory body cameras for cops, one strike rule on abuse, and
a permanent DOJ office on Police Misconduct.