As the third Chicago Police Department officer to commit suicide in less than a month was laid to rest this past weekend, arguments and anger over the city’s overtaxed police force took on a new sense of urgency.
The deaths understandably have inflamed long-simmering condemnation of the department’s increasingly routine and, in many eyes, inhumane practice of canceling days off at short notice because of deep staffing shortages, made worse of late by shortfalls in recruitment and retention.
It has become increasingly routine for police Supt. David Brown to increase officers’ shifts to 12-hour days and nix days off as violent crime rates have soared, along with such other relevant factors as the ongoing pandemic, street protests and the continuing dramatic shortfalls in police recruitment and retention.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot didn’t help matters much when she remarked late last month that officers get “incredible” amounts of time off as part of their contract. She walked back her comments July 19 to acknowledge this is “probably the most difficult time in our nation’s history” for police officers and that her administration “understands the necessity of really emphasizing health and well-being.”
That matters. As the always-outspoken and frequently controversial Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said in last Wednesday’s City Council meeting, officers deserve time to decompress after witnessing “trauma after trauma after trauma” on the job, including seeing “dead bodies … emaciated babies” and victims of domestic violence. That undergo all this without even time to grab meaningful sleep between shifts.
It also doesn’t help police morale, or reflect a sense of common decency, for the families of fallen officers to be kept waiting for decisions on whether the loss of their loved ones qualifies for line-of-duty designation. The families of three officers who died of COVID-19 have been waiting seven months from the time of their passing, Catanzara said, to receive a line-of-duty designation.
Deaths in the line of duty can qualify the officers’ families to receive the deceased officer’s salary for a year from the time of the officer’s death, as well as pension benefits, pending approval from the city’s pension fund.
Delays in that process were a top concern among stress-related problems highlighted by a group of displeased aldermen who stood outside City Hall last Wednesday with families of fallen officers to call for public hearings on stress and other mental health issues afflicting the city’s police force.
The aldermen included Silvana Tavares, 23rd, Matt O’Shea, 19th, Anthony Napolitano, 41st, Anthony Beale, 9th and Raymond Lopez, 15th, who also is one of the announced candidates running for mayor in 2023.
They presented a worthy list of legitimate concerns about the safety, morale and well-being of police, although some of their proposed remedies, to put it mildly, call for further debate.
Among their proposals are a limit on the ability of the Chicago Police Department to cancel regularly scheduled days off, a 30-day time limit on salary benefit decisions for families of deceased police officers and, to help relieve staff shortages, allowing officers from other departments to transfer to CPD “under a modified training program.”
Beefing up the department’s ability to service the families of deceased officers is a very important goal that will have to be worked out in light of the larger staffing problems. But the city owes at least that much to the families.
Lightfoot quickly expressed her opposition to giving officers more rights to refuse having their days off canceled, correctly seeing it as an infringement on the City Council’s ability to set personnel rules and policies. Yet, Lightfoot surely knows that the overall problem remains and needs to be remedied before it becomes a possible reelection campaign issue.
The same can be said for the city’s tragic challenges with high stress and mental illness. A 2017 report by the U.S. Department of Justice found the department’s suicide rate was 60% higher than the national average.
The city has responded with beefed-up programs, according to Dr. Robert Sobo, director of the department’s Employee Assistance Program. They include 11 licensed clinicians, drug and alcohol services — including six officers conducting meetings and assessments — and peer support groups of about 200 officers, all volunteers.
Many progressives who fight for better working conditions in both the public and private sectors often fail to include rank-and-file police officers in their campaigns, remaining silent even in the face of working conditions that any reasonable person can see have deteriorated in Chicago to an unacceptable extent. This is short-sighted in the extreme. Workers who must make snap, life-and-death decisions on a daily basis need to do so with the benefit of adequate rest.
Police face more than enough danger on the streets of Chicago. We must not leave them to fight their mental health battles alone.
