The great mathematician, philosopher, atheist and wit Lord Bertrand Russell explained the paradox of tolerance this way:
‘Any person who claims to be tolerant naturally defines himself in opposition to those who are intolerant. But that makes him intolerant of certain people – which invalidates his claim to be tolerant.’
Disagree that Chicago police officers are torture abusing, out of control thugs and you will see how your view is tolerated. Let’s try. Here goes!
$1,930,000 would be considered a tolerable sum of money. In fact, 1,930,000 of anything is a tolerable sum of anything. The Chicago Sun Times Police Abuse search on Yahoo revealed 1,930,000 hits. My Google search produced a somewhat less tolerable sum of 1, 790,000 hits – ouch. Lastly, the more general Chicago Media + Police Abuse produced even less with 1,740,000 hits. That’s still a lot of hits.
The Chicago police are under a constant assault from the news media and a collection of personalities that cling to the article of faith that the police have a culture of hostility, racism, brutality, duplicity and general malice. People who do not buy into this notion are equally malicious and not to be tolerated.
Consider Jon Loevy, a brilliant Columbia University educated lawyer. His father once was an advocate for a police union oddly enough. He has made a very tolerable $50,000,000 in lawsuits brought against the police for his firm of Loevy and Loevy. He won a jury trial in federal court for another $ 4,000,000 for a drug dealer who charged that he was sodomized by arresting officers. The Chicago Sun Times which thinks of itself as the progressive, independent conscience of the city.. Yesterday its headline shouted ‘Justice!’ on the front page.
I ain’t buying it, but that’s just me.
Justice for whom? The guy about to collect $ 4 million? I am not a Progressive – except in matters concerning the laws of physics – nor am I an independent, as I had plenty of help from many, many people.
As for my conscience – I get in a solid seven to eight nightly.
But, I do not buy into all the police torture industry’s doctrine. The Chicago Reader is now somehow uttered in hushed tones by so many people. John Conroy – the godfather of police torture stories? Lovely man.
Mick Dumke? Ditto.
Ben Javorsky has moved on to TIFs.
The Chicago Sun Times stable of ponies? Flat unoriginal; and seem lazy to me.
The Chicago Tribune will chime in now and then, but no where near as goofy as the Chicago Sun Times. I work down the block from where the man whose mother called the police after her son violated an order of protection – no the mother violated her own order of protection against her son – and he was tasered and died. I’ve had many occasions to watch the police in action and have never had any experience with any police officer (female, male, black white, yellow, brown, red and sometimes really pale) where honor to the task of protecting the citizen was not, first and foremost, in evidence.
Whenever you open to the murders in Metro Chicago there always appears to be one within a very few blocks of work. I live in a neighborhood positively thick with police officers and they are wonderful fathers and neighbors. Then I read the papers – I need to for my work – and these folks are described in bizarre terms and with accusations from career criminals right out of Jules Verne. Jon Burge has become a demonic icon – jowly, rough, red-haired, mean piggy eyes.
People now think of every cop as Jon Burge thanks to the daily shower of police abuse sagas, commentaries, and op-ed pieces in the Sun-Times. But, Jon Burge has not been convicted of anything. Everyone knows he tortured? Not me.
I don’t believe any of the lawyers involved with Burge truly want Jon Burge to go to jail for anything; not while the man can serve as a metaphor. I believe that Chicago Police Officers are being bullied by leftists – lawyers, journalists, university think-tank funded by liberals not to bring about any reform in law enforcement but to undermine any and all confidence in law enforcement. That way more lawsuits can and will be manufactured and climate of fear and uncertainty can pervade the community.
Leftists are okay but I hate bullies. As a teacher it was always one of the more difficult things trying to break young people of falling into habits of bullying. It can be done. The first thing is to identify bullying:
Bullying is the act of intentionally causing unhappiness to others through verbal harassment, physical assault, or other more subtle methods of coercion such as manipulation. . . . Bullying is an act of repeated aggressive behavior in order to intentionally hurt another person. Bullying is characterized by an individual behaving in a certain way to gain power over another person . . . social aggression or indirect bullying is characterized by forcing the victim into social isolation. This isolation is achieved through a wide variety of techniques, including spreading gossip, refusing to socialize with the victim, bullying other people who wish to socialize with the victim, . . . Research indicates that adults who bully have personalities that are authoritarian, combined with a strong need to control or dominate. From Wikpedia on Bullying.

Chicago police officers have been bullied by the media, phony activists, gutless elected officials, lawsuit addicted lawyers and criminals who wish to get out of or avoid jail and get a tolerable sum of money in so doing. Here’s the radical genius Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals. Here they are:

1. Power is not only what you have but what the enemy thinks you have.
2. Never go outside the experience of your people. It may result in confusion, fear and retreat.
3. Wherever possible go outside the experience of the enemy. Here you want to cause confusion, fear and retreat.
4. Make the enemy live up to his/her own book of rules. (You Officers do just that)
5. Ridicule is man’s most potent weapon.
6. A good tactic is one that your people enjoy.
7. A tactic that drags on too long becomes a drag.
8. Keep the pressure on, with different tactics and actions and utilize all events of the period for your purpose.
9. The threat is usually more terrifying than the thing itself.
10. The major premise for tactics is the development of operations that will maintain a constant pressure upon the opposition.
11. If you push a negative hard and deep enough it will break through into its counter side. (I have NO idea what that Means)
12. The price of a successful attack is a constructive alternative.
13. Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it and polarize it.

My advice to the police: This is what you’re up against. You’re in the media’s cross-hairs.

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Patrick Hickey is a regular columnist for The Chicago Daily Observer.