Chicago Tribune: Is Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner anti-union? Or pro-taxpayer?
In 2009, a police officer for the city of Rockford shot and killed an unarmed man in a church basement. Children attending day care witnessed the incident. It drew national attention. The Rev. Jesse Jackson protested. Racial tensions flared. The officer, Oda Poole, was white. The unarmed man, Mark Anthony Barmore, was black.
The city moved to fire Poole. But nearly seven years later, he is still on administrative leave. A ruling by an arbitrator — a person who resolves disputes between employers and unionized workers — blocked the city’s efforts to fire him.
The rules that arbitrators follow are set in state labor laws. They’re also established through case precedent and enforced under union contracts. Those rules bind the hands of local governments to discipline and fire employees such as Poole. His continued employment and the legal costs of trying to oust him have fallen on the backs of Rockford taxpayers.
Chicago Tribune: Chicago police soon to wear more body cameras
The Chicago Police Department expects to receive a shipment of more than 450 body cameras, which will be worn by officers in some of the most gang-plagued areas of the city in addition to the department’s top brass starting this spring, city officials announced Sunday.
After being trained, officers and supervisors in seven of the department’s 22 police districts will be equipped with body cameras capable of recording 72 continuous hours of high-definition video and audio on a single charge.
The new cameras, part of a city pilot program, began in January 2015 in the Shakespeare District, which covers the Logan Square and West Town communities on the North and Northwest sides. The six new police districts, which encompass one-third of the city, cover the South Shore, Auburn Gresham, Chatham, Washington Park, Hyde Park, Kenwood, Back of the Yards, Brighton Park, Bridgeport, Austin, North Lawndale and Little Village communities.
Chicago Tribune: Beyond repair: Chicago's Independent Police Review Authority
When Sharon Fairley accepted the job as head of Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority, one of the first things she did was to outsource the Laquan McDonald case.
She knew Chicagoans did not trust IPRA, the body charged with investigating allegations of police misconduct, to do its job. And for good reason.
In eight years, IPRA has rarely sustained a complaint against a police officer, much less recommended any meaningful punishment — even as 400 civilians have been shot by Chicago cops and taxpayers shelled out hundreds of millions in legal settlements to victims of police abuse and their families.
Financial Times: US faces ‘disastrous’ $3.4tn pension funding hole
The US public pension system has developed a $3.4tn funding hole that will pilepressure on cities and states to cut spending or raise taxes to avoid Detroit-style bankruptcies.
According to academic research shared exclusively with FTfm, the collective funding shortfall of US public pension funds is three times larger than official figures showed, and is getting bigger.
Devin Nunes, a US Republican congressman, said: “It has been clear for years that many cities and states are critically underfunding their pension programmes and hiding the fiscal holes with accounting tricks.”