Odd Lessons From Police Misconduct Trial

[Tsukasa Buddha]

Skimpy Clothes Cause Rape, Women Can't Walk Alone At Night, Poor People Are Dangerous and White People Should Avoid Black Neighbourhoods.

Chicago will be paying out it's largest settlement for police misconduct ever. The facts of the case are surprisingly straightforward for this sort of thing (after considerable digging, mind you). The most controversy is in certain interpretations:

Rather than dwell on the question of police responsibility for providing medical care, the judges said there was evidence of a clearer constitutional violation, that officers had taken Eilman from a relatively safe place — Midway Airport — and ultimately left her in a dangerous place seven miles away, at 51st Street and Wentworth Avenue.

In reciting the narrative of what happened that night, Chief Judge Frank Easterbrook suggested the police showed little regard for the danger they were putting Eilman in when they released her.

"She was lost, unable to appreciate her danger, and dressed in a manner to attract attention," Easterbrook wrote, noting she was wearing a cutoff top and short shorts. He added "she is white and well off while the local population is predominantly black and not affluent, causing her to stand out as a person unfamiliar with the environment and thus a potential target for crime."

...

Contrary to what most people think, the police don't have a constitutional duty to protect people from harm. But they do have a duty to not put people in harm's way, in other words not to make things worse, and that's what the court found here," said Craig Futterman, a law professor at the University of Chicago Law School, who has led both litigation against the Police Department as well as research into the department's oversight practices.

Linky.

Though healthcare for prisoners and the troubling system of using prisons as de facto mental institutions (and she didn't have health insurance, just to make matters worse) are both the issues that jumped out at me, the "White Woman" storyline has been the focus in the reports I've read.

(Anecdotally, two of my aunts have gotten lost and ended up on the South Side. They were both asked what they were doing and given quick escort away, one from a cop and one from a "gangbanger".)

 

[Dancing David]

http://blogs.findlaw.com/seventh_ci...cago-cops-for-release-in-high-crime-area.html

he Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals announced on Thursday that Christina Eilman can sue seven Chicago police officers for releasing her into a violent neighborhood where she was raped and nearly killed, reports the Chicago Tribune.

The decision brings an end to a two-year qualified immunity interlocutory appeal.

...
The Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals reasoned that Eilman’s lawsuit actually asserted three theories for denying qualified immunity:

Eilman had a right to medical care while in custody.
Eilman needed to kept in custody longer to facilitate medical care.
Police gratuitously put Eilman in danger by releasing her where and when they did, and in a mental state that left her unable to protect herself.

...
Notably, the Seventh Circuit found that Chicago police created extra risk by moving Eilman to a part of the city they knew to be extremely dangerous and they did nothing to mitigate that risk, even though they were aware that Eilman was unstable. (The Seventh Circuit suggested five easy ways that the cops could have mitigated the risk, before concluding, “They might as well have released her into the lions’ den at the Brookfield Zoo.”)

Now if she had been a poor person from the neighborhood then only teh medical care issue would stand.

Sad and another reason for UHC

 

[Chris_Halkides]

Washington Park area in Chicago

"1. Englewood and Washington Park are both on the city's South Side and are well-known havens for drug dealing, prostitution, and violent crime. According to the Every Block Chicago website, which tracks crime statistics, Englewood led the city in total crimes for the month of July in 2010 with a whopping 1,397 between July 7 and August 7. According to a study published in the Chicago Sun Times in June of 2009, four Chicago neighborhoods – each located in parts of Englewood and Washington Park – are among the nation's 25 most dangerous neighborhoods." Link. See also here.

 

[WildCat]

Skimpy Clothes Cause Rape, Women Can't Walk Alone At Night, Poor People Are Dangerous and White People Should Avoid Black Neighbourhoods.

I'm very familiar with that area, even been in that police station. It has the Dan Ryan expressway on one side and a viaduct on the other, which is next to several notorious high-rise housing projects controlled by gangs. Or used to, they've since been torn down. The nearest El stop is 4 blocks away, not that she'd know where it is since she's from out of town.

She was an easy and obvious target in a neighborhood where the weak are preyed upon, and the police should have known better than to send her off there in her state.