CHICAGO — I was searching through a box of memories Thursday when I spotted a picture of my big head — I had a goatee, a bad hair cut and thin glasses — that a newspaper designer had crammed in a tiny box under a column headlined, “City police test is broken, so fix it.”
Back on Jan. 15, 2003, I was pulling double duty as the Daily Southtown’s City Hall reporter and Page 2 columnist for the Sun-Times' free tabloid “Red Streak.”
“Word in some police district locker rooms is some cops who come from a long line of lieutenants — we’ll call them white cops — form study groups. … There are even rumors that at these study sessions some (white) cops score secret preview copies of promotion exams, helping them get higher test scores,” I wrote.
Some things never change.
I still have a giant head, for instance, and cops are still (allegedly) cheating on the Police Department’s lieutenants exam.
Still, 13 years later we are living in a different Chicago
“Red Streak” is long gone.
My goatee has morphed into a full beard.
And white cops can’t claim to be the only ones with enough clout to get accused of cheating on Police Department promotional exams.
These days, Deputy Supt. Eugene Williams, who is African American, has been accused of using his position as a test “subject matter expert” to give certain African American sergeants confidential information that gave them an unfair advantage on the test — and do well enough to get immediately promoted to lieutenant.
Unlike the rumored test cheating by white cops in the past, city Inspector General Joe Ferguson is investigating the claims made by a Police Department employee who signed his name to an official complaint, sources told DNAinfo.com.
In 2003, former West Side Ald. Isaac Carothers (who went to federal prison on corruption charges) demanded changes to the Police Department’s promotional process because only three African American sergeants were among the 24 lieutenant promotions that year.
Carothers' goal was to bring more diversity to the Police Department command staff.
I agreed with him, arguing in print that the police force needs “leadership as diverse as the city it serves.”
But the diverse group of police bosses that Chicago needs should be college-educated with exceptionally clean service records who pass a no-nonsense promotion exam and undergo extensive training — a promotion “training college” of sorts — that prepares ambitious officers and sergeants for their future long before they become lieutenants and commanders.
You know, the kind of common sense changes that treat all police officers equally and provide them opportunities for advancement regardless of the color of their skin in hopes that the best and brightest cops rise through the ranks based on their exceptional intelligence, work ethic and judgment.
Instead, any progress made in increasing diversity in the ranks of the police command staff and street-level supervisors continues to depend on a gamed promotion system allowed to exist thanks to the a code of silence within the department that protects cheaters from punishment.
For instance, the allegations levied against Williams in an official misconduct complaint in November 2014 —months before the lieutenant’s exam — were never investigated by Internal Affairs Division.
It wasn’t until a whistleblower stood up that the city’s watchdog launched the ongoing investigation that targets Williams and recently promoted lieutenants accused of cheating, including Lt. Maryet Hall, the wife of former First Deputy Al Wysinger, who was the department’s No. 2 cop until he retired last year, and police Supt. Eddie Johnson’s fiancée, Lt. Nakia Fenner.
So far, Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the cheating allegations part of a "game" that involved "innuendo and besmirching people's character” in an apparent attempt to separate ties to Johnson, the mayor’s handpicked police boss, from the controversy brought by the misconduct charges.
But the allegations of cheating on the lieutenants exam aren’t part of any game.
Frankly, saying so, suggests a high level of political paranoia.
What was true 13 years ago is still true today: A lack of integrity in police promotions is part of the same decades-old culture of corruption covered up by a code of silence that eroded trust in the Police Department … and the mayor who runs it.
The city police test is broken, Mr. Mayor, so fix it.
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