Huge public outcry a missing part of the Austin scandal

Web-posted: Wednesday, February 5, 1997

hen Chicago experienced something called the Summerdale police scandal -- cops moonlighting as burglars -- it was considered a civic outrage and was the talk of the city.

For weeks, the story dominated the front pages of four newspapers, the news shows, and barroom and back-yard conversations. Even with a long history of cop corruption, Chicagoans had trouble believing that policemen could be so greedy and heavy-handed as to behave like common thieves.

For more jaded Chicagoans, the shock wasn't that cops could be crooks. Everybody knew the department was corrupt. But the surprise was that some of them could be so crude in their methods when there were so many other traditional and accepted ways for them to supplement their incomes.

It was a time when the custom was to offer a cop a few dollars to beat a traffic ticket. The size of the bribe depended on the severity of the offense and the value of the car. The cop's feelings might be hurt if you didn't offer something. They hated having to ask.

It also was when just about every tavern in town made a weekly drop with the local district commander's bagman. And maybe a few dollars extra for the beat cops to overlook minor infractions.

Bars that ran hookers paid a premium. So did those that had a bookie on the premises or a card or a dice game in a back room or a basement. Policy wheel operators -- the black community's own lotteries -- were a source of South Side police income.

But in the public's mind, there was a clear line between traditional honest graft -- a fee for services rendered -- and cops stealing from honest citizens. It was embarrassing: breaking into appliance stores at night, hauling away the loot in squad cars, and using a professional burglar to case the joints and take care of other details.

So bushels of angry letters poured into newspapers. Civic leaders expressed dismay. And the machine politicians who ran City Hall were stunned and worried about their jobs.

The cries for reform were so loud that Mayor Richard J. Daley caved in and actually did it.

He fired his home-grown police superintendent and replaced him with a nationally respected outside criminologist -- Orlando Wilson -- to tear the police department apart and put it back together again.

That's what Wilson did, sweeping out the corrupt old police hacks who ran things, promoting bright younger guys who had been overlooked for lack of political clout, and introducing all sorts of modern management techniques.

It was the first -- and so far, the last -- major overhaul of the police department in the city's history.

And it happened because Chicagoans were angry and the politicians knew it.

Now, we have another police scandal. This time in the West Side's Austin District.

And in many ways, this is much worse than Summerdale or lesser police scandals.

Here we have cops extorting money from guys they thought were drug dealers. Turns out they were undercover federal agents.

But it goes beyond that. People who were arrested by these cops say they were framed -- drugs were planted on them. And the feds are looking into the very real possibility that this group of cops routinely extorted money from genuine drug dealers.

It has come out that one of the accused cops was a ranking leader of a West Side gang and is believed to have worked with another gang-leading drug boss in robbing rival drug dealers.

The fallout from this is going to be more than the cops standing trial.

Dozens of drug cases brought by these cops will be tossed out of court because you can't have accused crooked cops as your chief witnesses.

And before it is over, it could cost Chicago taxpayers millions upon millions of dollars to settle damage suits brought by people who say they were the victims of frameups and false arrests.

Before this mess ends, it will make the old Summerdale scandal seem like a shoplifting case compared to an armored truck heist.

Yet, the reaction of Chicagoans seems to be a collective yawn. There has been some angry response by community leaders and organizations in the Austin neighborhood. But the rest of the city got far more excited about Dennis Rodman's latest adventure.

Why the indifference?

Maybe it is racial. Austin is a black community. The accused cops are black. So whites might be thinking that it is a case of blacks mistreating other blacks, so that's their problem.

Also, the Summerdale scandal came at the tail end of the calm Ike Era, when public corruption of any kind was stunning news. It was a more naive era, when the career of a movie star or star athlete who had a child out of wedlock might be shattered.

But now, it might be beyond the indignation level of most people to get worked up about corrupt cops when they're getting daily revelations about the White House crowd twisting the arms of fat cats for campaign contributions. Or arguing about whether a former Heisman Trophy winner really slaughtered his wife.

Maybe we've become shockproof and immune to indignation.

If so, President Clinton could have talked about it in his State of the Union speech.

Sad state.

© 1996 Chicago Tribune