Mayor Emanuel, Is The Chicago Police Dept. Professional? What Professional Police Departments Must Do

Professional police departments must do the following: First, no fictitious meritorious promotions. Make sure that promotions truly are merit based, not a ruse for cronyism, nepotism, and clout. There needs to be an independent standard and guideline to define meritorious. After this is achieved, all meritorious candidates should only be evaluated by competent people that have no connection whatsoever to the candidates. If this cannot be achieved, then make all promotions test based. The practice of promoting cronies have provided certain police departments with some of the laziest, most incompetent police officials imaginable. Second, end policing by the numbers game. The numbers game is not only childish, but it encourages laziness and the lowest, most unprofessional quality of police work. The numbers game, to be as brief as possible, is when officers, usually from tactical and specialized units, are held accountable and evaluated by quantity of arrests, not by quality and by other measurements. Third, stop allowing upper management and certain privileged people on police departments to be exempt from work. Everyone, from the lowest ranking officer to the highest ranking officer, needs to put in a full days work. Rank and position should not be an excuse for a free ride. Fourth, put the legions of healthy able bodied paper pushers on the streets. (Getting rid of the numbers game will help reduce the endless stream of meaningless numbers some police departments like to produce). Fifth, do not allow departments to become top heavy with management and administrative positions. The primary responsibility of a police department is to patrol and protect, not to be a sanctuary for layers of people in unnecessary administrative and do nothing supervisory positions. (An aside- there is nothing worse than a do nothing supervisor with too much time on their hands that like to abuse his or her power).