Deanimator
Member
I ONLY go because my mother lives there. She finally moved to one of the suburbs. I wish she'd moved to Indiana, but at least she's not in Chicago anymore. When she dies, my trips to Chicago terminate after the funeral.
I don't think all cops are bad. The cops in the town where I live seem to be ok. The cops where I used to live here in Ohio were great. But coming from Chicago colors all of my interactions with the police. If I consider the respective harms that could come to me from trusting or not trusting any policeman I don't personally know, it's obvious that suspicion is the wiser policy.
In my personal experience, police departments are like basic training companies in the Army. You can instantly tell a good one from a bad one. In the former, the trainees are always worked hard to make them good soldiers from the start. They're closely supervised and held to a higher standard. In the latter, you find them wandering all over post instead of in the barracks in reinforcement training. When there's no formal training on the schedule, they're left to their own devices. Likewise, in a good police department, professionalism isn't optional. They HAVE to know the law, or at least ask for guidance. They're protectors of the public, not parasites. They enforce AND obey the law. They uphold the system; they don't game it. Those are the values I saw in the Berea, Ohio PD. Those are the values so utterly lacking in the Chicago PD.
