YOUR AD HERE — REACH DISCERNING READERS OF SERIOUS JOURNALISM
Rates upon inquiry. Clowns extra.
COURTS✒ EDITORIALABSURDITY:
Chicago police union takes discipline fight to state Supreme Court
Filed 54m ago · Via Courthouse News · The Buffoon Desk
THIS STORY IS SCORED
Robobozo
Kevin MacLeod · incompetech.com · CC BY 4.0
Photo: Baker, Cornelia, 1855- · No restrictions · via Wikimedia Commons
The Fraternal Order of Police asked the Illinois Supreme Court to let a private arbitrator, rather than the public Chicago Police Board, decide serious misconduct cases, citing a 1984 labor law and an arbitrator's ruling in the union's favor. Lower courts partly agreed but said arbitration for suspensions of a year or more, or termination, must stay open to the public.
The city's attorney argued sixty years of public police board hearings and a federal consent decree established transparency as policy, especially given community distrust of the department. The union's attorney countered that a consent decree is a settlement, not law, and cannot bind the whole state. The seven-justice panel took the case under advisement without a timeline for a ruling.
The full dispatch is available from the source below.
✒ FROM THE EDITORIAL DESK
A union wants discipline decided by an arbitrator it helps pick, and calls that a labor dispute like any other. Firing someone for excessive force is not the same as arguing over vacation days, and pretending otherwise is the whole point of the argument. The city's case rests on sixty years of doing it in the open, which is a pretty good argument until you remember courts don't grade on tradition alone.
