Responding to Police propaganda (Copaganda) about the proposed Illinois Police Reform Bill (HB 0163 Amendment 2)
The Illinois Sheriffs Association (ISA) placed a frantic alert that a bill in the Illinois legislature would make “it a crime to be a law enforcement officer in Illinois.” This statement from ISA president Jim Kaitschuk:
Friends-
Late on January 5th, the Illinois General Assembly filed a 611 page bill that eliminates law enforcement as we know it from every community in the State. The Illinois G.A. has until noon on January 13th to pass legislation before the next duly elected General Assembly takes office. Senate Amendment number two to House Bill 163 radically changes law enforcement, victim services, criminal proceedings and the protections of every law enforcement officer in the State, regardless of employment as a peace officer, deputy, trooper, university police officer, corrections officer, court security officer or other law enforcement.
Through 611 pages, HB 163 eliminates all protections from law enforcement officers. It eliminates officer’s ability to pursue their job without civil liability, it eliminates the ability of officers to pursue collective bargaining agreements, it invalidates the constitutionally protected due process of officers and it substantially increases the costs for employers of law enforcement officers. This list is probably not comprehensive, but it certainly covers the bulk. Specifically, HB 163 does the following:
-Requires In custody death reporting to AG
-Requires statewide use of force policy
-Eliminates prison gerrymandering
-Eliminates Qualified Immunity for police officers, making them civilly liable to siren chasing trial lawyers
-Eliminates Officer’s rights to Collectively Bargain, creating a “special class” of public employee who does not have these rights in Illinois
-Eliminates impartial arbitration over burdensome residency requirements
-Allows for unrestricted and ungoverned disciplinary policies of law enforcement officers
-Prohibits departments from taking advantage of cost saving federal surplus programs or allowing the purchase of certain “militaristic” equipment
-Allows officers to be punished or fired based on anonymous and unsubstantiated or unverifiable complaints-no sworn affidavits
-Creates a co-responder model for social workers with corresponding grant funding from ICJIA
-Mandates that those unsubstantiated and unverified complaints be kept to be used against officers forever, with no destruction and no limits on how they can be utilized to inflict harm on officers
-Substantially increases both initial and ongoing education requirements with no money to pay for the increased costs and no assurances that the courses will even be offered
-Mandates the use of body cameras by all departments for every officer with no money to pay for the cost of those cameras and 20 cut in LGDF funding if you don’t
-Significantly increases the training requirements for those going through the academy and those that are already certified-provides NO money to do this
-Defunds any department that does not comply 100% with the draconian requirements of the legislation
-Eliminates funding for law enforcement agencies
-Requires reporting to National use of force registry
-No more suspending driver’s license for traffic violations
-COMPLETE ban on chokeholds and anything above the shoulders regardless of threat of serious bodily injury or death
-Eliminates Cash Bail
-Enacts multiple benefits for felons-including access to victims compensation
-Prohibits use of force in almost all situations, and makes officers criminally liable for virtually any use of force
-Removes prohibitions against obstructing police officers wrong
-Requires duty to intervene
-Eliminates felony murder
-Institutes 3 phone call bill
-Changes parameters for getting a warrant and requires a plan for certain situations
-No custodial arrests for Category b or c offenses-citation only
-Changes standard for conditions that have to be met to not allow for pretrial release
-Eliminates charges for habitual criminals
-Charges officers with Official Misconduct, a class 3 felony, for banal and incidental issues
-Last, but not least…….EFFECTIVE IMMEDIATELY
The fight over this bill is a fight to save law enforcement. If we lose this fight, it might as well be a crime to be a law enforcement officer in Illinois…
Illinois Sheriffs’ Association President Jim Kaitschuk
Holy moly! This is serious! According to the police, we may as well just give guns and badges to criminals. By god! What will happen to society without the institution that can kill you at any point with next to no repercussions? The Thin Blue Line is actually the sky itself, and it’s falling people!
Actually, no.
In reality, the bill addresses many of the pressing concerns Black Liberation activists have been making for years, especially since this past summer. It removes many forms of immunity that historically have been used to insulate police from any outside accountability.
Let’s go over, piece by piece, ISA President Kaitschuk’s statement:
“the Illinois General Assembly filed a 611 page bill that eliminates law enforcement as we know it from every community in the State.”
A 611 page bill! Oh, that’s bad! You know it’s bad because he repeats it several times; everyone knows if laws are too long they can’t be good. This guy reminds me of Herman Cain who said during his failed 2012 presidential run that he would veto any bill that came to his desk if it was longer than 3 pages. And, while the bill is actually that long, most of it is minor edits to already existing laws. When lawmakers do that, they include the existing law so everyone knows exactly what it is referring too.
Besides the bill being too long, he listed over 30 things that should shock the conscious of every law-abiding citizen. Oh man, what are the first horrible things this bill does?
-Requires In custody death reporting to the Attorney General’s
What? We’re not already doing this? Apparently, letting the chief law enforcement official know that someone died in your custody is a real drag. The bill actually goes a bit further than this: it requires the emergency contact of the deceased individual be contacted & informed of the death, and includes a fine of $500 to anyone who omits pertinent information to a complete investigation. We wouldn’t want that, would we?
-Requires statewide use of force policy
Basically it just says that state has till 2022 to adopt a standard policy around use of force so there is a clear idea of what is expected, though this policy is not expounded on in the bill and will be determined at a later date. I’m not sure why this is a problem.
-Eliminates prison gerrymandering
This is incredibly important. Currently, inmates in detention facilities are counted for representation purposes in the districts the facilities are located in. Since most of these are more rural areas of the state, it boosts the districts representation in the state and federal legislatures. So, we end up with a group of people who can’t vote being used to boost representation for another group. This is just like the 3/5ths compromise in the U.S. Constitution where slaves were counted as 3/5ths of a person for representation in the states they resided in, increasing the representation of white slave owners. The bill would require that inmates be counted for representation at their last known residence (unless they are from out-of-state in which case they’d be counted in the facility’s district). This way representation is maintained where inmates originated so those districts get the resources they actually need to prevent crime in the first place.
-Eliminates Qualified Immunity for police officers
Yea, we wouldn’t want this. Unlike doctors, nurses, CPAs, brokers, lawyers, and many other professions, it’s ridiculous to assume that police that knowingly break the law through intent or negligence should be liable for their actions. We wouldn’t want police to have to take personal responsibility for their actions, right? If you want learn more about qualified immunity, check out this site.
-Eliminates Officer’s rights to Collectively Bargain, creating a “special class” of public employee who does not have these rights in Illinois
The bill doesn’t do this at all. It merely reduces what issues police can collectively bargain for to: policy matters directly affecting wages, hours and terms and conditions of employment as well as the impact thereon upon request by employee representatives. You know, the exact same thing every other union gets to bargain over. Kaitschuk is angry because it would prevent police unions from placing clauses in their contracts that allow police to keep disciplinary records private, make it extremely difficult to fire police for bad behavior, make the city keep a specific amount of police on salary regardless of need, and a whole host of other policies that allow police to be the one group that can murder and terrorize people without repercussions.
-Allows for unrestricted and ungoverned disciplinary policies of law enforcement officers
Unrestricted & ungoverned? Apparently anarchists are going to be in charge of discipline.1 Let’s see what actions might be disciplined… 1) misrepresenting facts in a report regarding an officer’s conduct; 2) withholds knowledge of other officer’s misconduct; 3) not follow body-cam laws; 4) commit any act with intent to avoid culpability or liability for themselves or another officer. Obviously, we wouldn’t want officers to tell the truth or report those few bad apples out there. It’s the end of policing as we know it!
-Prohibits departments from taking advantage of cost saving federal surplus programs or allowing the purchase of certain “militaristic” equipment
The bill states no bayonets, grenade launchers, tracked armored vehicles, weaponized aircraft, vessel or vehicles, fully automatic weapons, silencers, military grade drones, & chemical weapons. Oh no. What will we do if our police don’t have bayonets, fully automatic weapons and weaponized drones? Next, this dude’s going to say we need dragons to fight crime.
-Allows officers to be punished or fired based on anonymous and unsubstantiated or unverifiable complaints-no sworn affidavits
That hardly seems fair. And, it certainly wouldn’t be if that was actually what the bill said. The bill actually just states the initial complaint can be anonymous and encourages police departments to have a policy in place for taking anonymous complaints. In fact, anonymous complaints aren’t even required to be submitted to outside agencies for review. It’s up to the departments whether they think more investigation is needed. And, the investigation process allows for the subpoena of witnesses.
-Creates a co-responder model for social workers with corresponding grant funding from ICJIA
Oh no, we wouldn’t want more social workers. Whatever will we do? This goes back to union contracts; many police union contracts actually state there are a whole range of incidents cities are required to only use police for, effectively preventing other non-police methods from even being attempted.
-Mandates that those unsubstantiated and unverified complaints be kept to be used against officers forever, with no destruction and no limits on how they can be utilized to inflict harm on officers.
Keeping records is dumb guys. BURN IT ALL DOWN!
-Defunds any department that does not comply 100% with the draconian requirements of the legislation.
Basically, if your department refuses to (checks notes) follow the law & do their job, there’s a punishment. Who would have thought?
-Requires reporting to National use of force registry
No one can know how often we abuse our power guys. That’s certainly not fair.
-No more suspending driver’s license for traffic violations
Oh dear. Anarchy driving. Except the bill specifically says licenses won’t be suspended simply because one hasn’t been able to pay the fines. Because, its hard for people without cars to work & make money.
-COMPLETE ban on chokeholds and anything above the shoulders regardless of threat of serious bodily injury or death
There’s already a current ban on chokeholds in Illinois for non-life threatening instances. Many police departments don’t even train their officers in chokeholds anymore.
-Eliminates Cash Bail
I’ll talk more about this in another article, but this bill includes the Pre-trial Fairness Act which would eliminate ransoming people their freedom.
-Enacts multiple benefits for felons-including access to victims compensation
The bill actually simply states that if a person is the victim of a crime and that person is a felon from a previous unrelated act, that person would still qualify for restitution for the crime they were a victim of.
-Prohibits use of force in almost all situations, and makes officers criminally liable for virtually any use of force.
Let’s fact-check this. The bill specifically says you can’t use force: to punish or retaliate someone (no torturing guys), you can’t fire non-lethal projectiles at someones head or genitals, and you can’t fire projectiles indiscriminately into a crowd. What’s the point of being an officer if you can’t brutalize people indiscriminately?
-Removes prohibitions against obstructing police officers
Wait! We can resist the police now? No. The bill actually says the police can’t just arrest you for resisting arrest unless they are arresting you for another offense. Why wouldn’t we want the police to be able to arrest us for literally nothing?
-Requires duty to intervene
That’s terrible. Why would we want to the allegedly good cops to stop the bad cops from violating people’s rights?
-Eliminates felony murder
I’m not sure where they found this, because nothing in the bill states this whatsoever. PANTS ON FIRE!
-Institutes 3 phone call bill
All this does is change the language for new inmates from a “reasonable amount of calls” to “3 calls” so they can call their attorney or loved ones upon arrest. That’s bad, I guess.
-Changes parameters for getting a warrant and requires a plan for certain situations
Basically, the bill says that before you break down someone’s house over an alleged gram of drugs that you: make sure it’s the right place, and you’re taking into account any bystanders that must be present. We wouldn’t want officers being prepared.
-Eliminates charges for habitual criminals
Again, this is no where in the bill.
-Charges officers with Official Misconduct, a class 3 felony, for banal and incidental issues
Apparently, lying about bad behavior and covering up gross abuses of police misconduct are banal & incidental issues. We certainly wouldn’t want to punish people for their actions. That’s crazy people.
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It’s responses like this that truly convince me that Reform is impossible for policing. Despite EVERYTHING we’ve been through in just the last year, the wide agreement that major changes need to be made,2 the lowest hanging fruit is seen by law enforcement as an existential threat to their power. The police unions will lie and mischaracterize any attempts at reform because they believe they are above the law & above accountability.
This bill is an important first step in the right direction for addressing many of the systemic issues that we face around policing & state violence. Anyone who participated in the uprisings this past summer, anyone who said the words Black Lives Matter for the first time last year, should support this bill as an important first step. It specifically addresses one of the most important things protecting unlimited & unchecked police authority: the power of police unions to maintain their hegemony of state violence. Police unions are well-organized and extremely effective at achieving their goals. Anyone who advocates defunding the police must outmaneuver the police unions grip on power. It actually treats the police as workers, without allowing them unaccountable power that no other worker has.
Don’t believe the scare tactics & fake news of the ISA.
This article was originally published on Strangecornersofthought.com.
