by Jeff McMahon
The people of Chicago recognize the fallibility of their police in a way that makes them less of an alien force in the city, less a force, really, than a gang of fellow mugs and
molls who don't so much represent the law as have some practical fiduciary responsibility to it. So when a Chicago cop hanging out, on duty, at the Dubliner Pub on Rush
Street at 3 a.m stares at a girl, watches the hem of her black skirt rise and fall against her white thigh with each delicate breath she takes, no one who notices seems to react
with surprise or alarm. Nothing in this scene is countersymbolic. Not in Chicago. No one here expects the cop to stop being a fella when he dons his blues. And when in the
blaze of daylight a sidewalk pedestrian shouts at a cop -- "Whaddaya on vacation?" -- because the cop failed to ticket a drunk who stumbled into traffic -- "Whadda we
payin ya faw?" -- the pedestrian invokes a long Chicago tradition of questioning your local police. Out loud. It is a tradition reinforced by headlines like that recent one --
Cop Admits Jewel Heists -- a tradition sprung from dark urban realities to vest in the bright rights of citizenship, a tradition most violently consummated, perhaps, in the
Haymarket bombing of 1886. The farce of a trial that hung those Haymarket anarchists only reinforced the impression that made the Chicago police bombable in the first
place: that the cops are a gang not necessarily aligned with justice. As such they are fitting targets, if not for bombs then certainly for words.
There's a quote in Algren: "In Vachel Lindsay's day, in Carl Sandburg's day, in the silver-colored yesterday, in Darrow's and Masters' and Edna Millay's day, writers and
working stiffs alike told policemen where to go."
They still do, Nelson. In the Chicago you forsook they do.
The cops on the street are a gang not necessarily more honest or organized or altruistic than any other gang on the street. It's just they have a job to do. And since you pay
them you can call them on that. And therein lies the honesty. 'Tis a more honest system that does not expect cops to be icons of justice, animate statues with capes and
tights and x-ray vision somehow simultaneously blindfolded for justice. There is something markedly less fascistic, something liberating, in letting the cops be human.
It is not so everywhere. In California, the Golden (Police) State, if you look sideways at a police officer (that's what you have to call them there -- it's probably a law), they'll
write you up for it, for in that golden police state everything is a misdemeanor, including whatever you're thinking right now, everything, that is, that isn't already a felony, and
they have devised far uglier punishments than prison and death; they have pioneered the spiraling fine and the impoundment of car registration -- oh horror! -- the golden
people dread nothing more than the embarrassment of public transportation, so they line up at the sight of a badge like sheep to be shaved. Plus, in the golden police state
the golden police officers are openly for the chosen people. No doubt about it. If you're white and fat with gold they're your golden army.
In Chicago the cops have dirt under their nails and nothing is quite so clear: they just might side with the working stiff over the stiff suit. In this city of smoke and grit you know
you can't fully trust the cops, so you don't make that mistake. You know that if you need their help, they might show up, and so you're grateful when they do. You know you
can tell them where to go, and so you do. You know that if you kill one, they'll come after you like a blue army and kill you back; if they drag it out with a trial it's just to make
a spectacle of you first. You know the cop with the belly hanging over his belt failed his physical the last eight years, but maybe he's got rank in the union, or maybe he
married a captain's sister or did a "favor" for a commissioner or alderman. You just have to hope he's not the one who shows up to chase your robber. And that's okay. It's all
okay. Because when we all stop chasing the thieving illusion of "justice in the law" we find a better system anyway, a system that works just as well for robbers as for cops, a
system as crystal in the crack house as it is the precinct house -- "you respect me, I respect you, else we got trouble." And in that system, nobody's naive.
|
|
|
