No more Ralph Metcalfs

I remember the Austin Tavern shakedowns well because I'd wander over to Doc Gandolf's General Store at Lake and Austin to preach old-leftism to the New Left Rising Up Angry crowd there. The Austin District commander was a guy with a long Greek name I can't remember now but I recall the Store's Doc Pelligrini telling me about getting threatened by him.

Here's Time magazine from 1972 talking about Congressman Ralph Metcalf's leadership responding to those scandals,

The police are under fire on still another front. A coalition of mostly black grass-roots organizations, led by Democratic Congressman Ralph Metcalfe, has been waging an all-out campaign to end what it considers excessive police brutality. Their complaints were reinforced by a report issued by the Chicago Law Enforcement Study Group that showed Chicago police were involved in fatal shootings at a rate that is three times higher than in New York, Los Angeles and Detroit. Also, during a day-long hearing, a dozen witnesses, eleven blacks and one white, testified. Some of them told of their traumatic experiences; one man testified that he lost an eye after being hit by a police baton. The officer had been exonerated by the police internal affairs department.

Metcalfe and his followers have demanded that Conlisk disband the elite police task force unit, which they blame for much of the police brutality in black and Latin American neighborhoods. The group also called for an increase in the number of blacks in policy making positions, the recruitment of more blacks and the across-the-board upgrading of blacks already on the force. To increase citizen control over police activities, the group has demanded that citizens' review boards be created for each of the city's 21 police districts.

It's utter silence from Illinois's elected progressives on today's scandal. No all out campaigns organized. Just Democrats and progressives dismissing violence as isolated abuse. Random series that don't say much to them.

Maybe that's what happens when a State gets so blue progressive leaders disown their responsibility. Unlike climate change and global warming, police abuse and police cover ups just some of those random things in Chicago's nature we must accept.