NEW INC. MAGAZINE COLUMN FROM HOWARD TULLMAN

 

Follow These Four Rules For Returning to the Office

There's a lot of angst out there about who has to come back, and when. The need to return isn't necessarily fair to everyone, but it does need to be communicated honestly and clearly. 

BY HOWARD TULLMAN, GENERAL MANAGING PARTNER, G2T3V AND CHICAGO HIGH TECH INVESTORS@TULLMAN

As if we didn't have enough angst and division in this country, the newest emerging conflict (soon to dwarf even the disputes with the moronic anti-vaxxers) is between the WFHomers and their employers, the RTOers, who are intent upon and insisting on increasing the amount of time staffers need to spend in the office each week. While plenty of companies are pushing off the start dates for the grand return -- some of the main tech companies are already targeting early next year -- it's clear that there's a widening employee expectation gap, which is likely to expand even further as the Delta variant and its progeny spread. And the most disappointed team members aren't necessarily who you'd expect. It's the folks stuck in the middle who have the blues.

What's especially concerning about the arguments on the right way to return is how quickly this debate is morphing into an economic class and caste struggle.  It's already become challenging for even the best-intentioned management teams to explain, try to empathetically justify and, ultimately, to honestly break the sad news to certain important groups of their employees that life still isn't fair, and that one size and one solution still doesn't fit everyone. Telling people things they don't want to hear is never easy. Years from now, when we all look back on this time and the pandemic in its entirety, one of the most discouraging realizations will be how disproportionately and unfairly COVID-19's burdens were borne by people in different economic strata.

Executives across just about every industry will need to quickly figure out how to explain to their people, the media and the world that many of their lower-paid workers need to be on site even though the company isn't going to require others with different job responsibilities and requirements to do likewise. Worse yet, they're going to have to tell a bunch of mid-level workers who clearly thought otherwise -- and believed that they had a lot more flexibility and control over their lives than the folks on the factory floor -- that they too are expected to show up. This latter news is likely to be the rudest of all the awakenings, because it's as emotionally bound up in matters of perceived status as it is with regard to commuting costs, productivity and other domestic issues.

Some of the companies that have tried to make the new requirements applicable across the board have found that - unlike the lower-level blue collar and no collar folks who pretty much knew that they were screwed since the pandemic started - the folks in the middle are already raising the biggest stink and threatening to go elsewhere, which is really the last thing these firms can afford at the moment.

Unfortunately, a lot of these "knowledge" and creative workers believe, rightly or wrongly, that they have many other alternatives rather than forlornly marching back to their cubicles. We'll know soon enough whether their confidence is well-warranted or sadly misplaced. My own guess is that a lot of these folks will find that the type of positions and salaries they're looking to replicate aren't exactly abundant in the newly streamlined economy. And the ones wrapped up in the idea of simply starting their own businesses are even more likely to end up unhappy.

Another key part of the problem is that many of the senior people making these decisions have ridden out the crisis with minimal disruption, smoothed and softened by a robust stock market, so they don't necessarily understand or appreciate just how radically millions of lives and circumstances have been changed, uprooted and transformed.  Nor do they get just how long and painful the return to whatever the new normal is likely to be for families concerned with continuing health and housing issues, their kids' education, rearranging and resuming child and pet care, and supplementing lost spousal incomes.

Management has neither time nor the option to see what competitors are doing or how the variants are progressing when the day-to-day demands of the workplace and the requirements of the reinvigorated economy require clear and consistent answers and directions for their people. Now's the time to bring people back to reality as well as the office, because, if you aren't structuring and leading the "back to work" conversations, you can bet that the vacuum will be promptly filled with commentary, complaints and criticisms that aren't likely to be helpful in any way.

While there aren't any perfect answers, here are four important ideas to keep in mind as you craft a policy and, more importantly, as you try to honestly communicate it to all the members of your team.

(1)  Explain what applies to everyone.

These conversations should start by making clear that the overall policies of the company are generally applicable to everyone (as they always have been) and that everyone is expected to comply. There will be exceptions based on a variety of reasons and criteria as there also have always been. But no group of employees is being specially treated or afforded privileges that don't have a clear business-related purpose and value to the firm.

 (2) Note that there have always been variable shifts, seasons and schedules.

In many respects, once we return to the "new" normal, the way that the business will operate won't be materially changed for most of the employees, and it's important to make this clear. If the company's basic policy is going to be "all hands on deck," which it always was pre-pandemic, then there's not really much left to discuss. It's just getting back to business.

(3) Make sure your distinctions are meaningful and matter.

You can be sure that everyone in the firm will know exactly who is being asked to do what. That means it's very important that you have a precise and ready rationale for each group of employees who are treated differently in some respect. Having your senior team lead by example and make it their business to be on site and visible will be very important.

 (4) Focus on what you can fix.

It's essential to show all the team members that the company is being proactive and helpful in addressing and providing assistance and solutions for the various recurring issues that many will be dealing with. Flexible hours including early departure times, pet friendly offices, in-office Covid testing, and vaccinations are some of the common remedies. But be ready to improvise.

AUG 17, 2021

HOW SAD...

 

THE HEAD CLOWN

 

The media's weird obsession with Biden Delaware trips - Still playing gotcha Eric Boehlert Blog

 We’re really still doing this?

Five months after White House reporters began raising the specter that there was something unusual or hypocritical about President Joe Biden traveling to his home in nearby Delaware, press secretary Jen Psaki is still fielding the misguided gotcha questions.

The latest came on Wednesday when CBS News’ Ed O’Keefe pressed her about why Biden’s upcoming itinerary showed him traveling from Wilmington, to Camp David, then to Wilmington.

O’KEEFE: This whole going back to Wilmington then to camp David then back to Wilmington. Is there something to that?

PSAKI: Certainly not. It’s just his travel logistic plans.

O’KEEFE: There’s no reason to go Wilmington then go to Camp David instead? Why not just stay in Wilmington?

PSAKI: He likes Camp David.

This weird line of questioning has been a regular theme at White House press briefings all year, dating back to February.

“The moment was telling because in an era devoid of bleach injection recommendations and open warfare on the press, reporters are becoming increasingly desperate for ways to make their jobs interesting,” Mediaite’s Tommy Christopher noted last winter following one of the first Delaware media inquiries. The fact that Psaki still gets peppered with these questions in August defies common sense.

The pointless media demand carries with it an unmistakable scent of Both Sides baggage. Because Trump abused his power in office by visiting a Trump Organization property on 428 days of his presidency, or one visit every 3.4 days, the press seems to feel the need to needle the Biden White House about the president’s short, innocuous trips to Delaware.

This is the Beltway press returning to normalcy after four years of deliberate chaos. And normalcy for the D.C. media means poking Democrats with stories about optics and how something the president has done doesn't look right, as determined by journalists. It’s the press in search of drama.

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“I loved covering Trump,” one prominent, albeit anonymous, White House reporter recently confided. “It was a great and fascinating story. It wasn’t just about him; it was about his movement and the institutions and America. The story was always so dramatic and had these larger than life characters. The stakes often felt very high. I like covering Biden, too, but it just doesn’t feel as dramatic.”

As a recent rule of history, there is no brazen corruption or bouts of government lawbreaking when Democratic presidents serve in office, so the press has to lean into optics in order to create storylines. That’s why the White House press corps doggedly keeps trying to turn Biden’s Delaware trips into a thing.

Here’s a look at the baffling timeline.

The Associated Press first hatched the Biden/Delaware travel narrative, just weeks into his presidency when on February 4, it published, “Biden to Head to Delaware as CDC Recommends Avoiding Travel.” FoxNews.com immediately followed that up with a sharper attack, “Biden Flying to Delaware Despite CDC Warnings to Avoid Travel.” In the Fox telling — note how “despite” was added to the headline — Biden was portrayed as flaunting pandemic guidelines.

The following day, the AP’s Zeke Miller pressed Psaki about the Delaware visit in light of the CDC guidelines. “Why is the president going to Delaware this weekend?” he demanded. “Is there an exception to that [CDC] policy?”

The obvious fault in the media pursuit was that the CDC in February was urging Americans — most of whom were unvaccinated at that time — not to travel because the CDC wanted people to avoid crowded airports and stuffed airplanes, which was not something Biden had to encounter as the President of the United States. The idea that the fully vaccinated leader of the free world could not safely travel one year into a pandemic made no sense. Biden’s trips in no way ran counter to CDC guidelines. It was a complete non-issue.

End of story, right? No way.

Four weeks later on March 4, during a White House briefing, Psaki was again forced to defend a Biden trip to Delaware and whether the president should be doing “more to set an example about personal travel during a pandemic.” Psaki patiently explained, “The president lives in Wilmington. It's his home.” She continued, "That's where he's lived for many, many years. And as you know, as any president of the United States does, he takes a private airplane called Air Force One, to travel there. That is, of course, unique from most Americans.”

Nine days later on March 13, the Associated Press circled back to raise the Delaware non-issue. “The White House defends those visits at a time when the administration is urging the public to avoid unnecessary travel,” the AP tweeted.

More? On April 26, a CNN reporter asked if special rules applied to Biden for a planned international trip at a time when most Americans were discouraged from traveling because of the pandemic. Psaki’s polite, short answer? Yes, different rules do apply for the President of the United States while he makes diplomatic trips overseas.

Fast forward to last week when McClatchy reporter Francesca Chambers again brought up the issue of Biden’s unremarkable weekend trips to Delaware:

CHAMBERS: And while the President may not be taking a vacation, he is in Delaware, and it’s a place that he goes often on the weekends. Why is it important for the President to visit his Delaware residence so frequently?

PSAKI: Because it’s his home. You like going home, right? So, does the President. He’s human too.

Then on August 11 came CBS’s O’Keefe’s pressing query about Biden’s Wilmington-to-Camp David travel plans.

Biden has eagerly embraced a no-drama approach to White House leadership. The press ought to stop trying to invent commotions.

Living with anxiety and holding strong

 

Living with anxiety and holding strong

By S.E. CUPP

NEW YORK DAILY NEWS |

AUG 10, 2021 AT 3:00 PM

 

Never, in 25 years of writing, has a blank page felt so intimidating.

To say I struggled to find something to write about this week is an understatement — not because there isn’t an abundance of news and important stories worth covering — but because I haven’t been able to read or watch any of them without spiraling into an uncontrollable sense of panic and fear.

 

For the past week I’ve been stuck in a deep black hole of anxiety, a kind I’ve never felt before. It’s been exhausting.

Before I continue, let me say at the outset that I am getting treatment. I’m taking steps to limit my exposure to triggers. I have not yet asked my employers for time off, but I very well may.

I’ve always been a worrier — the kind Woody Allen movies and Larry David sitcoms affectionately portray as “neurotic,” or as go-getters might spin as “Type A.”

Worrying about what could go wrong has been a part-time side hustle for most of my life. I chalked it up to moving often as a kid, and having to constantly prepare for unknowns.

 

Later, exacerbated by 9/11 and compounded exponentially when becoming a parent, worrying became the full-time gig. I constantly caught myself envisioning the worst possible scenario, even scenarios that were not just unlikely to happen to me, but nearly impossible. I told myself this was a normal part of responsible adulthood, and that things like clocking the nearest exits in a restaurant were just “being prepared.”

I also started obsessively transferring the pain of others onto myself. It wasn’t hard to find subject matter — I covered things like war, genocide, oppression. It wasn’t long before every child victim of the Syrian war was my child. Every mother fleeing Myanmar was me. Every family separated at the border was mine.

 

That can be useful — I’m not embarrassed or ashamed of empathy. But at times it could be debilitating. I leaned on friends who also worked in those difficult spaces, and attempted to compartmentalize.

 

The increasing divisiveness of American politics was also disorienting and traumatic. Once friends were now political foes; the things I thought we all cared about were no longer important to many; things like facts and truth and science were perverted purely as an exercise in manipulation and political gain; institutions have been and continue to be attacked and eroded by the very people charged with protecting them.

 

Then, in the midst of a deadly pandemic, worrying about things we once took for granted — going outside, going back to school, traveling — now had a proper purpose. Indulging my anxieties during Covid felt good and appropriate. Worrying about my job, my kid, my parents, my town, my community, my country all felt totally deserved. I leaned in.

But suddenly, the anxiety I nurtured and cultivated over the years became an absolute monster during this perfect storm — pandemic, politics, problems.

 

Now, every ambulance I passed was going to my house. Every call was going to be bad news. Every step, I was convinced, was going to be my last.

In the past week, simple things have become impossible. Making a decision, from what to buy at the grocery store to which words to use in a conversation, is agonizingly difficult. Racing thoughts make sleep impossible. A video of a boy on a ventilator sparked a panic attack while running errands. I am simultaneously overwhelmed with emotion and completely disassociated from my body.

 

While I knew instinctively to limit my news and social media intake, it’s my job to pay attention. So as I prepared to write this morning, the headlines were assaulting:

“COVID-19 cases among kids keep rising.”

“Wildfires ravage California and Greece.”

“Cuomo report triggering emotions for other sexual harassment victims.”

“Former Bronx charter school music teacher sexually abused students as young as 12.”

“Man on meth and Xanax crashes child’s birthday party.”Top of Form

 

 

Bottom of Form

Asking anyone to function amidst a steady diet of this kind of news is a heavy lift. Today, I could barely manage to click on the links.

 

While opinion comes easy to me, I couldn’t make sense of anything I saw. They were jumbled words on a page, vaguely familiar but disassembled.

 

Oddly, the only thing I can seem to think clearly about is my anxiety. Somehow I can explain in excruciating detail the contours of my panic, but I can’t string together a cohesive thought about the stories I’ve been covering my entire career.

 

So, as I go about getting help to get back to my old self, or perhaps discovering a new and improved one, I hope you’ll bear with me. Apologies if I don’t tweet much or post.

Even as I write this, I have anxiety over sharing it. I’m not sure what the next days and weeks will bring — ideally some relief and clarity. But I know I will get there.

How the Census Bureau Stood Up to Donald Trump’s Meddling

 

How the Census Bureau Stood Up to Donald Trump’s Meddling

 

By Emily Bazelon and Michael Wines

Ms. Bazelon is a staff writer at The Times Magazine. Mr. Wines is a national correspondent for the paper who writes about voting and other election-related issues.

Aug. 12, 2021, 2:57 p.m. ET

WASHINGTON — There were 10 days left in the Trump presidency. And John Abowd and Tori Velkoff had a decision to make.

Six months earlier, in July 2020, President Donald Trump had ordered the Census Bureau, where they were senior officials, to produce a count of every unauthorized immigrant in the nation, separate from the 2020 census count that was well underway. The Trump administration’s goal was to strip those immigrants from the population count used to divvy up House seats among the states.

The move promised to benefit Republicans by sapping electoral strength from Democratic-leaning areas and handing more voting power to older, white and most likely more conservative populations.

Mr. Abowd, the bureau’s chief scientist, and Ms. Velkoff, its chief demographer, were obligated by law to carry out the president’s orders. They’d assigned some of their top experts to produce an immigrant count from billions of government records. Mr. Trump had also inserted four political appointees into the bureau’s top ranks since June, in no small part to ensure that the numbers were delivered.

But despite months of work, the results, in Mr. Abowd’s and Ms. Velkoff’s view, fell far short of the bureau’s standards for accuracy. Now the agency’s director, Steven Dillingham, was demanding the tallies — accurate or not — before the president left office.

Mr. Abowd and Ms. Velkoff went to Ron Jarmin, the deputy director. The trio, who had more than 75 years of experience in the bureau among them, agreed on a response: They would reject the demand unless they could explain in a technical report why the numbers were useless. (In an interview this month, Mr. Dillingham said that he was merely asking for an assessment of the immigrant tabulations, with whatever caveats were necessary. “I said, look over that data and see if any of it is ready,” he said.)

Mr. Jarmin then sent a message to three other Census Bureau experts whom he had assigned to assist the political appointees. Stop whatever you’re doing, it said. Any future orders will come from me.

That internal struggle, which has not been previously reported, was the breaking point in a battle with the Trump administration over political interference in the census. By now, tales of Trump appointees disrupting, or outright corrupting, the work of federal agencies are familiar. But in this case, the meddling threatened not just to change the allocation of federal power, but also to skew the distribution of trillions of federal tax dollars.

It was not a revolt or some sort of deep-state resistance that thwarted that effort. Instead, a slice of the career bureaucracy that keeps the federal government running, day in and day out, stood up for what it saw as the core function of the Census Bureau — to produce the gold standard for data about the nation’s population.

“We tried to do what we thought was statistically sound and valid,” Ms. Velkoff said in an interview in June. “If we didn’t have a statistically sound and valid methodology, then we pushed back.”

The episode pitting career officials against political appointees raises an important question: Should the Census Bureau be better protected from such political interference in the future?

The White House had initially sought to identify unauthorized immigrants by adding a question about citizenship to the census form itself. Mr. Abowd had warned that doing so would harm the quality of the count. In focus groups the bureau conducted, people in various ethic groups expressed an “unprecedented” level of concern about giving the government identifying information, according to a 2017 report on the research. Nonetheless, Wilbur Ross, the secretary of the Commerce Department, which includes the Census Bureau, ordered the agency to go ahead with the citizenship question.

But in June 2019, the Supreme Court rejected Mr. Ross’s proffered rationale — that adding the citizenship question was necessary to better enforce the Voting Rights Act — calling it “contrived.”

With that avenue closed, the administration immediately ordered the Census Bureau to gather data on unauthorized immigrants by combing through records of some 20 federal agencies.

Mr. Abowd, Ms. Velkoff and their colleagues spent the next year collecting immigrant data from the administrative records. Then in July 2020, Mr. Trump ordered the data to be used to remove unauthorized immigrants from the coming census totals that would reapportion the House for the next decade. But to segregate unauthorized immigrants from the census totals for each state, there first had to be a census.

And that was a problem. In the summer of 2020, the bureau faced the huge challenge of counting every household in the midst of a pandemic. Despite that, Mr. Ross ordered the agency to finish the count by Sept. 30 and to produce the politically crucial population figures for apportioning House seats among the states by Dec. 31. The deadlines ensured the census totals would be delivered to Mr. Trump whether or not he won the November election.

Internally, census officials were aghast. Anyone who thought the agency could meet the December deadline, the day-to-day leader of the census, Timothy Olson, wrote to Mr. Jarmin and other senior census officials, “has either a mental deficiency or a political motivation.”

But the anti-immigrant forces within Mr. Trump’s administration kept the pressure on, creating four new political jobs in the bureau’s top ranks — an unprecedented step — beginning in June 2020.

Senior bureau officials gave them offices. They also quietly ordered that the appointees be given only rounded numbers — estimates, which could not be labeled official for political or other reasons.

The first of the new political appointees was Nathaniel Cogley, a political-science professor at a state university in rural Texas who has specialized in African studies. He was soon joined by the other three, and they reported weekly to an aide to Mark Meadows, Mr. Trump’s chief of staff.

Mr. Cogley began attacking the bureau’s effort to count a small share of known households that evade the best efforts of census takers. In these cases — 1.2 million people in 2010, but probably many more in pandemic-scarred 2020 — the bureau has long used a statistical method called imputation, looking at nearby households to make educated guesses about who lives in the places the census field operation missed.

Some of those households are occupied by right-leaning libertarians who are deeply suspicious of the government. But many are low-income families, members of minorities and unauthorized immigrants, who expand the count for urban areas and thus increase representation for traditional Democratic strongholds.

“If you leave out imputations, you leave out African Americans, Hispanics and other hard-to-count people,” Kimball Brace, a demographer and president of a consulting firm that does work on redistricting, said in an interview. Mr. Cogley called him to ask for evidence that imputation was statistically unsound. “I saw Cogley’s view as totally a way of justifying how the Republicans come out on this,” Mr. Brace said. (Mr. Cogley did not respond to calls, texts and emails asking for comment.)

Mr. Ross had the power to order the bureau to do as Mr. Cogley wished. But after listening to dueling presentations, he allowed the imputation work to continue — handing the career officials a victory on one of their most important concerns. (Mr. Ross declined to comment on the record.)

In early November, when Joe Biden won the presidential election, the 10-week clock for Mr. Trump’s time in office began to tick with new urgency. There would be no second term. Mr. Abowd, Ms. Velkoff and their colleagues raced to meet the Dec. 31 deadline. But the bureau hit a major technical snag: The pandemic had scrambled the locations of tens of millions of people, like college students and agricultural workers, who should have been counted where they studied or worked but instead lived elsewhere temporarily because of the coronavirus.

Putting them in their proper place would take time. In late November, census officials told Mr. Dillingham, the bureau’s director, that they could not meet the Dec. 31 deadline and maintain the agency’s standards for accuracy.

Mr. Cogley and other political appointees pressed for shortcuts to speed ahead, going so far as to suggest commandeering computers from other agencies to accelerate data processing, an idea the bureau dismissed as impractical. But the political appointees and the White House never answered a basic question about the numbers they most wanted: What definition of “unauthorized immigrant” should the bureau use? Did it include people contesting their deportation in court? Or children whose birthplace was unclear? Or immigrants whose green cards were being processed?

In December, the White House tried one last tack: If census experts could not reliably say who should be removed from the state-by-state apportionment totals because they were in the country illegally, then administration officials would decide for them, using whatever tabulations of immigrants the bureau provided.

This would take a hammer to the bureau’s standards for accuracy. It would also reverse past practice, in which the Census Bureau calculated the House apportionment and the White House delivered the results to Congress as a formality. In January, Mr. Dillingham told Mr. Jarmin it was the bureau’s No. 1 priority — above the census itself — to turn over figures on undocumented immigrants to the White House by Jan. 15. He acknowledged proposing cash bonuses to those who could make it happen, but said he made sure anyone working on the project “would not be pulled off the 2020 census data.”

This last-minute order, which Mr. Dillingham delivered orally rather than in writing, was the breaking point for the career officials who had carried out every other directive. “The integrity of the statistical process that the Census Bureau is ethically committed to was abrogated in serious ways,” Mr. Abowd said.

Separately and anonymously, three career officials filed whistle-blower complaints with the Commerce Department’s inspector general. The complaints accused Mr. Dillingham of violating a cardinal rule for the federal government called Statistical Policy Directive 1. “A federal statistical agency,” it states, “must be independent from political and other undue external influence in developing, producing and disseminating statistics.” Mr. Dillingham said this month that when he heard about the complaints to the inspector general, he stopped asking for the immigrant tabulations.

On Jan. 18, Mr. Dillingham resigned. Mr. Trump left office two days later without the counts that would have downgraded the status of immigrants and most likely helped more Republicans win election.

The census has been wielded as a political weapon before. When the very first count in 1790 fell short (at 3.9 million) of George Washington’s expectations, he didn’t change the number, but he instructed Thomas Jefferson to check it. When Jefferson’s work produced an estimate above four million, he included the higher number in descriptions of the census abroad to make the new country appear stronger.

When the 1920 census counted rising population totals in American cities — thanks to an influx of Italians, Poles, Jews and others from outside Northern Europe — Congress refused to reapportion the House until 1929 so that rural areas wouldn’t lose seats.

And most notoriously, after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, the Army used census information to round up Japanese Americans for internment. (In 2000, the bureau apologized.)

Now a group of officials at the agency are considering how the census could be better protected from political meddling and misuse. In July, a committee of career professionals put in place a new policy on data stewardship, which firms up the rules governing internal as well as external access to confidential data. A bigger idea is to move the bureau out of the Commerce Department to make it more independent, like the National Science Foundation. Congress could also mandate by statute that immigrants who reside in the country must continue to be counted, as they always have been. Lawmakers (or the president, by executive order) also could further strengthen the existing safeguards in Statistical Policy Directive 1.

In the end, the delays that frustrated the anti-immigrant ambitions of Mr. Trump’s administration may end up helping his party. The bureau’s release of redistricting numbers on Thursday was several months behind schedule. Republicans, who control more state legislatures and have shown a greater appetite for extreme gerrymandering than Democrats have, could benefit because little time remains to contest maps before the 2022 elections.

The newly released numbers will now set the stage for what are likely to be colossal battles over control of the House and State Legislatures.

For career professionals, “the highest priority now,” Mr. Abowd said, “is restoring the credibility of the 2020 census and the Census Bureau.”

JOHN KASS COLUMN

 

Chicago Police families and the mayor’s big speech

By John Kass

 

When Chicago Police officer Ella French was murdered after a traffic stop on another bloody weekend in the city of anarchy, Mayor Lori Lightfoot made her “big speech.”

Mayors always make “the big speech” when a police officer is killed in the line of duty. And the one Lightfoot delivered on Sunday was typical of others I’ve seen. It was somber and sought to bridge the divide between police critics and supporters and protect her own flanks. And it was deeply political, because she used it to cover her own flanks.

But Lightfoot forgot an important part. She forgot to say that for years now, she’s been the one throwing cops under the bus to boost her politics.

And police, and their families I spoke with for this column, sum her up in one word:

Phony.

“I’m so angry at the mayor,” said the wife of a veteran Chicago Police officer who works on the South Side. “Ella French was young, inexperienced, she shouldn’t have been out there, but manpower is so low that these kids get sent to the roughest places, and Lightfoot has spent years throwing cops under the bus.

“The mayor made her damn speech, and she said something like, ‘they’re human too.’ Police are human, too?  God! Really? Thank you Lori. I don’t really think she thinks they’re human. They’re a mechanism to further her agenda.”

Another wife of a veteran officer who works on the North Side said she didn’t handle the mayor’s speech or what happened to French very well.

“I don’t think I’m handling this well at all,” she said. “I’m worried all the time. He’s good at compartmentalizing. When he’s home, he’s home. ‘Let’s go into the garden,’ he’ll say, or ‘Let’s walk the dog.’ When I cry, I do it after he’s gone.”

So politicians make speeches. But you know who isn’t supposed to make a speech? Cops themselves, and their families. They feel under siege, by politicians and media and they suffer in silence.

I’ve confirmed that cops turned their backs on the mayor when she tried speaking to them at the hospital. The father of French’s partner, the critically wounded officer, was also angry at Lightfoot and told her what he thought of her in no uncertain terms at the hospital.

His son has lost an eye and is clinging to life with a bullet in his head. His father, a retired cop himself, spoke his mind. He was angry. They’re all angry. They have the right. It’s not the first time a police family member had their say to a mayor. It isn’t the first time that cops have turned their backs on a mayor.

They’re also furious with First Deputy Supt. Eric Carter, who for years has handled the rituals of police funerals . Hundreds of cops lined up at the Medical Examiners Office after Ella French died, waiting for French’s body to roll past and to give their final salute as the pipes played and the snare drums rolled.

“It’s a ritual, it is what we do, we’ve always done this,” said a top police source. “It’s our last time to pay respect before the body goes into the morgue and is processed. It’s important to us.”

But Carter is reportedly on police audio, ordering cops and paramedics not to wait for the pipes and drums. It’s gone viral among the Chicago Police. I heard the video. My sources say it is Carter.

“We’re not gonna be waiting on the bagpipes,” says a command voice said to be Carter’s on the police scanner. “Go ahead and get the vehicle inside. Take it all the way inside. Do not stop.”

It? That’s not an ‘it.’ The body of a fallen officer is not an ‘it.’ A boss who handles funerals should know that at least.

In a video taken by a cop at the scene, Carter walks by, saying “we’re not waiting 20 minutes for this….”

“That’s Carter, wow,” said a police voice on the video.

I called police headquarters to confirm it was Carter, but couldn’t get an answer one way or another.  You’d think the mayor or Supt. David Brown would want to know. The point is a command issue, a morale issue. All police are furious.

But that will probably be washed away by other news, including Supt. Brown mistakenly referring to Ella French in a news conference as “Ella Fitzgerald.” Pathetic.

Murder charges were filed against the alleged shooters on Monday. And now, more questions are being asked.

Questions as to whether all the young, inexperienced officers in supremely violent neighborhoods at night have been intimidated by politics and the fear that their bosses, and the politicians, won’t back them up. They’ve been trained in a climate of fear, and so, do they hesitate rather than put vigorous hands on suspects when necessary?

They don’t want to be on a video. They don’t want to be shamed. They don’t want to lose their careers. Some hesitate. And that can be deadly.

Media might forget, the mayor and police brass might avoid it. But cops and their families won’t forget about what happened at the morgue, or the uncertainty about hands-on policing that has crept into law enforcement, and what that means for the survival of those they love.

Take a look at the photo taken by the police union, the Fraternal Order of Police, of cops outside the hospital, with French, 29, dead and her wounded partner fighting for his life in critical condition. You can see the backs of their necks and almost see the silence, and the anger.

It took some convincing to get some police families to talk. They know how vindictive City Hall can be. I am not identifying them, but they are families of the real police.

On Sunday in her big speech, Lightfoot said:

“There are some who say that we do not do enough for the police, and that we are handcuffing them from doing their jobs. There are others who say that we do too much, and don’t hold them accountable for what they do, particularly in black and brown neighborhoods. To all of this I say: Stop.

This constant strife is not what we need in this moment,” she said.

She doesn’t want strife? Then why did she bring police accountability into it with a young officer dead  and another in critical condition?

Lightfoot saying “stop” gives defensive ammunition to her media apologists, but it does nothing for morale of the police force.

“We have a common enemy,” Lightfoot continued.   “It’s the guns and the gangs. Eradicating both is complex.”

Then she quickly eradicated reference to street gangs in her written and Twitter statements. So, it turns out that eradicating street gangs wasn’t all that complicated for City Hall. They’re just words to suits.

I’m not saying that bad cops don’t deserve a rhetorical bashing. They do. And when they’re out of line, they deserve sanction.

But for years, Chicago’s mayor has cozied up to the hard left of the Chicago Teachers’ Union and gave CTU a great contract and gave the cops the back of her hand to protect her progressive cred.

Remember how she lambasted one officer for a vulgar hand signal to George Floyd protesters from a car, when police were getting spit on and hammered day after day?

A wiser mayor would have simply admonished him, brushed it off saying she’d talk to his supervisor and let it go. But she hammered him publicly.

She works them to exhaustion, with 12 hour shifts and vacations cancelled, while her City Hall suits take their vacations. And she endorsed catch-and-release Cook County State’s Atty. Kim Foxx for re-election.

She made fools of exhausted cops during the riots and looting sprees, when they dared rest in U.S. Rep. Bobby Rush’s office and munched on his office popcorn. Or have you forgotten the Great Bobby Rush Popcorn scandal? Cops haven’t.

She tried covering up her administration’s actions in the Anjanette Young raid, and that’s not going away, but will come back to bite her.

When 13-year-old Adam Toledo was shot after a foot chase—the boy had a gun—she effectively put an end to police foot chases.

But how can police keep order if they can’t can’t run after criminals and make arrests.

Lightfoot undercuts the ability of police to do their jobs. And what seeps into the empty spaces of degraded public order?

Anarchy.

“Manpower is disastrously low,” said another police spouse. “And calls of service are so high. But there’s no one to send. Last year, she pulled officers from districts to cover her house. Police families know this. We know the underbelly of the city, what’s out there. And there just isn’t support coming from City Hall.”

Police are undermanned, demoralized, overworked and exhausted, spiritually, physically, mentally and emotionally.

Columnists like me, and politicians like Lightfoot can change the subject and talk about something else from day to day.

Cop families can’t do that. There is one subject, only one: Waiting for mothers and fathers to come home.

The George Floyd riots kicked it off, the hate of police families on social media further isolated them, they feel targeted by politics and media. They sit in silence in their homes and wait.

“My anger toward the mayor is visceral now,” said another police spouse. “She endorsed Kim Foxx. [Foxx’s patron, Cook County Board President Toni] Preckwinkle is awfully quiet and  [Chief] Judge Evans, and they’re all members of this crew putting violent repeat offenders on electronic home monitoring, which we know doesn’t work, so my husband might run into them at night.

“He’s out there. They’re home, with security. And he’s out there and they make speeches. Am I angry? You bet I’m angry.”

After officer French was murdered, the police spouse who said she was angry went to church with her  family. She silently watched her husband pray.

“This is all so hard to reconcile when you’re standing in church, and the priest asks for prayers for public officials,” she said. “Oh my God forgive me, but I don’t want to pray for the elected, I want them to go away.

“My husband is next to me. I can see he’s emotional. The kids are emotional. This is the church my children were baptized in, where my parents were buried, and I’m thinking, I’m supposed to pray for Lori after all she’s done?

“No…I can’t.”

 

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(Copyright 2021 John Kass)