Chicago's Shame

*This article first appeared in New English Review. Subsequent to my writing this piece, Chicago Police Superintendent Larry Snelling held a press conference to address the incident. I will follow up with an additional post to discuss his remarks.

 “Per the chief of patrol: Clear everybody out, we’re not responding over there.”

On Saturday morning, in Broadview, a suburb of Chicago, several ICE vehicles were deliberately rammed and boxed in by numerous other vehicles, one of which was driven by someone with a semi-automatic weapon.  The aforementioned woman, Marimar Martinez (40) was shot and wounded by agents in self-defense when she allegedly tried to run down agents who had exited their vehicles. She and another man, identified as Anthony Ian Santos Ruiz, are facing federal charges in the incident.

If all that wasn’t shocking enough, when the agents called Chicago PD for help, officers from the department were ordered by their dispatch not to go in and assist, “per the chief of patrol”, which is confirmed by radio transmissions. This is clearly a result of the policy put into effect by Illinois Governor JB Pritzker and Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson.

There is a clear difference between not having your police officers enforce illegal immigration laws and allowing federal immigration agents to be attacked by mobs and Antifa-types and refusing to render assistance to your fellow officers. As a former federal agent (DEA) who worked with local police extensively, this is the worst example of police negligence I have ever seen in the United States. I am sure that the rank and file Chicago police officers, particularly those who were ordered to stand down, are sickened by this. They know it goes against every instinct they have that when a fellow law enforcement officer is under attack, it doesn’t matter what agency it is, the response is immediate. Had the shoe been on the other foot and a local cop were being attacked, any off-duty officer, state, local, or federal, on duty or off duty, who saw it would stop and render assistance. I know this from personal experience.

What happened Saturday happened because of the rotten politics in the city of Chicago and the state of Illinois. It is a dark stain on the Chicago PD as an institution, and I can only imagine the embarrassment felt by the rank-and-file officers.

Only by the grace of God were no officers injured. Had one of them been killed, a lot of people would be carrying this with them the rest of their lives. Now it underlines the need for President Trump to send in the troops, not only to Chicago, but Portland and anywhere else that suffers from this kind of orchestrated violence. It is also time for the Justice Department and the FBI to go after these people at the federal level. This is not spur-of-the-moment violence; it is being orchestrated nationally, and that makes it a federal responsibility. It is also appropriate to investigate what federal laws, if any, are being violated by politicians like Pritzker and Mayor Johnson to impede the enforcement of our federal immigration laws. 

As for the officer who ordered his cops not to go in and help the ICE agents, I don’t know what he is feeling now. He was obviously following the orders handed down to him, but there comes a time, even in law enforcement, when you have to ignore policy and ignore orders. This was just such a situation.