Murderous Chicago Cop Van Dyke Had Long Record Of Complaints

   This is really important and shocking. 

   I was astonished back in the idealistic days of my youth, to first hear about "the blue wall of silence." That is the kind of bullshit that should never have been tolerated. It needs to be shredded. There needs to be a professional code of conduct that prohibits defending other officers on what are, in effect, tribal grounds--and there needs to be enforcement of such a code. 

   This is not the kind of issue that's normally on my radar. I've got no particular insight into it, I don't know anything more about it than anyone else, and one can't go around outraged about everything. It's not an issue I yell about all the time, but that's purely accidental. We arm some citizens and authorize them to keep the peace. There is no reason on Earth why we should tolerate these sorts of actions by them. In fact, there's a case to be made that criminal actions by police officers should be punished more harshly than similar crimes by non-cops. Every now and then we are presented with irrefutable evidence that a certain percentage of the police force is composed of criminals with badges--a lot of other cops apparently collude with them, and it seems that even more turn a blind eye to it all. It's absolutely got to stop.

   This is Chicago, however, so one has to be cautious drawing conclusions with too much certainty about the rest of the country.