My wife sent me this story from the Sun Times about a business called See Chicago With a Cop. You travel around for half a day, and see the neighborhoods and get told war stories. Sounds pretty good actually.
This reminded me of a memorable episode. Once I worked on a case where we had retained an expert witness to testify about security who was a retired cop. The client was being sued for supposedly having inadequate security at their place of business, and the plaintiff’s decedent in the wrongful death action had been stabbed to death by two crack-heads there. So we went out to this dire neighborhood on the West Side to look at the place, and I’m sitting in the back seat and Jim the retired cop is in the passenger seat and his son, also a cop is driving. The son is getting increasingly nervous. Jim is going off about the neighborhood, and what it was like 40 years ago, happy as a clam: “Look, see that guy in the doorway, he’s a crack dealer” and “hey, turn down here, let me show these boarded up synagogues,” etc. And at one point he turns around and says, “Hey, want a gun?” and extends to me the butt of a revolver. I declined. We did not get out of the car at the place where the tragic events occurred. We were able to make our assessments of the scene and scoot.
While I’m at it, there was also this remarkable obituary of a guy who was a cab driver who got his Ph.D and taught at UIC. His family described him as “an old Lefty” who wanted to live long enough to vote for Kerry. “His oncologist joked, ‘Well, if I knew you were going to vote for Kerry, I would have given you the good stuff.'”
(Update: I fixed the link to the obituary.)
And a KC boy at that!
But, Lex, do you really think that the guy won’t get to vote just because he’s dead? ;^)
If he was smart he voted absentee in advance.
When I lived in Austin there was a program called the Citizen’s Police Academy (probably still is). Other cities have something similar. They run it every few months, it takes about 30 people, it’s free, and there’s a waiting list. They do a background check (no one with a prior felony is allowed), and let you know when they have a space.
You spend one evening a week for 8 weeks learning what cops do, including meeting a rep from the canine corp, riding on patrol one night, and helping do traffic stop role-plays. I recommend this to everyone who wants to understand the world from police POV.