Rahm Emanuel still is Chicago’s mayor. So far, anyway. Not that any serious students of the Chicago Way expected Emanuel to resign, even in the face of accusations that he covered up the brutal shooting of a black youth by a white cop. He might not have survived last year’s mayoral election if voters had seen the dash-cam video of the killing. The video didn’t become public till later, and only because a court ordered it. Apparently shame isn’t enough to make the man quit.
If he won’t leave, can he be forced out? Not likely: A bill introduced in the Illinois legislature allowing Chicago voters to recall the mayor from office faces a slow, lonely death. And given Emanuel’s Borgian reputation, few leading Chicago or Illinois Democrats are willing to demand his head (maybe because so many worry that the only decapitations would be their own).
Even if Rahm did get the boot, what would that bring? A raucous political fight for succession like the one that followed Mayor Harold Washington’s sudden death in 1987, a melee guaranteed to worsen the city’s racial divide. Already guesswork has begun over who would follow Emanuel to the throne, but given Chicago’s payback culture, that’s a perilous endeavor for both the speculator and the speculatee.
No doubt Emanuel deserves to go, as does Cook County state’s attorney Anita Alvarez, who also sat on evidence implicating cops. Facing a March primary for reelection, voters might actually hold Alvarez accountable — as they might have held Emanuel accountable, if the video he suppressed had been seen in time. Police superintendent (and designated fall guy) Garry McCarthy has already been handed his gold-braided hat.
But that’s not enough. Experienced Chicago hands can only wonder at the media’s captivation with Emanuel’s fate. Even if the top ranks of city government are purged, it would do little or nothing to solve Chicago’s systemic problems. It isn’t just the bosses who make a corrupt system run. It’s the army of precinct and patronage workers, the small-time grafters— all the favor seekers and dispensers who populate the Democratic party’s machine — who sustain the Chicago Way. Why should they get a pass?
Why is virtually no one asking who the political sponsor was protecting Jason Van Dyke, the policeman who shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times? During his 14-year career, Van Dyke was named in at least 20 citizen misconduct complaints, including “use of force,” “verbal abuse,” and “illegal search,” according to the Citizens Police Data Project. Of them, five were “not sustained,” five were unfounded, four resulted in exoneration, five had unknown outcomes, and in one no action was taken.
Was Van Dyke the repeated victim of false accusations? Or could it be that Chicago’s Independent Police Review Authority — the agency in charge of investigating complaints against Chicago police — is so biased in favor of cops that they bury most every grievance?
And then there is the police union, whose contract makes it nearly impossible to act against wrongdoers in blue. From March 2011 through September of last year, civilians filed 28,567 complaints against Chicago police. Less than 2 percent of those complaints resulted in officers being disciplined — and then rarely anything more serious than a reprimand or a week’s suspension.
Or perhaps Van Dyke had a patron who made the charges disappear. You don’t get ahead in Clout City simply on merit. And you don’t survive charges of incompetence (or worse) without the protection of the Democratic party.
This has always been the essence of the Chicago Way. The Machine has been pronounced dead before, supposedly slain by court rulings freeing civil servants from political fealty. The eulogies have been premature; the machine-greasing culture of loyalty lives on. It’s how a policeman rates a cushy assignment at, say, O’Hare International Airport. It’s how teachers who don’t teach keep their jobs. It’s how shovel-leaners and paper-shufflers score their sinecures in the first place. Clout punishes. Clout rewards. Clout survives.
Enough Chicagoans benefit from the Machine that the system thrives, even as the good cops, excellent teachers, and dedicated civil servants carry the load of the corrupt, the idlers, the incompetent, and the shielded. It’s why well-intentioned political reformers in Chicago have racked up a history of failure.
Imagine Emanuel resigns in disgrace: Satisfying as that would be, little if anything would change. Nothing will change until investigators and the media go after the bottom feeders with all the gusto they deploy against the brass and the bosses. Nothing will change until enough Chicagoans are fed up with the whole lousy political culture that dominates the Democratic-controlled city, county, and state. Maybe some of us will live long enough to see it.
Dennis Byrne is a Chicago writer.
