John Smith, a Chicago police detective and sex crimes specialist, may personify the occasionally deviant nature of labor-management relations.
Smith, 49, gained a public spotlight briefly on July 4, 1991, via Mike Royko. The columnist disclosed a rather odd assignment given Smith shortly after he complained that colleagues were violating both a city clean-air ordinance and a department rule against smoking.
The Area 5 detective, a 22-year veteran, was allegedly informed by a superior that he would now get the ”smoke-free environment” he craved and was assigned to sit in a patrol car in the 1500 block of North Austin Boulevard. His mandate was to write down license numbers of any red or blue car heading north with, as a court document filed Friday puts it, ”persons of African-American ancestry in said automobiles.”
Royko wrote about Smith`s assignment and quoted him as being unable to elicit any plausible rationale for the assignment. The implication was that it had to do with retaliation, not nabbing bad guys. That`s where the tale was left.
Since then, Smith has filed a federal court lawsuit against his superiors, including former Police Supt. Leroy Martin, alleging violation of various civil rights. He`s represented by another former superintendent, Richard Brzeczek, raising the prospect that one former top cop will interrogate another in a courtroom. The suit could go to trial by October.
Equally telling, Smith alleges that harassment only increased after the publicity. ”It hasn`t changed one bit,” he said Thursday night.
The department moved to suspend him five days without pay. Then, after years of working days, Smith says, he was placed on nights, including his current midnight shift. He also alleges that he has been barred from working with a partner on any regular basis; seen his name plate regularly ripped off his mailbox; doesn`t get phone messages left for him during the day, even from crime victims; and has seen his performance rating plummet unfairly.
”Detective Smith is quite capable of higher arrest totals, however, he is currently having difficulty in the area of personal relationships that stem from litigation that he has filed against members of the unit in which he works,” according to one evaluation cited in the court case.
His area commander supported a 10-day suspension in a March 10 internal report that alluded to Smith`s having gone public, writing that ”the purpose of the discipline is to correct the behavior of the individual involved and also to exhibit to other members of the Police organization its intolerance to that activity.”
Meanwhile, the police union filed an unfair-labor-practice charge in May with the Illinois Local Labor Relations Board, which oversees public employee spats. Via attorney Ann Wells Clark, the union amended its charge Aug. 6 to include new incidents of alleged harassment. The board is investigating.
The city, represented by attorneys Paulette Petretti and Jennifer Ranger, maintains that Smith`s claims are ”unsubstantiated and the city will ultimately prevail,” corporation counsel spokeswoman Andrea Brands said Friday.
The matter is expensive to taxpayers, no matter what happens. Then again, maybe we`re lucky Smith wasn`t assigned to guard the Hyatt Regency Chicago Hotel last week.
The Retail Tobacco Dealers of America was meeting inside.
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Haven`t there been times when you`ve heard a TV anchor say something dumb and wished you could respond?
Well, Bryan Norcross, weatherman at NBC-owned WTVJ-TV in Miami, had a few chances, and took advantage, last week.
The station made him, not its anchors, the center of virtually non-stop coverage of Hurricane Andrew. At one stretch, he was on for 22 hours with just a few breaks. The Miami Herald said his was an indispensable ”tour de force.”
Norcross, 41, was a TV production engineer and news director before realizing the absurd sums weathermen are paid. He split to get a meteorology degree, which came in handy last week.
He calmly derided some people for not evacuating and criticized anyone minimizing the storm`s impact. The Tribune-owned Ft. Lauderdale News and Sen- Sentinel called him the ”Gen. Schwarzkopf of the airways . . . even cutting off fellow anchors when they descended into simplistic statements.”
Anchor: ”This Hurricane Andrew seems to be unusual, different from other hurricanes in the way it developed so suddenly.”
Norcross: ”No, that`s not true. . . . It`s just that we`re not used to hurricanes down here.”
When another colleague declared early Tuesday that all might now be well, Norcross retorted, ”I can assure you, there will be death tonight in Dade County.”
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A Sun-Times story that compared gangbangers to raccoons didn`t just cause a City Council uproar. It`s also generating income for consultants.
Editor Dennis Britton, who defended the arguably offensive story, has informed the staff that ”in the wake of the `raccoon` episode, it`s clear that all of us in the newsroom have something to learn about seeing the world- and our newspaper-through the eyes of people different from ourselves.”
Thus, the paper has contracted with Ben Johnson, assistant managing editor of the St. Petersburg Times, and Mary Bullard-Johnson, a former executive director of a multicultural management program at the University of Missouri, to run two one-day sessions at the paper, titled ”Breaking Through Barriers: Improving Cultural Awareness.”
Staff members are being asked to fill out a 24-question survey. It includes a question whose answer offers little mystery: ”In terms of race, who gets the most important jobs and assignments at the Sun-Times?”
A check of the paper`s masthead-all five people are white males-gives a clue. But it`s not different at most papers.
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Looking to be a great writer? Forget about the wisdom gained from a down- and-out past, losing bouts with alcohol, military service, and various marriages. Simply attend Amherst College and Harvard Law School, then practice law in Chicago.
It worked for Scott (”Presumed Innocent”) Turow. Now, it may work for Mike Kahn.
Kahn is a St. Louis native and Amherst alumnus who came to Chicago in the mid-1970s to teach public school. It didn`t take him long to get frustrated with the system and head off to Harvard Law before returning to work as a private attorney in the then-hot, now-defunct Reuben & Proctor firm.
Though a rising star there, he returned home to St. Louis with his wife and five kids and practices law at a big firm, Gallop, Johnson & Neuman. But he also writes lawyer mysteries and now boasts a second well-received effort, ”Death Benefits” (Dutton, $19).
What one critic calls a ”rousing tale of suspense” involves protagonist Rachel Gold, a Chicago lawyer sick of the legal practice, being hired by a firm in St. Louis, her old home, to investigate the apparent suicide of a big- shot partner in an elite firm.
The ending? Spend the $19 and help a poor Harvard Law grad.
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Smart politicians are turning to cable television, notably public-access and ”local origination”-or locally produced commercial-channels. They get more time and more solicitous treatment. Ask Cook County State`s Attorney Jack O`Malley.
Appearing on ”Chicago Watch” on Chicago`s Channel 25, a local origination channel, O`Malley, who is white, heard host Rick Henry, who is black, declare, ”You didn`t butcher the office. You haven`t insulted the Harold Washington Party; they make it sound like you did.” They? Must be the enemy.
Henry opined that the press is starting ”not to like you because you`re too honest; you`re not Chicago.” During a resulting marshmallow
interrogation, O`Malley disclosed that he does not tolerate judicial corruption and doesn`t play favorites when it comes to prosecutions. That`s a relief.
”Will you tolerate police brutality?” Henry asked in closing.
”Absolutely not,” O`Malley replied.
Darn. One hoped he`d not be so politically correct and, instead, call for a sharp increase in illegal use of electric cattle prods.
