October 30, 2006
Chicago News Department
The Anti-War Protest That Wasn't
Marathon Pundit notes this story:
It's a mix up that will cost tax payers tens of thousands of dollars. The anti-war demonstration at Washington Square was supposed to start at noon and the Chicago Police Department was ready. But the protesters were a no show, and police say it was a big waste of time and money.
...
"We never got a permit from the city," said John Beacham, Illinois Anti-War Coalition.
The police showed us what they say is the permit -- approved months ago -- with John Beacham's name right at the top.
"I know nothing about that. We applied for a permit and there was never any confirmation of the permit from the city and a long time ago we decided not to have a demonstration," said Beacham.
Doesn't the City of Chicago phone first?
It sounds as if no one from the Chicago Police actually bothered to pick up a phone and call someone at the Coalition.
The City's application for a parade permit asks for a the address and telephone number of the sponsoring organization. It also asks for the name, phone number, and pager number of a person to contact and of the person signing the application. Then, in a touch of irony, the parade sponsors are supposed to submit the permit application to the City's Office of Emergency Management and Communications.
Perhaps the information on the application was wrong or missing, but shouldn't that have told them something?
Beacham had one more theory as to why the police department should have known protesters weren't showing up.
"The city is usually spying on us and watching us carefully, so we just figured they understood there wasn't a demonstration today," said Beecham.
That might be a little paranoid, or self-aggrandizing, but he's got a point of sorts. Even if the application had no contact information, shouldn't the Chicago Police have been capable of finding someone to tell them what was going on? In fact, isn't "finding someone to tell them what's going on" a pretty good description of much of police work?
Even if the contact information was wrong or fake, how hard could it have been to track down someone from the Illinois Anti-War Coalition? The ABC7 News Team certainly had no trouble finding John Beacham when they wanted to.
I wonder if the the police did in fact coordinate with the Illinois Anti-War Coalition, and the group just backed out at the last minute without telling them. Or maybe this was some sort of clever setup—having people ready to answer the phones and discuss the event plan, maybe sending someone to meet with a police commander to discuss the protest site—just to make the police look stupid.
If so, you'd think the police spokesman would have said something about it. Instead all we hear about is a parade permit issued months ago, and there's no mention of followup or coordination meetings with the parade's sponsor.
Frankly, even though the report shows a lot of uniformed officers, I can't believe this was really a Chicago Police operation. They may have been in it, but there's no way they were running it.
Update: From a Chicago Tribune article, it appears that someone did call the group, eventually:
Police didn't learn of the cancellation until police called group officials shortly before the scheduled 10:30 a.m. protest start-time to confirm, she said. That's when the organizers told the police they were bagging the march, she said.
As a result, police stood in pairs around downtown at major intersections with nothing to do. Now the city may ask the group to pay for the inconvenience.
Am I getting this right? If the group had shown up, the police services would have been provided free of charge (as they should be), but because they didn't show up, the police are going to bill them for manpower costs?
I don't see how the city can charge the group for police services when there was no prior agreement to provide police services, unless the group deliberately deceived the police into wasting resources.
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