Progress Illinois

Mayor Daley put his thumb in the eye of public accountability yet again today, this time by backing police Supt. Jody Weis’ decision to keep a list of "repeat offender" cops under wraps even if it means violating a court order.

If the mayor was looking for a challenge, he got it. Ald. Ed. Smith (28th Ward) and public interest attorney G. Flint Taylor countered that they’re not out to expose the “good hard-working police officers” that the mayor is attempting to hide behind. They want the list of officers who have received five or more citizen complaints since 2000.

“There are some bad cops and we need to know who they are,” Smith (pictured) told reporters this morning. “We’re not going to sweep it under the rug.”

Taylor called a press conference today to draw some attention to the repressive courtroom tactics recently used by Weis and Daley’s chief legal counsel Mara Georges. The motion below describes how the pair strung the judge along, pledging to unveil the list to the plaintiffs only to refuse in the end:

As we noted yesterday, the city has been playing this game for sometime, while a similar dispute remains pending in the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals. Taylor is now asking the federal courts to force Weis and Georges to explain their conduct under a sworn deposition. The plaintiffs are also seeking other financial penalties.

Taylor’s client is Donna Moore, whose 11-year-old son was arrested after getting into a schoolyard scuffle with an off-duty Officer Robert Smith last summer. Her 13-year-old daughter was also arrested in the incident. She and Taylor want to know whether Smith has a history of rogue conduct.

“I would trust that Jody Weis would lead by example,” Moore said. “He’s giving the signal to every official that whatever you do, I’ll protect you.”

Yesterday, we reported University of Chicago law professor Craig Futterman’s argument that rank-and-file police officers should want good oversight, rather than simply protection: “[A]ny good police officer knows that accountability is critical to their success.” Indeed, every rogue cop makes it that much harder for the good ones to earn the trust of individual citizens.

This morning, Taylor echoed that logic, saying: “You would think that morale would be boosted by the fact that the police superintendent would want to root out the repeater cops who are the ones that are giving a bad name to all the others.”

You would think …