Cops have been complaining for months that they're so demoralized by the career-killing investigations, criminal homicide prosecutions, and Black Lives Matter agitation following shootings of suspects that they've been pulling their punches about controlling crime in rough neighborhoods.
And now, a woman police officer in Chicago has said last week that she was so fearful of becoming yet another target of a Black Lives Matter-instigated probe of her department by the Obama administration, that she let herself be severely beaten by an allegedly drug-addled suspect rather than draw her gun to protect herself.
Superintendent Eddie Johnson said the patrol officer told him she did not use her gun to defend herself for fear of a backlash. "She didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news," he said.
What happened to this officer was hair-raising:
The injured officer, a 17-year Chicago police veteran, got into a struggle with a man who allegedly was high on PCP after she stopped at a crash scene in the Austin community on the West Side on Wednesday morning.
The suspect smashed the officer's face into the pavement repeatedly until she was unconscious, police said.
"As I was at the hospital last night, visiting with her, she looked at me and said she thought she was gonna die, and she knew that she should shoot this guy, but she chose not to because she didn’t want her family or the department to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news,” Johnson said while attending a public ceremony honoring heroic officers and firefighters.
And the woman's fear of official reprisals was well-founded:
The U.S. Justice Department launched a probe of the department after video was released of police shooting a teenager walking away from them with a knife, with complaints about the department’s treatment of citizens going back years.
The head of the Chicago Police Department's largest union said Thursday that Johnson's comments echo what he's been saying for months. Police “don't want to become the next YouTube video,” said Dean Angelo, president of the Fraternal Order of Police. “If you participate in a deadly force situation you can save your life, but in 2016, you can lose your job,” he said.
This story is especially sad because most women, including women police officers, don't have the size and strength to defend themselves against violent male assailants without the help of a weapon such as a firearm. The Obama administration is essentially telling women that they'd better not become cops if they'd like to save their lives and limbs. Some commitment to gender equality.