CHICAGO, Illinois – It was a four-hour excursion into the lives of crime busters, a gripping encounter with the potentially life-threatening situations that confront the police daily across the world as they patrol the streets to keep the peace. It was also a stark reminder of the vulnerability of the police to fatal injuries.
For one evening, I traveled the streets of Chicago, Illinois — a sprawling metropolis that assumed global notoriety for extreme criminality during the era of Al Capone — in a ride-along in a police patrol car.
As Sgt. David Welbel maneuvered the Ford sedan along Western Avenue, which, at 40 miles, is the longest street in Chicago, my mind flashed back to the form he asked Ikuko Yuge, my World Press Institute colleague from Japan, and myself to sign as we got into his car. The form released the Chicago Police Department from liability in the event any tragic incident occurred while we were with him.
My four hours of anxiety on the street is the life-long vocation of tens of thousands of law enforcement officers worldwide. It has been the routine of Sgt. Welbel for 21 years.
The situation may not be as precarious as that of a soldier on the battlefield, but in the routine of their working lives police officers walk in the valley of death virtually every moment.
According to one grim statistic reported in the Minneapolis, Minnesota, Star Tribune, on average one police officer is killed in the line of duty in the United States every other day.
“It’s a big dose of reality,” Sgt. John Delmonico, president of the Police Officers Federation of Minneapolis, said after fellow officer Melissa Schmidt was killed recently in a shootout.
“We run into dangerous situations when others flee,” said officer Welbel in a succinct analogy of the naked vulnerability of the police to instant death.
As a coping strategy, the police expect crime to rear its ugly head at any moment. Some even lament the “drought” whenever action is scarce. “It’s a dull day, no action,” bemoaned one police officer I met in Chicago. But this could be bravado, a way of psyching themselves up for the hazards of the job.
Two young officers were gunned down recently in Chicago while observing a drug transaction. One of them died three days later after his leg was amputated in a desperate bid to save his life. The other escaped death by a whisker.
Burnout is a constant occupational hazard
Burnout, a psychological term for complete exhaustion, is a recurring factor in the lives of the police. Those serving in high-crime zones in Chicago and elsewhere are perpetually on edge and on the defensive.
Chicago’s District 24, the territory Sgt. Welbel covers, is a mixed grill of high-, medium- and low-crime zones. The district is also the most ethnically diverse in Chicago. It has the largest concentration of Nigerians, Indians, Pakistanis, Arabs, Jews, Russians, Greeks and Ethiopians, presenting the Chicago Police Department with a peculiar challenge of dealing with large numbers of people of diverse cultural background.
The Nigerian community, for instance, is largely clustered around Winthrop Avenue. While most Nigerians in the district have been of good behavior, a few have taken criminality to new heights, setting records in narcotics, gangster-ism, money laundering, counterfeiting and extortion, Welbel said.
“The Nigerian gangs have been more deadly because they have combined their own talent with the style of the Italian Mafia. They are involved in vast narcotic operations. What I don’t understand about them is their propensity for extorting their own people more than anybody else,” he said.
High crime zones in his district include a low-income public housing estate occupied mainly by African-Americans. The areas largely occupied by the Jews are the lowest crime zones. Economic empowerment and population density are the major determinants of the crime rate in the district. An area with a lower concentration of people who are mainly middle to higher class will be a much safer neighborhood than one that is densely populated with low-income earners.
Chicago is the home of superlatives and Chicago police officers will not hesitate to tell you that they have one of the best police forces not only in the U.S. but the entire world. As testimonial to their preeminence, they quickly point to the huge number of police officers flocking to the Chicago Police Department from all over the world for training.
The police in Chicago are well trained, one factor Sgt. Welbel said contributes to their efficiency.
“You need to have a minimum of a bachelor’s degree to get promoted,” he said, explaining the system was designed to encourage a smart police force.
Chicago police are also well paid. We ran into an off-duty police captain driving through the district in her BMW convertible. The officer, a single parent, had three other posh vehicles, I learned. The Chicago Police Department is replete with stories of officers owing fleets of posh cars, said Sgt. Welbel. “Officers here are well paid and because of that, we attract the highest caliber of individuals.”
In contrast to Nigeria, where police corruption is commonplace, Welbel said the police in Chicago “don’t have to steal to support their families.”
Technology is another factor the Chicago Police Department has used to maximum advantage. The Chicago Emergency Communications Center, which dispatches signals to police officers in the field, is a $250-million, state-of-the art facility.
Acclaimed as the best of its kind in the world, the facility has the capacity to handle 6 million emergency calls a year.
Within 10 seconds after receiving a distress call, the center dispatches a message to patrol officers. The personnel in the emergency center are aided by a computerized mapping and geographic information system in instantly giving the exact location of trouble spots to patrol vehicles.
In addition, the department’s 3,000 patrol cars are being fitted with state-of-the-art computer notebooks and personal data terminals. They will enable patrol officers to quickly receive undetected signals from dispatchers, transmitting photographs of suspects and all available data on them at the touch of a button.
A mixture of fulfillment and frustration
The police feel a mixed sense of fulfillment and frustration in their efforts to rid society of criminals – fulfillment because criminals are kept at bay and prevented from running over society; frustration because 80 percent of prisoners in the U.S. return to jail, according to Sgt. Welbel.
Ex-convicts are always the most difficult criminals to deal with, they don’t give a hoot if they are re-arrested, he said. “‘I don’t care if you re-arrest me. It is an opportunity to have a place to sleep with three square meals, and most of my friends are there any way,’” he quoted defiant ex-convicts as often saying when they are re-arrested.
Just as we were about to end the ride-along, Sgt. Welbel got a dispatch on his radio regarding a burglar alarm in a building we were just driving by. He sent a message on his laptop informing his colleagues that he was right at the spot. He told them he would stop and check the building. He also called for backup.
The front door of the building on Northshore Avenue was securely locked. Sgt. Welbel returned to the car and drove us round to the back of the house.
I was already fretting inside even though I maintained a steely exterior. What if there were a shootout? The implication was too grim for me to contemplate. I looked at his eyes. He was not the least perturbed but his confidence did little to assuage my fear.
As we drove slowly to the back of the house, he kept aiming a floodlight on the front of his car onto every nook and cranny of the building. All the while, a dog kept barking in a neighbor’s backyard. Listening carefully to see if the dog’s barking could give him any hints, Sgt. Welbel continued to move ahead.
I heaved a heavy sigh of relief when we turned the corner and saw a man standing by the half-opened door, calming speaking into a cell phone.
Sgt. Welbel walked up to him and, just as the officer was about to engage the man in a discussion, three other police officers showed up from various directions.
The man had mistakenly triggered the alarm when he opened the door to his office.
I imagined the scenario would have been totally different if it had been a bunch of heavily armed criminals trying to break into the facility. There might have been crossfire, the outcome of which nobody could predict.
That same night, a policeman was shot in Chicago. This is the topsy-turvy life of the police.
By Olabode Opeseitan, WPI ’02