The campaign to persuade Mayor Daley to appoint Pat Hill superintendent of police was started by political maverick and cabdriver Steve Wiedersberg. “I got the idea after police chief Terry Hillard said he was stepping down in August,” he says. “Crazy, huh?”
In the last 15 or so years Hill has repeatedly criticized department policies and programs. She’s pointed to problems in CAPS. She’s complained about affirmative action efforts. She’s joined the Reverend Paul Jakes on his marches against police brutality. She’s currently championing the right of officers to wear their hair in braids or dreadlocks, and she sits on the “people’s” side of the courtroom in cases of police brutality–an act of heresy to many rank and filers. “In a lot of these cases of police brutality you have a divided courtroom–police on one side, people, which is generally just a handful of relatives of the kid who was beat up, on the other,” she says. “I sit with the people. And I’m always gonna sit with the people as long as I think the people are right.” As a result she’s seen by many officers, particularly white ones, as a turncoat.
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What kind of police superintendent would Hill make? She certainly wouldn’t defend the department reflexively. “I’m sick of the attitude that it’s only one or two bad apples when a cop gets caught doing something stupid,” she says. “Let’s be honest. The system is so archaic and stupid I’m just shocked that people tolerate it. It’s a power issue out there–these cops are taking advantage of the public’s ignorance. It’s not right, and it’s reinforced in the training. Too many police officers realistically know that if they were not police officers they’d be digging ditches somewhere. They know they’re not qualified. They don’t want to better themselves. They get drunk with this power that ‘I’m the police and I can take your rights away anytime I want to.’”
Wiedersberg made a few phone calls. The Defender ran an article. Callers began talking up the notion on Cliff Kelley’s call-in show on WVON. But no aldermen have rushed forward to endorse Hill, and 29th Ward alderman Isaac Carothers, a Daley loyalist who chairs the council’s police and fire committee, says, “I have no personal opinion regarding Pat Hill one way or another. It’s up to the mayor to support who he wants. My position is I can work with anyone the mayor appoints. If the mayor appoints Pat Hill, I can work with her.”
Art accompanying story in printed newspaper (not available in this archive): photo/Robert Drea.
