The Fraternal Order of Police Chicago president Dean Angelo on Sunday night told the I-Team that he will be in Washington this week for the high-level meetings with Justice Department officials and also for a meeting with the President Donald Trump.
Angelo and also Trump have something in common, they both frequently talk about the Chicago's staggering crime problem, especially the spike in murders in the last year and what seems to be a increasingly bloody crime blotter.
Angelo said that his trip to the Washington this week grew out of annual FOP "Day on the Hill" which is sponsored by the union each winter. The 2017 consortium with the Members of Congress occurred February 13-15. "I was invited to continue in a way that gets our message out" he said.
Angelo, who is currently in a hotly contested battle to retain his position as the Chicago local FOP president, said that following the Capitol Hill meetings in the February "several people said they wanted to talk to me about Chicago."
Apparently, that includes the President Trump, with a meeting which may come as early as Tuesday.
It is not the FOP leader's first fact-sharing trip to D.C. He also said that prior to the Justice Department's ballyhooed investigation of the Chicago Police Department announced in the December, 2015, he met with the top Justice officials about impending probe and also to "build national bridges."
His opportunity to give the first-hand account on behalf of uniformed men and women of the CPD is "a long time coming," said Angelo. "There is enormous concern about Chicago coming from Washington. I look forward to the opportunity to share everything I know."
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One of the final acts of former President Barack Obama Justice Department was to unveil a Consent Decree agreement with the Chicago Police, in which the department would have to fulfill an agenda of reforms and also changes to address what the DOJ determined to be inherent discrimination of the minority citizens.
The agreement, announced in the January, was to result in a formal court-ordered plan probably in a year.
However, the President Donald Trump’s administration is not as eager to mandate the plans. Angelo said that the "federal oversight is something a lot of (FOP) members don't want to see."
City officials and top brass at the CPD claim they will do everything that a Consent Decree requires even if the Attorney General Jeff Sessions declines to proceed with one.
Angelo also questions whether the city will indeed spend the money necessary to make those changes, if not required by the court-ordered DOJ agreement.
Shortfalls in the police recruit training was a major problem singled out by DOJ investigators.
The I-Team reported in the February that one training video shown to police recruits was 35 years old and also featured Peter "Columbo" Falk who was been dead since 2011.
Mrudula Duddempudi.
