The Merits of the Piland Decision
Several years ago when I was going to law school part-time and working for the Illinois Attorney General during the day, an older lawyer who was getting ready to wind down his career gave me some of the best advice I’d ever heard. He said Abdul; if you end up practicing regularly remember this, “some days you get the bear, other days the bear gets you.” I think that is advice we should all take to heart in the wake of Friday’s decision by the Police Merit Board (PMB) to overrule IMPD Chief Paul Ciesielski’s recommendation that Officer Jerry Piland be terminated because of the excessive force used against Brandon Johnson.
I was in post-election mode so I did not get a chance to watch the hearing. However, the decision drew strong reaction from the Mayor, Chief, Public Safety Director as well as some segments of the African-American Community. However, if you take a closer look at the PMB’s record you can see it’s pretty clear that some days you get the bear and other days the bear gets you.
- Earlier this year the PMB upheld the Chief’s recommendation that Officer Nhat Nguyen be terminated for choking a subject and making no arrest.
- The PMB overruled the Chief’s recommendation that Officer Bobby Jefferson be terminated for stealing $1,000 from an arrested subject,
- The PMB upheld the recommendation for termination of Officer Anthony Smith who was charged with confining a woman in his car and having sex with her.
- In 2009, the PMB upheld a recommendation that Officer Christopher Poindexter be fired for filing a fake accident report and lying about the investigation. Poindexter is appealing the decision.
Overall, looking at PMB decisions since 2007 the decisions have come down 4-2 in favor of termination, with a couple “out of court” settlements. That tells me that most of the time, IMPD gets what it wants.
The problem here is that the entire Brandon Johnson situation is so emotionally and politically charged (by the way most of the board is made up of Bart Peterson and Frank Anderson appointees) that I don’t think there would have been anyone not complaining about the decision regardless of how it turned out.
I do not believe the PMB should be dismantled, because everyone is entitled to due process. However, I do think a little tinkering may be in order so that the PMB comes in on the front end of the process and makes a non-binding recommendation to the police Chief, who then has the final say regarding an Officer’s disposition.
I get very nervous when we don’t get decisions that go our way and we start talking about throwing out the entire system. There is nothing worse than watching the people who whine about “judicial activism” when really all they are complaining about is the decision that didn’t go their way. The PMB, like everyone else, has a job to do. It may be time for it for it to do its job a little differently, but like most of us; it still has a job to do.
