jackconaty's Blog

I first got to know Pat more than twenty years ago.  He was my guide to what was happening while I did what are called "ride-alongs" with the Chicago Police Department.  It was a new and exotic world to me.  But Camden patiently explained why things we're done as they were done in District 11# on the west side of Chicago.

The Chicago Police Department has to handle the dirty laundry the rest of us don't want to see.  The cops don't create poverty and they deal with the corrupting influence of drug trafficking that has turned big-city police departments into the equivalent of occupying armies.   Street busts build statistics and put a lot of people behind bars....but that sort of policing does not curb the insatiable appetite of middle-class and upper middle class drug users.

Pat took me into a world I didn"t have the credentials to join...a world of teenage and pre-teen drug dealers sparring with cops in a seemingly endless game.  In fact, the critically acclaimed T-V series "The Wire" calls it "the game."  Pat likes that series because it's the only thing on television that can even resemble the life he's known on the department.  "There is no such thing as a non-political police department" Pat says and of course he's right.  Crime statistics can be manipulated, cops can and do go bad, and all of it reflects on the man in charge at City Hall. 

In his dealings with the media, Pat was honest if not always forgiving.  The false urgency of the evening news and its obsession with street crime bothered him.  But day in and day out he would hang in there....extremely careful about what he said and how he said it.

The new top cop Jody Weis wants a new face on the often bad news.  He has a right to make any changes he wants.  But there may come a day in the not too distant future when he'll wish he had Camden back there.  Intelligence and experience aren't easily replaced.