Harold Ickes Homes, 2008. Photo: David Schalliol
In his comments after Mayor-elect Brandon Johnson announced his appointment as interim police superintendent, Fred Waller described himself as “old school.” Presumably, this was meant to reassure the department’s rank and file and city residents concerned about crime. In this fraught moment, as summer approaches, it’s easy to imagine that Johnson was drawn to Waller as a calming, seasoned presence able to address challenges in the days ahead, while conveying to officers under his command that he has their back.
In the context of the long struggle to advance meaningful police reform, however, “old school” has other, more disturbing connotations associated with the “code of silence” within the department.
Often used loosely to characterize police culture, the term “code of silence” is at once imprecise and inevitable. So it’s important to be clear: I intend it to refer to a set of tools, central to the operation of the department, that are deployed in response to incidents of misconduct, criminality, errors of judgment and other regrettable events. These tools are used to impose a narrative solution rather than to engage the problem at hand. This is less a matter of discreet “cover-ups” than the ongoing operation of narrative machinery by which the institution seeks to protect itself from scrutiny and accountability.