'Ferguson Effect' Debate Reignites As Man Accused Of Beating Officer Held Without Bond

By Stephen Gossett in News on Oct 7, 2016 9:11PM

The man accused of seriously injuring a Chicago police officer on Wednesday—and whose attack has reignited the debate about the so-called Ferguson effect in Chicago's police department—was denied bail at a hearing on Friday. He faces charges of attempted murder and aggravated battery.

The offender, 28-year-old Maywood man Parta Huff, allegedly crashed his car into a West Side liquor store while high on PCP, then attacked three responding police officers. One officer was seriously injured after Huff knocked her head into the street, leaving her unconscious. According to reports, prosecutor Jamie Santini said on Friday that Huff continued to attack the officer even after being Tasered at least three times, pulling hair from the officer’s head and concussing her.

The case then became a lightning rod in the debate about the Ferguson effect—which argues that police are now prone to retreat from potential conflict in fear of media scrutiny—after Supt. Eddie Johnson told a crowd on Thursday that the officer said she didn’t fire her service weapon because “she didn’t want her family or the department to have to go through the scrutiny the next day on national news.”

Prominent Tribune columnist John Kass, for one, was quick to second that argument in a Chicago cop is the face of the Ferguson Effect in an opinion called “Chicago cop is the face of the Ferguson Effect.” Kass admits to “a history of police cover-ups and misconduct in Chicago, which has included torture and wrongful convictions, with most of the victims being black and Hispanic” but even as Chicago is embroiled in the thorny aftermath of extra-judicial killings, he finds prevailing fault elsewhere:

“We'd be going through the old rituals we know by heart, angry activists, the dead re-created as the victim of state-sponsored racism, politicians cowering and turning their backs on her, the entire urban political liturgy we've seen so many times.”

(Sadly but not surprisingly, Kass returns to racially loaded language as well, calling Michael Brown “a violent thug.”)

But some civil-rights attorneys are skeptical of both the prosecutor’s version of events and the Ferguson effect itself. “If we learned anything from Laquan McDonald, it’s to have great skepticism about police narratives,” Alan Mills, Executive Director of Uptown People’s Law Center, told Chicagoist. “We need a lot more evidence, otherwise we’re talking about hypotheticals.”

"To the extent that there may be some reluctance to use force, the blame has to be put squarely on officers who have used excessive force,” he added.

Supt. Johnson on Friday announced a draft revision to CPD’s use of force policy that calls for a greater emphasis on “the sanctity of life,” among other measures.