Disrespecting Ella

 I’m going to write something that will be uncomfortable for most of you to read.   Because we don’t want to believe it.  We really don’t want to believe that people in leadership positions can be this callous, and this committed to the twisted righteousness of their cause.

In a stunning series of purported slips, the hierarchy of the Chicago Police Department continues to heap disrespect on to the slain young officer, Ella French.  It is tradition that bagpipes accompany the body of a slain officer but as her body was being taken to the morgue, First Deputy Superintendent Eric Carter was caught on tape saying, “We’re not waiting for bagpipes…We don’t have time for this shit.”

Really, Eric?  What else was more pressing?  What else was on your busy schedule?

Then, Chief of Police David Brown in his first public comments explicably flubbed her name and called her “Ella Fitzgerald.”  

Downtown David Brown, in these circumstances, you had one job.  Just one.  And you shockingly whiffed.

Not to be outdone, in a budget meeting,  Mayor Lightfoot referred to her as “Ella Franks” earlier this week.

The mayor and chief of police both botched her name.  Her name is not a long, difficult to pronounce ethnic name like mine.  It’s not Polish with a paucity of vowels.   It’s not Lithuanian or Czech.   A few Mexican names can be tough to handle.   Some Arabic names can get you tangled up.  No.  It is a simple, one syllable name,  a name any kindergartner could easily remember and enunciate.

And a mere week after allowing Lollapalooza to go on, she deep sixed the longstanding tradition of playing bagpipes for French, claiming it violated new COVID protocols- to which the medical examiner’s office immediately  responded that that claim was not true.  There have been no changes in protocols.  And two weeks after Lollapalooza, Lightfoot joined Pritzker in marching in the black-oriented Bud Billiken parade—another summer Chicago tradition.  Every step of the way, Lightfoot displayed her disingenuousness around the entire tragedy.

But wait, there’s more.   The suspect that sold the shooter, Emonte Morgan, the gun in a straw purchase was released by the judge.   And feckless prosecutor Kim Foxx declined to charge Morgan’s mother with a felony after she burst into the hospital where Morgan was being treated, screaming hysterically, recording the drama with her cell phone and assaulting officers.  Clearly, she was either hoping for a big payday or garnish national attention as Jacob Blake’s parents did.

Adding up all the messaging by the mayor and the top brass at the Chicago Police Department, you have to reach one conclusion:  The disrespect shown to Ella French by this cabal is intentional.  The mispronunciation of her name is intentional.  The refusal to honor her with a time honored tradition is intentional.

Here is the hard truth that we need to come to grips with:  The people in the chain of command are all black radicals (or sycophants) that are secretly pleased with her death.  They view this as payback for George Floyd, Michael Brown, Rayshard Brooks and Jacob Blake, and the false narratives that went along with each of those incidents—that the police are unjustly targeting African Americans.  If they could spit on French’s coffin, they would.  Deputy Chief Eric Carter came as close to doing so as you could.

This cabal reduced police manpower, forced officers to work 12 hour shifts, and assigned young, inexperienced officers like Ella and her partner to the toughest districts.  Worse, the politicians changed all the rules of engagement over the past year, adding another element of risk and complexity to an already stressed system.  It all virtually ensured that something like this would be the eventual result.  It was inevitable that an officer would get hurt or killed or that an officer would overreact or react badly to a situation.

This is the outcome they engineered and wanted, and I’m not ashamed of saying it out loud.  And when it did, they went out of their way to disrespect her.   It is something that you really do not want to believe that people in a leadership position could be so sinister, but it is reality.  Their actions belie their beliefs.