Word: daleyisms
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Professional Collapse. Even so, the program was relatively understated, in tone and in the rhetoric of the policemen telling their version of the story. Here and there, the Daley show attempted to present both sides of the controversy. University of Chicago Historian Richard Wade was heard arguing that both demonstrators and police were guilty of excesses. Yet most of the footage chosen was shot from behind police lines. Not once did it suggest that dozens of police removed their badges and name tags to prevent identification and then assaulted demonstrators, newsmen and bystanders...
...mayor has fulminated repeatedly about the distorted coverage that press and television gave to the demonstrations. Obviously, some reporters and commentators grew highly emotional. But too many impartial Chicagoans and visitors, and too many editors, correspondents and writers, witnessed the confrontations to accept Daley's version. What they saw was a collapse of professional discipline within the police ranks...
...Administration official and longtime observer of police methods traces the debacle back to the riots in the wake of Martin Luther King's assassination last spring. Said the official: "Daley went crazy. He couldn't believe that his city could do it to him." Daley publicly rebuked his police superintendent for being too soft on the rioters-even though most responsible law officers around the nation commended the Chicago police for their behavior. The mayor compounded his mistake by issuing his approval of shooting looters. The overall effect was to undermine the police department's chain...
...battle's ironies is that Daley himself has done as much as anyone else to smear his own police department. At the confrontation in front of the Conrad Hilton, only a few dozen cops broke ranks to crack the head of any civilian they could lay a club on. But Daley defends those who violated discipline. In doing so, he damns the entire department...
Unwitting Ally. After Daley's television apologia, Illinois State Treasurer Adlai Stevenson III came forth with one of the most balanced and accurate assessments of the confrontation. He did so at some risk to his political career, since any Democratic politician in the state defies Daley at his own peril. Said Stevenson: "In the Democratic convention, there was dissent and in it new hope for real change. But in Chicago, and in the Democratic party of Illinois that week, there was little room for dissent. Some 'revolutionaries' appeared on the scene, bent on provoking disorder, unwashed...