“There are certain things you just don’t talk about.” Those were some of the last words Larry Williams said to me before he stopped answering my questions about his 32 years as a Chicago cop.
For many, Burge’s sentence seemed to provide long-overdue closure. For me, after years away from investigative work, it just pulled at the scab on an old wound. It was a potent reminder of everything that wouldn’t get resolved that day in federal court, and all the questions that had haunted me—and still do.
A lot’s changed since I worked at OPS. In 2007, the unit was replaced by a new civilian agency no longer tethered to the police department, the city’s Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA).
“We had respect for the police,” he said. “A lot of this came from our parents. They would say, ‘If you did this or that, the police will get you.’” Williams said things are not the same today.
Another way to reach this mentality is to be raised in the projects. “Because of the environment, they develop a survival instinct,” Williams said of public housing residents, “and in order to survive, they learn how to fight.” He said officers who come from either background have an edge.
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But he remembered a white cop who would regularly stop by his home and tell his mother that he didn’t believe in the racist behavior of the other cops in the area. Later, she’d tell her son, “You know, not all of them are bad.” And there were a couple of other positive experiences where the cops “did their job the way it was supposed to be done. Not through nonsense.”
