**Written by Doug Powers

Chicago’s in the midst of the city’s worst crime and violence wave in two decades, and Attorney General Loretta Lynch showed up today — a week before Obama’s eight years are up — to give a stern lecture to … the police:

A damning U.S. Department of Justice report released Friday morning excoriates the Chicago Police Department for failing to discipline officers who too often resort to force, including shootings.

The failure to effectively investigate officers’ use of force or discipline police “has helped create a culture in which officers expect to use force and not be questioned about the need for or propriety of that use,” the Justice Department said.

The 164-page report paints a picture of a broken department where officers have disproportionately used force against African-Americans and Hispanics. Officers have rarely faced consequences, as the city’s famously ineffective oversight authorities have done cursory investigations biased in favor of officers, the report states.

In response to the investigation, Mayor Rahm Emanuel has agreed to enter a court-enforced pact with the Justice Department on reforms, federal authorities announced. The report lauds some of the changes Emanuel has made to policing in recent months but cautions that further reforms are needed and change is unlikely to last without outside monitoring.

Decade-upon-decade of Democrat control of Chicago led the Obama Justice Department to come to the following conclusion: Give Democrats a chance to fix this problem!

Lynch’s statement cited low officer morale as a contributing factor to the city’s problems:

Our investigation found that this pattern or practice is in no small part the result of severely deficient training procedures and accountability systems. As my colleagues will explain in greater detail, CPD does not give its officers the training they need to do their jobs safely, effectively, and lawfully. It fails to properly collect and analyze data, including data on misconduct complaints and training deficiencies. And it does not adequately review use of force incidents to determine whether force was appropriate or lawful, or whether the use of force could have been avoided altogether. All of these issues are compounded by poor supervision and oversight, leading to low officer morale and an erosion in officer accountability.

Considering who sent the messenger, that concern about low officer morale at this point is little more than a last-ditch effort to shore up Obama’s irony legacy.

**Written by Doug Powers

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