Chicago police-speak requires interpretation

The sound of gunshots doesn't need translation.

The sight of a motionless body in the middle of the street doesn't need explanation.

What Chicago police had to say about both of them required translation and explanation.

I was just wrapping up a meeting in our downtown conference room last Thursday when the shots were fired.

There were five quick shots; distinctive, sharp sounds that bounced off the canyon of buildings along State Street.

Eight of us at the meeting jumped up and looked out the 4th floor

window down onto the street. People were running away from where the gunfire seemed to have come from.

The police were running toward it.

Looking south, there was a man sprawled in the middle of the street. No blood. Just a body, frozen where it fell. It was the only object not moving on the landscape.

The police had been running after a purse snatcher. During the chase, the guy grabbed a random hostage and put a knife to his neck. The cops shot and killed the attacker.

The hostage wasn't hurt.

One bullet struck a policeman in his protective vest and saved his life.

That was about it.

But you wouldn't have known that was it when Chicago Police Supt. Jody Weis arrived an hour later to give the first official account of what happened.

Weis' statement, carried live on TV websites and some radio stations, was typical of what has become a police ritual. The public is fed a nearly incomprehensible explanation during which the facts are propped up by unnecessary drivel.

Here is what Weis said, followed by what it meant:

Weis Reality

"We had an incident."

Something bad has happened.

"We had a male individual."

A man.

"Someone who is an aggressive panhandler."

A beggar who really bothers people.

"Menacing people with a knife."

Trying to stab or slash people.

"Our guys responded to that situation."

Officers did their jobs.

"He then proceeded down the street."

The guy with the knife ran away.

"Our officers engaged the individual."

They tried to stop him.

"He kept escalating his actions."

He tried to kill the hostage

"We used deadly force."

We shot him.

"I believe he has been pronounced."

I think he's dead.

Maybe there should be a translator off to the side of the police, offering a pedestrian-version of what is being said.

Seriously. Who can understand such twaddle?

I'm not sure it is entirely Supt. Jody Weis' fault. The above mumbo-jumbo appeared to have been from a written statement that Weis was reading. As Weis had just come from the hospital, I'm sure the police gibberish was put together by his PR staff.

They're not doing the boss any favors by putting those words in his mouth.

Of course, Weis doesn't really have to repeat such malarkey. As proof that neither the superintendent, or anybody else, really talks that way, when he was finished with the statement and began answering questions, common sense and common English seemed to take over.

My office is about 50 paces from where Supt. Weis was speaking about the deadly police shooting. On my bulletin board is an 8 by 10 page that I've had for more than 30 years. But some things never go out of date.

Here's what it says:

"Strike three. Get your hand off my knee.

You're overdrawn.

Your horse won.

Yes. No.

You have the account.

Walk. Don't walk.

Mother's dead.

Basic events require simple language.

Idiosyncratically, euphuistic eccentricities are the promulgators of triturable obfuscation.

What did you do last night?

Enter into a meaningful romantic involvement or fall in love?

What did you have for breakfast this morning?

The upper part of a hog's hind leg with two oval bodies encased in a shell laid by a female bird or ham and eggs?

The incessant use of police-speak to confuse and complicate simple announcements reminds me of a great quote from one of America's greatest writers, Samuel Clemens, aka Mark Twain.

"Sometimes I wonder whether the world is being run by smart people who are putting us on or by imbeciles who really mean it."

Chuck Goudie, whose column appears each Monday, is the chief investigative reporter at ABC7 News in Chicago. The views in this column are his own and not those of WLS-TV. He can be reached by email at chuckgoudie@gmail.com and followed at twitter.com/ChuckGoudie.