The City of Chicago, situated on the windswept shores of Lake Michigan, is  part of Cook County, Ill. Many of the locals call it “Crook County” because of its long and notorious history of corruption.

A report last year by the University of Illinois, Chicago campus, listed about 150 county politicians and employees who had been convicted in recent years for wrongdoing.

Add to the list Chicago Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who was fired this week, just days after an incriminating dashcam video was released showing the street slaughter of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by one of Chicago’s finest.

The now former police officer, Jason Van Dyke, has been charged with murder. On Tuesday, he was released after posting a $1.5 million bond.

Laquan was shot and killed in October 2014. At least seven other officers were on the scene, according to reports. Anyone who has seen the video of the horrendous crime should be outraged by the lies told by authorities for more than a year in covering up the criminal actions of Mr. Van Dyke.

Furthering the coverup, 86 minutes of video has mysteriously disappeared from a surveillance camera at a Burger King near the scene where Laquan was gunned down. The fast food restaurant’s manager says that police came into the store that night and tampered with the cameras. 

So who are the real crooks in Crook County?

Why did it take a year for the Cook County prosecutor, Anita Alvarez, to release the dashcam video to the public and file charges against Mr. Van Dyke? Why did it take Mayor Rahm Emanuel a year to dump the police superintendent and to create a task force on police accountability? Was the mayor the chief architect of paying Laquan’s family $5 million before a lawsuit was even filed? Was that supposed to be hush money?

A lot stinks in Crook County. And we hope that more heads roll before it’s all over, including that of the mayor.

For years, police have elicited the help of the community in combating crime. People who witness crimes or criminal activity are asked to “drop a dime,” meaning they should call in and report the suspected criminals.

We believe that “drop a dime” should apply to cops as well. If police across the nation don’t want to be tarnished in the public’s perception by the actions of the rogues and criminals in uniform who have held open season on African-American men, women and children in America, then they need to step forward and report their fellow officers.

“Good” cops should drop a dime on bad cops — like Mr. Van Dyke in Chicago, Timothy Loehmann in Cleveland (victim: Tamir Rice); Daniel Pantaleo in Staten Island, N.Y. (victim: Eric Garner); Ray Tensing in Cincinnati (victim: Sam Dubose); Eric Casebolt in McKinney, Texas, (victim: Dajerria Becton); and Alicia White, Caesar Goodson Jr., Brian Rice, Edward Nero, Garrett Miller and William Porter in Baltimore (victim: Freddy Gray).

As of Nov. 16, 1,000 people have been killed by police this year in the United States, according to records collected by The Guardian newspaper. From January to June, 135 African-Americans were killed by police. Of those, 32 percent were unarmed, the publication reported. During that same period, 234 white people were killed by police, with 15 percent unarmed.

Nothing changes in any community without pressure. Rosa Parks taught us that when her arrest in Montgomery, Ala., launched a yearlong bus boycott that led to equal seating on public buses. That was 60 years ago Tuesday.

Today, we are certain the continued public protests have drawn unwanted publicity to Chicago as the latest example of police abuse against African-Americans. Demonstrations on Black Friday that blocked entrances to the high-end shops along Chicago’s Magnificent Mile also may have an economic impact on businesses, bending the city’s latest actions toward justice.

The Free Press renews its call, initially made on these pages six months ago, for the national NAACP or any watchdog group to create and maintain a national database of police officers who are disciplined, fired, resigned, criminally charged or sued for excessive use of force and aberrant behavior. As we said then, such a database would put police agencies and the public on notice so that bad cops cannot leave their jobs, move elsewhere and wreak the same havoc on another unsuspecting community.

They should be barred from ever getting another job with a police department or security agency.

We call on cops in every community — from Richmond, Henrico and Chesterfield to Chicago — to drop a dime on the bad cops. We’d see a drop in these atrocious crimes.