Chicago Justice Podcast: Recent Episodes
Tracy Siska
This is our Chicago Justice Podcast that covers crime, violence, and justice issues in Chicago. We will feature deep dives in to justice system data, interview with researchers and justice system reform advocates, as well as evaluations of justice system practices.
What happens when a police unit operates outside traditional oversight and is staffed by officers with troubling disciplinary histories?
In this episode, we take a deep dive into the New York Police Department’s Community Response Team (CRT), a controversial unit that has drawn scrutiny for its aggressive tactics, alleged constitutional violations, and lack of accountability. We examine reporting that raises serious questions about the unit’s operations, including allegations that CRT officers repeatedly engaged in unconstitutional stops, searches, and enforcement actions.
Our discussion also explores the makeup of the unit itself, including the significant number of officers assigned to CRT who have histories of sustained misconduct complaints. We unpack what that says about police culture, leadership, and the broader challenges of reform.
Perhaps most troubling, we examine claims that the unit functioned outside the NYPD’s traditional chain of command, with key decisions allegedly driven directly by Mayor Eric Adams’ office rather than department leadership. What does this mean for transparency, accountability, and democratic oversight of policing?
Joining us is Eric Umansky, Editor-at-Large at ProPublica, whose investigative reporting helped uncover the inner workings of the CRT and the political dynamics surrounding the unit.
This is a critical conversation about policing, public accountability, constitutional rights, and who really controls law enforcement in one of the nation’s largest cities.
More than 100,000 Automated License Plate Reader cameras are now operating across the United States, feeding data into networks shared by thousands of police departments and federal agencies. But where are these cameras located, and who is most affected by this growing surveillance infrastructure?
In this episode, we speak with Professor Steven Keener of Christopher Newport University, first author of the recent study “Surveillance Inequality: Race, Poverty, and the Geography of Automated License Plate Reader Deployment.“ Together, we explore the findings of the research and what they reveal about the relationship between surveillance, race, poverty, and community impact.
As part two of our series on Flock Safety and ALPR technology, this conversation examines how these systems work, how data is shared among more than 3,000 law enforcement agencies, and why these developments are generating growing concern among researchers, advocates, and community members.
In this episode, we begin a special series examining the rapid expansion of Automated License Plate Reader (ALPR) technology and the growing privacy and civil liberties concerns surrounding its use.
Flock Security, one of the nation’s largest ALPR providers, reports that more than 100,000 cameras have been deployed across the United States. These cameras collect detailed information about vehicles, including license plate numbers, make, model, color, distinctive features, and the precise location and time of capture. Much of this data is accessible through a centralized network used by thousands of law enforcement agencies, raising important questions about surveillance, accountability, data sharing, and constitutional protections.
To help unpack how these systems work, what information they collect, and how they are increasingly being used by local police departments, we are joined by Jon McCray Jones, Policy Analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union of Wisconsin. Together, we explore the capabilities of Flock cameras, concerns about warrantless access to vehicle location data, the potential for misuse, and the broader implications for privacy in an era of expanding surveillance technologies.
This is the first installment of a multipart series investigating ALPR systems, their impact on communities, and the policy debates shaping their future.
Topics discussed:
- What Automated License Plate Readers (ALPRs) are and how they work
- Flock Security’s nationwide camera network
- Vehicle tracking, data collection, and retention practices
- Information-sharing among thousands of law enforcement agencies
- Privacy, civil liberties, and Fourth Amendment concerns
- Transparency, oversight, and accountability challenges
- The potential role of federal agencies and data access questions
- What communities should know about surveillance technology in their neighborhoods
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What really happened on New Year’s Day 2019 when North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers shot and killed Brandon Webster?
For years, the official account of the shooting was accepted by law enforcement leaders, government officials, and the media. But behind the scenes, an internal investigation uncovered evidence showing that the trooper’s version of events could not have happened as reported. Despite those findings, both the Highway Patrol’s internal review and an investigation by the North Carolina State Bureau of Investigation ultimately upheld the official narrative.
This week, we’re joined by Joseph Neff of The Marshall Project, whose reporting exposed the contradictions, the buried evidence, and the troubling questions surrounding the investigations that followed Webster’s death. Together, we examine how official narratives take hold, why conflicting facts were ignored, and what this case reveals about accountability, transparency, and police oversight.
Listen as we unpack one of North Carolina’s most disturbing law enforcement cover-ups and the reporting that brought the truth to light.
In this episode, we sit down with Joanna C. Schwartz, UCLA law professor and author of Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable, to unpack the hidden systems that protect police from consequences.
We go beyond the headlines about qualified immunity to explore what really blocks accountability:
- Why most police misconduct lawsuits fail before trial
- How courts, police departments, and legal rules work together to “shield” officers
- The surprising truth about who actually pays when lawsuits succeed
- Why internal discipline systems rarely deliver justice
- What reforms could actually change the system
Grounded in real cases, data, and decades of research, Schwartz reveals a reality most people never see: accountability doesn’t just break down in court—it fails at every stage.
If you care about policing, civil rights, or how legal systems actually work in practice, this conversation is essential listening.
This week, we break down the controversial 2022 raid of Grammy-nominated rapper Afroman’s home by Adams County Sheriff’s deputies and the legal fallout that followed. Acting on claims from a confidential informant alleging kidnapped women, a “sex dungeon,” and large quantities of marijuana, officers executed a warrant that ultimately uncovered none of it. In fact, there wasn’t even a basement.
Joining us is Afroman’s attorney, Dr. David Osborne, who walks us through the critical legal questions at the heart of the case, from the reliability of the informant to the steps deputies did or didn’t take to verify the allegations before obtaining the warrant.
We also dive into the aftermath. Afroman used home security footage from the raid in a series of music videos tied to his 18th studio album, and seven deputies later filed a civil lawsuit alleging defamation and invasion of privacy.
Was this a failure of police procedure, a breakdown in judicial oversight, or something more? Tune in as we unpack the facts, the law, and what this case could mean for accountability in law enforcement.
What we cover:How a single informant’s claims led to a full-scale raidThe warrant process and probable cause questionsWhat deputies found and didn’t findThe legal battle over Afroman’s use of the footageBroader implications for civil liberties and police accountability
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How politics, media, and institutions distort crime narratives across AmericaFear has become the dominant framework for how Americans understand crime—and it is often deliberately manufactured.
In this episode of the Chicago Justice Podcast, host Tracy Siska, Executive Director of the Chicago Justice Project, introduces a new national focus for the show. We examine how crime and violence are exploited by political leaders, media outlets, justice system officials, and police unions to shape public perception, deflect accountability, and justify extreme policy responses.
Despite well‑documented declines in violent crime across much of the country from 2022 through 2025, fear‑based narratives persist. Isolated incidents are amplified, progress is denied, and national trends are ignored when they complicate political agendas.
This episode challenges the myths surrounding crime “waves,” questions who benefits from public fear, and explores how distorted narratives can lead to real‑world consequences—including militarized responses and the erosion of democratic accountability.
This episode marks the beginning of our expanded national lens on public safety, justice, and truth.
In a first-of-its-kind independent analysis of the effectiveness of ShotSpotter, the science says the technology does not lead to more arrests and convictions for gun crimes and does not reduce these crimes in the areas where it is deployed. The study examined the impact of ShotSpotter in Chicago and Kansas City.
To understand the science more deeply, we sat down with the study’s first author, Dr. Eric Piza, who is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Director of Crime Analysis Initiatives, and Co-Director of the Crime Prevention Lab at Northeastern University.
The study does uncover that ShotSpotter positively impacted response times, the location of victims, and the recovery of evidence from crime scenes. While this all sounds great, it is not even remotely reflective of the criminological gains promised by SoundThinking, the company that owns the technology. The original sales pitch promised more arrests for gun crimes and convictions and, thus, a reduction in gun violence. None of these promises have come to fruition.
This scholarly peer-reviewed analysis mostly mirrors previous analyses conducted by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, the MacArthur Justice Center, and the Chicago Office of Inspector General. Pro-police politicians & journalists in Chicago have dismissed all three of these previous analyses as biased, including the one from the City’s Inspector General. The alt-right refuses to hear any criticism of the police department, no matter how fact-based those criticisms might be. This shuts down any possibility of a public discussion on the merits of anything the police are in favor of.
This most recent study is just being ignored by the media and politicians in Chicago. This is probably because they cannot label it biased. Instead, many alderpersons in Chicago are calling on the mayor to keep the ShotSpotter contract in place despite the technology failing to deliver on any of its promises.
We open season four with a discussion of Karina’s bill, which hopes to formalize a process for the courts & police departments throughout Illinois to seize guns from individuals who have an order of protection entered against them.
Our guest today is Danielle Parisi Ruffatto, Managing Director of the Family Law and Protective Orders Division at Ascend Justice. We discuss the horrific murder of Karina Gonzales & her daughter Daniela Alvarez at the hands of Karina’s husband, Jose Alvarez, who had been ordered to stay away from the home.
The protector order Karina received from the court revokes a person’s FOID card, but the court and police do not have a formal process for ensuring that officers remove the gun when they are serving the order of protection. Karina’s bill will formalize this process while empowering judges to approve search warrants when entering the protective order to allow officers to search homes & retrieve weapons if necessary.
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On today’s show, we discuss the connection between racialized policing in the US and the efforts by the right-wing to erase slavery from America’s history. We discuss this with Joseph Flynn, the Executive Director for Equity and Inclusion in the Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Northern Illinois University.
The efforts to rewrite American history are an attempt to prevent Americans from realizing the connection between slavery, Jim Crow laws, the civil rights struggle in the mid-20th century, and policing in communities of color today. Absent this context, it could seem ridiculous for anyone to conclude that the justice system is and has been systemically racist.
The right-wing wants everyone to think that the murders of George Floyd and Laquan McDonald are unrelated events. That the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse for his crimes had nothing to do with the fact that America has, since its founding, feared black men and justified just about any action taken by white men against the bodies and lives of black men if the white man was “scared.” The verdict can easily be accepted if you view it from the lens of white supremacy that dictates that black men are nothing more than urban predators who cannot control their most primal urges.
We also discuss the epidemic of fear surrounding ethnic studies programs at universities across the country. This fear has been driven by America’s growing underbelly of unsophisticated and fearful residents seeking someone to blame for the struggles in their lives. This makes them ripe for manipulation by the right-wing media machine and politicians who seek to benefit themselves at the expense of their supporters. This wedge serves to empower right-wing elites while simultaneously not only hurting communities of color but also putting the lives and bodies of people of color on the line.
Dr. Joseph Flynn’s Perspectives on WNIU – Northern Public Radio can be found here.
On today's episode, we feature an interview with Alexandra Block from the ACLU of Illinois about their lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department's highly questionable traffic stop practices. The ACLU alleges that the CPD pulls people over exclusively to search them and their care for drugs and guns. According to their statistics, the CPD's rate of finding guns, drugs, or cause to arrest the person they have pulled over is about 1%.
In 2020 the Cook County State's Attorney's Office documented a significant switch in tactics by the CPD from pursuing gun offenders, those who have committed a violent crime with a weapon, to seek those who possess an unregistered gun. In the ACLU lawsuit, they allege that in 2016 the CPD made another switch in tactics from doing large numbers of stops of pedestrians in communities of color to making car stops in never before seen numbers in those same communities. The ACLU calls this just another version of stop and frisk. When combining these two critical data points, it is evident that CPD officials made a concerted effort to change how they fight gun violence and where and how they search for unregistered guns.
We also discussed with Alexandra that within a lawsuit filed by a former officer, internal emails were exposed showing high-ranking officers within the department pushing middle management to increase their traffic stop numbers. The emails reveal the pushing of unconstitutional CPD quotas designed to get officers on the street to increase significantly the number of pretextual stops they make. As the ACLU data shows, about 1 in 100 stops results in gun, drugs, or cause for arrest being found. Oddly enough, they also don't result in a ticket being written. Significant proof that traffic safety is not a purpose for the stops.
Today’s episode discusses the long history of abuse and mismanagement at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) with Injustice Watch reporters Kelly Garcia and Carlos Ballesteros.
The JTDC has long been a dumping ground for clouted workers in Cook County government who were too incompetent for any other job in the county. This, combined with a seeming refusal of half of those running the facility to see their role as anything less than jailers, has led to a point where over the last decade, report after report has come out on the facility and their treatment of the youth in the facility. Despite these multiple reports un the horrible conditions within the facility, those in charge of running the facility seem unwilling and incapable of making the required changes.
The JTDC is under the authority of Cook County Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans. One of the reports trashing the facility came from a committee he put together, and still, no significant change has come to the JTDC.
We will discuss these issues and discuss Injustice Watch’s reporting on the JTDC with Kelly and Carlos.
Despite promises to the contrary by the Chicago Police Department and the agencies that make up the police accountability system in Chicago, lying while undertaking your official duties as an officer isn’t taken all that seriously.
The CPD’s rule 14 bars any officer from knowingly submitting a written or oral false report. In other words, they are not supposed to lie. A recent report issued by the Chicago Inspector General’s office details how the CPD and the police accountability system are utterly inconsistent in how they respond to officers lying in their official duties. While all the agencies talk publicly about the importance of integrity and truthfulness, they are not taking violations of rule 14 anywhere as seriously as they want people to believe they are.
The integrity of the CPD and the police accountability system is vital to building trust between communities and the CPD. Despite this reality, the Office of Inspector General’s Public Safety section continues to churn out report after report demonstrating how little attention the agencies pay toward accountability.
Today’s episode discusses these issues with Chicago’s Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.
On today’s show we attempt to bring facts and science to the discuss around the Pre-Trail Fairness Act (PTFA) and the state of electronic monitoring (EM) in the Cook County criminal justice system. We were honored to sit down with Kareem Butler, a pretrial justice fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, to discuss these vital issues.
The hyperbolic response to bail reform in Cook County and the subsequent passage of the PTFA by the Illinois General Assembly having nothing to do with the reality of what the efforts mean for communities throughout the state but are all about an ideology that cannot come to terms with the need for the justice system to treat every equitably. The response is also often based in deep hatred and fundamental distrust of the poor. This is why those bothered by both efforts are so upset that the poor can spend their pre-trial time out on the street just like those with the same charges but with the money to bond themselves out of jail.
Butler demonstrates a deep understanding of the issue and is able to highlight the hypocrisy in the responses to these efforts. Also, Butler is very good at bringing the data to back up his perspective. This is a fundamentally opposite position of the alt right in Chicago whose don’t need any evidence to support their beliefs. It is clear what Butler and his organization is advocating for is evidence based decision making in pre-trial assessment of the risk a potential defendant poses and for a system where there is not two different pre-trial detention policies for the rich and the poor.
Butler also provides insight in to just how in true Cook County disorganized fashion the EM systems have two masters. One being the Cook County Sheriff’s Office headed by political animal Tom Dart and the other being Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans. Neither office has a reputation being a really well run office free from political influence in their decisions. This should scare anyone that is concerned about the appropriateness of how these two EM systems are administered.
On the show today we sit down with Raina Lipsitz to discuss America’s problem with justice reform and how cities like Chicago are caught in endless cycle of failure when it comes to passing meaningful justice reform. A meaningful conversation to engage in now as Mayor Lightfoot’s time in office has ended with a pretty dismal record on justice reform including endlessly scapegoating judges as being to lenient despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary.
Lipsitz in an article published last summer in The Crime Report discusses a couple national level examples including Philadelphia’s progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner & New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams has proven to be pretty retrograde on his policing and justice policies according to Lipsitzincluding moving to reopen Riker’s jail despite the unprecedented evidence of the harm the jail is causing inmates. Krasner for his part has stayed pretty true to his politics and even won reelection despite the alt right’s complaints about his policies.
This discussion is very timely as Brandon Johnson starts his first days in office his spokesman already started to flip flop on whether Johnson would be reopening the mental health clinics that he promised so thoroughly during his campaign. Johnson is not alone just about every mayor for at least the last three decades has in one form or another campaigned on doing something about the abuse of the Chicago police and then never really do anything about that abuse once they get in to office. Lipsitz in her piece so perfectly explains how Chicago liberals want to think they are for true justice reform but when in power they always bail on those plans. They don’t want what happened to Kim Foxx to happen to them.
Raina Lipsitz is the author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, published from Verso. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera America, The Appeal, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The New Republic, among other publications. We are talking to her today about a piece she wrote last July in The Crime Report: Breaking the ‘Toxic Cycle’ of Fear Over Justice Reform.
The Adam Toledo shooting while a massive tragedy was not out of line with Chicago Police Department guidelines and so the firing of Eric Stillman smells like politics. Despite how the video of this shooting has been exploiting repeatedly for political purposes the reality is that tragic police shootings can occur and those shootings can also be inline with CPD guidelines.
The fervor over the shooting of Toledo makes sense as nobody really wants to see children die at the hands of anyone, especially law enforcement. This fact however does not allow people to say the shooting of Toledo is unjustified just because of Adam’s age without considering the facts involved in the shooting.
This also goes for the fact that the gun shot identifying technology ShotSpotter that did properly identify the shooting and altered officers to respond does not make the shooting unjustified. The technology is unproven and while we remain critical of the use of such technologies in this case it seems to have worked.
The reality is that it seems like Interim Superintendent Eric Carter is moving to fire Stillman for political reasons and not because of misconduct. If this is the case then this is going to support the conspiracy theories the CPD rank and file have about the CPD’s leadership and the police accountability system as a whole.
It also means that one more time Toledo’s death is being exploited for personal gain. It is a Chicago tradition unfortunately.
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Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has announced that after two terms in office she will not be running for re-election in the fall of 2024. On today’s show we will provide our quick response to Foxx deciding to end her political career and provide some insight on what brought us to this point.
It is very hard for progressive politicians to bring in the changes they campaign on because of the vitriolic response from centrists and conservatives. In the post 2016 presidential election that gave air to the alt right this has become much harder. The bar is raised to such a degree that the slightest mistake or transgression is seized upon and can be career ending.
In the case of Foxx her mistake was so big that it probably would have caused even the most conservative prosecutor their next election. Of course I am talking about the deal that Foxx executed in one of Chicago’s stupidest scandals ever, the Jussie Smollett case. The fact that the case was charged in the manner it was originally shows you just how dysfunctional it has been but that does not absolve Foxx of her responsibility of totally bumbling probably the highest profile (yet stupidest) case her office would handle in her two terms.
The reality is that the reaction to the progressive reforms that Foxx put forward like bail reform and her changes to not charging people for retail theft unless in access of a $1,000 was stolen were completely baseless. The criticisms were put forward from the alt right in Chicago, a mayor who has a PhD in pointing finger at other, and a police superintendent with a history of lying during an internal misconduct investigation. Not a credible bunch at all.
On today’s show we discuss the new process for how a new superintendent (supt) for the Chicago Police Department gets selected. With the creation of the new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability the process is slightly different from the last time a new supt was selected.
In years past the Chicago Police Board would select 3 candidates for the job of supt and send that list to the mayor. Legally it seemed the mayor was forced to either selected his/her pick from that list or return the entire list to the Board for the to select a new slate of candidates. Historically mayors have just ignored the Board’s selections and hired their own choice for supt. It seems like Mayor Lightfoot did choose from the list provided but it has been reported that the Board knew that the Mayor had a person in mind so they made sure to put that candidate on their short list.
Now the selection process for a new supt is run by the Commission. There certainly seems like there Is potential for real change. However, some recent comments by the Commission’s interim President Anthony Driver Jr have me a little worried about the potential for real change. Driver Jr was recently quoted talking about how rank and file officers didn’t feel that former Superintendent David Brown had their backs. Driver Jr serving as a megaphone for alt right rhetoric that comes straight from the alt right leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police is very concerning. Driver Jr seems to think that they are going to find some one for the position of supt that cannot unite the alt right of the department, with the residents of Chicago concerned about police misconduct, and policymakers in to a united front to fight crime and violence in Chicago. Obviously this is folly. The fact that his is coming from the person leading the organization that is selecting the candidates to be the next supt is very, very concerning.
On today’s episode I am going to give you my very initial thoughts on the Brandon Johnson victory in the Chicago mayoral runoff election as it pertains to police reform issues.
The majority of the mayoral field ran primarily on the issue of crime and violence being out of control in Chicago. If you are thinking that black “progressive” alderpeople who jumped in the race wouldn’t do that you would be wrong. Instead it was a chorus signing the tride but true 1980s ear rhetoric about the need for more police officers and that each individual candidate was the only person who could bring crime under control. While these tactics seemed to be affective against Mayor Lightfoot those same types of critiques against a far more progressive in rhetoric candidate Johnson didn’t seem to work as well.
There is little doubt in my mind that Paul Vallas tried the Bob Fioretti plan where he was going to try to be a candidate for every possible constituency in the city, and many that couldn’t even vote in this election. Over the last several years he has certainly grown publicly closer to the MAGA and alt right both in Chicago and throughout Illinois. As Illinois grows more and more democratic this strategy has always seemed odd to me. Attempting a mayoral run in Chicago after doing this is puzzling for sure. Unfortunately for Vallas he continued to do this during the campaign. There is no doubt given the margin of about 17,000 votes his move right probably played a more important role then we will ever understand in his loss.
As for what we should expect from Johnson I am think reformers should not expect major changes in the first budget. There just isn’t enough time. When Johnson starts to make changes I am hoping he roles our a crisis response system that removes officers from responding to 911 calls that don’t require them to be there. This would allow the city to staff a response with mental health professionals, medical personnel, and social workers. This among all the reforms Johnson could bring in would probably do the most to help repair the relationship between the community and the police department.
On today’s pod we discuss the alleged reasoning behind Chicago CRED’s founder & leader Arne Duncan’s endorsement of Paul Vallas for mayor. Later we also discuss the Chicago Tribune’s editorial comparing Donald Trump & Jussie Smollett.
We know about Duncan’s endorsement because Duncan authored an OpEd in the Chicago Tribune announcing it. While we are not going to judge the endorsement itself other than to say we believe nonprofit leaders are and should be barred from engaging in any type of political involvement including endorsements. This is why we find what Duncan has done and the method he has done it to be completely distasteful but inline with his Chicago machine roots.
The outrageous and completely unbelievable reasoning behind this endorsement is that Duncan says because Paul Vallas has a wife who is former police officer and that his son is a current officer makes him the perfect person to make the Fraternal Order of Police, the main police union in Chicago, swallow reforms. If you are thinking this is totally bat shit crazy you are not alone. This would require Duncan to be so naive that the alt right extremist FOP leadership did not have a conversation with Vallas about reversing reforms already put in to place and limiting whatever he might bring forward during his administration. The FOP leadership is awful & full of hatred but they are not that dumb. That conversation definitely took place. Duncan knows this but used this bull shit reasoning anyways.
The weird thing is Chicago CRED’s reforms that they support as an organization are very aligned with Brandon Johnson’s stated reform goals. They are also very far from the unleash the police rhetoric of Vallas.
Also on the show today we discuss a really bad OpEd by the Tribune’s Editorial Board comparing Donald Trump to Jussie Smollett. While they are aligned in that they are both proven liars there is nothing else that connects them. However, in the OpEd itself the Tribune reveals the real reason they have pushed so hard for Smollett to be put in prison and it is pretty ridiculous for the small government hypocrites.
The coverage of the runoff in the race for mayor and the intense focus on crime and criminal justice matters exposes bias in the Chicago Tribune and the reporters. In the article we discuss today there are massive assumptions embedded in the article that are presented as facts by the two authors. Also embedded in the article if you look closely are topics for which Chicago journalists continue to fail the public by not making the candidates for mayor provide specific answers to pointed follow up questions regarding their policies.
The rhetoric coming from the Vallas campaign about proactive policing and removing restrictions on police foot and car pursuits so they can get the criminals sounds good in a commercial but journalists should be forcing both candidates to provide specifics about their policies so experts can weigh in on what science tells us about the potential impact of their policies. All people of color should be scared of a Chicago Police Department unchained by the accountability system and free to do whatever is needed to get the job done. If anyone remembers what the Special Operations Section (SOS) street unit was doing under Phil Cline imagine that but department wide. It will be like dropping a nuclear bomb in police community relations building efforts.
For his part Brandon Johnson is providing more specifics about his plans than Vallas. He is for building up a citywide crisis response to 911 calls involving mental health and drugs that do not require an armed officer to respond. He has also said he will not commit to hiring additional officers to the department and instead wants to invest that money into programs that will have longer-term success. He has backed off of to some degree his support for defunding the police. I think with Johnson he has strategically decided to talk in more nuance about the programs he would fund by diverting police budgets rather that the general defund concepts.
This week we take the first of what will be many looks at soon to be former Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown and his time in Chicago.
Unfortunately for Chicago despite the Mayor’s glowing endorsement and hiring of Brown the reality is that the Lightfoot administration was engaged in a conspiracy with Brown to hide his misconduct while a member of the Dallas Police Department. Their lack of transparency and integrity about this issue was emblematic of Brown’s time with the CPD. Brown is skilled at co-opting the language of reformers and accountability advocates for his own ends. He probably said the words of transparency & accountability more than any former superintendent but in reality nothing changed on the ground.
Brown came in to the CPD while the department was in the early stages of a federal consent decree that mandates specific reforms. He also took over the department immediately after the Mayor herself brought in former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck to kick-start transforming the CPD in to a 21st century police department. Instead of continuing the reforms Beck had implemented Brown reversed them. The Mayor voiced support for Brown’s reversals despite making reforming the CPD a key part of her campaign.
No evaluation of Brown or Lighfoot’s time in power in Chicago can be done absent the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. Both played a major part in shaping the circumstances of their time in power. Unfortunately for both of them Brown completely misread the intelligence regarding the protests sweeping the country in response to Floyd’s murder. This was the same intelligence both the Cook County Sheriff and Illinois State Police read and knew protests were coming to Chicago. The pandemic alone may have doomed them but the failure of the CPD to have a professional response to the protests was probably the nail in the coffin for both Brown & Lightfoot.
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Mayor Lightfoot just lost re-election and now stands as the first mayor in forty years to fail to lose re-election after their first term in office. Her is our quick reaction to her loss.
There is little doubt that the reaction to to Mayor Lightfoot from the beginning was based partially on her race, gender, and sexuality. There is also little doubt that her style of governance and lack of relationship building skills contributed significantly to her downfall. Mayor Lightfoot has a propensity to always think she is the smartest person in the room and make important decisions without taking time to think things through.
Her reaction to the protests to George Floyd’s murder and their demands to defund the police are a prime example. Instead of coming up with a strategy to show compassion and engage the protestors she immediately came out and denounced the protests and dismissed their calls. She should have engaged protestors in discussions around what it would look like to create a new public safety agency and build alternative responses to 911 calls that don’t involve the police. This was the easy and smart move. But the Mayor chose to be dismissive in her patented style which only through gas on the flames instead of working to douse them.
For some reason the Mayor picked David Brown to be her Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department despite his track record of lying during internal investigations and police policies from the strong age. This hurt her politically as Brown’s tenure basically turned in to one big disgrace as he is as good at building and maintaining relationships as she is.
We are now left with a run off election for the mayor’s office between Paul Vallas, who is alt right when it comes to policing, and Brandon Johnson, who sounds progressive on police reform but has little real record to show voters. These candidates are starkly different on police reform like Chicago probably never really has had before. Time will tell who wins.
An interesting piece of research documenting in their own words how some practitioners in Illinois’ justice system use jail. While the research on the uses of jail throughout Illinois vary there seems to be a thread that the use is regularly extrajudicial and goes well beyond the legal purposes of jail and bail.
The goal of the report was to seek out how practitioners use jail and why they seem to be against the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFTA). While the report does shed light on how sheriffs and prosecutors, mostly rural, use jail they don’t really ask any followup questions that I believe would have shed immeasurable more light on the injustices in their practices.
The article quotes officials talking about how they jail people to address countless social problems that are way out of the purview of their offices and the justice system as a whole. This ranges from using jail to address homelessness in the short term and a person in crisis, however the type of crisis that is being addressed is not defined.
Now they practitioners also admitted they use jail as a way to pressure defendants to work out a plea bargain. The authors detail how outside of Cook County the percentage of felony cases that result in a plea bargain is 97% while in Cook County that rate is nearly 87%. These are disturbing figures especially when you consider just how broken and incompetent the justice system in large cities with official oversight is not to mention how bad rural justice systems must be with no meaningful accountability mechanisms built in to their systems.
It is pretty clear that practitioners from around Illinois are using the mechanisms of the justice system to inflict massive violations of constitutional and human rights. Their arguement against the PTFA is actually just an argument in favor of letting them continue their illicit practices that by the benefits them politically also.
The police accountability system in Chicago just provided all of us more examples of just how broken the system really is. It is a system I have spent over 25 years trying to reform but unfortunately the system cannot seem to provide the Chicago Police Department the oversight and accountability that has been so desperately needed in Chicago.
On today’s show we take a look at a recent example where the failures of this system has provided an avenue for an officer to continue his career as a police officer despite demonstrating horrendously bad judgment while off duty drunk and armed. Instead of firing the officer they instead sought a mediated settlement of a 180 suspension. This allowed the officer to get a job with a suburban department after serving his suspension instead of being removed from the profession completely. For some reason being drunk off duty, armed, getting in to a fight, and losing control of your gun in the fight is not something the system deems serious enough to remove the officer from the profession.
In last week’s show we talked with Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg and the failure of the system to fire two officers affiliated with the white supremacist organizations of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Unfortunately this pattern of incompetence and lack of aggressiveness is not new to this version of the system but instead endemic of how it has operated since it was created.
Also on today’s show we discuss an oddly framed article about CPD Superintendent David Brown aging out at the department this spring which was instead framed with intrigue as to whether or not he will stay on despite the fact that all the mayoral contenders say they will not keep him on. We also discuss the need for listeners to vote for their district council seats in the upcoming elections as the alt right in Chicago is organizing and running the exact people you would expect them to run.
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On today’s show we feature a interview with Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg discussing the case of Chicago’s Proud Boys cop. As it has been reported in Chicago the Bureau of Internal Affairs had two chances to fire a Chicago Police officer who was associating both in person and online with the white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys.
Officer Robert Bakker failed to report to the CPD that he had been questions by the FBI about his involvement with an organization known as the Proud Boys. When questioned by BIA Bakker gave “contradictory” and “misleading” statements about his involvement with the organization and the fact that he was questioned by the FBI. In their original set of findings BIA only suspended Bakker 5 days for his statements and his failure to report his being questioned by the FBI.
After the Office of Inspector General reviewed the closed investigation as they are required to do by law they referred the case back to BIA because in their opinion the investigation was not thorough. BIA then sustained charges against Bakker for new allegations but not for his involvement in the organization or for submitting a false report which would have been enough to move to fire Bakker.
As Witzburg details the CPD also had an opportunity to fire an officer who admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers. They also declined to fire this officer. Not the best time for police accountability in Chicago. When being involved with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers brings you a slap on the wrist in Chicago’s police accountability system it certainly seems that there needs to be accountability for accountability system.
This comes at time when Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent David Brown are trying to tell the public that the CPD is making progress on the reforms mandated by the consent decree. Not sure what reform would be more fundamental than firing cops for associations with white supremacist organizations.
On today’s show we feature a interview with Chicago Inspector General Debra Witzburg discussing the case of Chicago’s Proud Boys cop. As it has been reported in Chicago the Bureau of Internal Affairs had two chances to fire a Chicago Police officer who was associating both in person and online with the white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys.
Officer Robert Bakker failed to report to the CPD that he had been questions by the FBI about his involvement with an organization known as the Proud Boys. When questioned by BIA Bakker gave “contradictory” and “misleading” statements about his involvement with the organization and the fact that he was questioned by the FBI. In their original set of findings BIA only suspended Bakker 5 days for his statements and his failure to report his being questioned by the FBI.
After the Office of Inspector General reviewed the closed investigation as they are required to do by law they referred the case back to BIA because in their opinion the investigation was not thorough. BIA then sustained charges against Bakker for new allegations but not for his involvement in the organization or for submitting a false report which would have been enough to move to fire Bakker.
As Witzburg details the CPD also had an opportunity to fire an officer who admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers. They also declined to fire this officer. Not the best time for police accountability in Chicago. When being involved with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers brings you a slap on the wrist in Chicago’s police accountability system it certainly seems that there needs to be accountability for accountability system.
This comes at time when Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent David Brown are trying to tell the public that the CPD is making progress on the reforms mandated by the consent decree. Not sure what reform would be more fundamental than firing cops for associations with white supremacist organizations.
On today’s show we sit down with 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez to discuss her efforts to get Chicago to implement true crisis response that doesn’t involve the Chicago Police Department. While focusing mainly on her ordinance we also get a little politics in given it is the season as Chicago’s elections will be held in just a few weeks.
In response to protests stemming from the murder of George Floyd cities around the country started to test out and implement a form of crisis response to 911 calls that doesn’t involve sending uniformed officers with guns to the scene. The idea is that the mere presence of the badge and gun escalates the situation. It also takes in to account that officers are not trained nor equipped to properly deal with people in mental health crisis or who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol but haven’t yet become violence.
Chicago under Mayor Lightfoot did indeed create a few pilot programs in a couple of districts Mayor Lightfoot demanded that those pilots include an officer among the responders. This is something our guest and the three decades of evidence in Eugene, OR shows that is not the way to do it. Crisis response is not something new to the US. The CAHOOTS crisis response program has been active since 1988. CAHOOTS has demonstrated that crisis response can be successful over three decades it is just that Mayor Lightfoot either decided to ignore the evidence or just thought she knew better than everyone else. This is a common issue with people who always think they are the smartest person in the room.
Alderwoman Rodriguez Sanchez has introduced an ordinance called Treatment not Trauma that focuses on crisis response. We will be talking in-depth about the ordinance and Mayor Lightfoot’s response.
On today’s episode we sit down with Susan Lee who is currently Chief of Strategy and Policy at Chicago CRED but was previously Deputy Mayor for Public Safety under the Lightfoot administration.
Lee is known as an expert on violence prevention and was doing this same work in Los Angeles before coming to Chicago. Lee was brought in to city government to try to help build a more robust and coordinated anti-violence effort from a position within the Mayor’s office. Leaked emails have demonstrated that anti-violence partners that Lee had helped organize were complaining about the rhetoric being used by Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown regarding their criticism of bail reform. Rhetoric both continue to use despite the facts. It is believed that this very rhetoric lead Lee to leave the Mayor’s office and return to her work with Chicago CRED.
Our conversation today goes deep in to the work of the organizations working everyday in Chicago to prevent violence from occurring. Chicago CRED is just one of many organizations working on violence prevention. They are routinely underfunded and left to deal with the repercussions of failed city policies. For decades the city has continued to remove resources from the most under served communities and left organizations trying to do this work to pick up the pieces. Lee’s work is very important because to some degree these organizations are the only ones trying to make a difference in these communities.
We also discuss Lee’s recent OpEd in the Chicago Tribune on how reform of the Chicago Police Department hangs by a thread. This OpEd was in response to Superintendent David Brown’s firing of Robert Boik who was head of the office that was directing reform efforts. A move not inline with the rhetoric on reform coming from Mayor Lightfoot or Superintendent Brown.
On today’s episode we feature a discussion about the real cost of the Chicago Police Department and how the City of Chicago uses corrupt budget practices to hide some of the cost from taxpayers and the media. These practices are not new to the city but Mayor Lightfoot’s administration has done nothing to correct them. Thus, like other corrupt mayors before her she hides the true cost from taxpayers.
Trying to figure out exactly how much the city spends on the Chicago Police Department is almost impossible unless you have significant experience deciphering budgets for a living. Thankfully, Jonathan Jonathan Silverstein took the time to comb through the city’s budget and parse out the hidden costs associated with operating the CPD. Jonathan is a Management Analyst with the City of Evanston, IL during the day. Jonathan has experience with Chicago budgets as he worked both in an alderperson’s office and at the City Council Office of Financial Analysis.
The politics around how much policing in the city costs taxpayers has always be fraught. On one side you have the Fraternal Order of Police always demanding the city spend more and more on police while leftists in Chicago question the spending and would rather put those costs towards addressing root causes.
In his research Jonathan details how the city uses a dumping ground within the budget to hide items like pension costs maintenance for CPD facilities and cars. These practices allow the city to hide well over $1 billion in costs related to the CPD annually.
If you are thinking this reflects really bad on the media in Chicago that it took a budget nerd to spend his free time to uncover these costs when the Chicago media couldn’t be bothered over a couple decades to do it you would be correct!
On today's pod we focus on the problem of the absence of news and how humans fill that hole with their beliefs rather than facts. We dive deep in to these issues with Professor Sandy Goldberg from Northwestern University's Department of Philosophy. Goldberg recently authored an opinion editorial in the Chicago Tribune focused on the dangers posed when people fill the whole left by a lack of news on a topic with their beliefs about an issue that of course fit their political beliefs.
Goldberg's research focuses on Epistemology which is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. While this topic is incredibly meaningful given the how divisive the political rhetoric is in America it is especially important given the state of the discourse around justice reform in Chicago. Chicagoans are convinced that crime and violence are out of control and that these issues are unique to Chicago in a manner that it can only be dealt with by changing local responses. This of course flies in the face of the reality that crime and violence is up in cities around the country and that local responses seem not to impact whether a city is experiencing increased levels.
Also important to note is that the public's lack of trust in the news and the news media certainly plays in to exacerbating this issue. Many in the alt right in Chicago are convinced that local justice reform is responsible for the increases in crime and violence despite media reporting on data that proves this just isn't the case. When confronted by these facts the alt right just ignores them and relies on their political beliefs as enough to reinforce their beliefs despite being challenged by the news media with the facts. There is also the case that the fact that the news media is not reporting on individual aspects of the social circumstances in Chicago means they cannot be contributing to the underlying causes of crime and violence.
On today's pod we sit down with former Inspector General for the City of Chicago, Joe Ferguson. We discuss a wide range of topics from the city's failure to release investigative reports generated by his former office to city council corruption to why there is not a single Inspector General Office with oversight over all of the city departments.
Ferguson left office last year after a 12 year run. His tenure covered the last 2 years of the Daley administration, Rahm Emanuel's two terms, and about 60% of Mayor Lightfoot's first term. Ferguson aggressiveness in his pursuit to expose graft that is endemic to Chicago has always presented political problems for the politicians within the City Council and the Mayor's Office.
About 6 years ago the City Council passed legislation creating the Deputy Public Safety Inspector General within his office that empowered the office to reach in to the Chicago Police Department & the police accountability system in Chicago and audit their activities. This has resulted in Ferguson's office publishing several groundbreaking reports about the failures of the CPD and the police accountability system. Many of which have been discussed on previous episodes featuring interview with Deputy Public Safety Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.
Ferguson has been involved in Chicago politics and corruption long enough that his insight in to Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent David Browns actions are certainly informed. The Mayor could not hid her contempt for Ferguson or the office during her short time in office. It was so bad that when she announced his permanent replacement she just couldn't help herself and had to blurt out about the need for Witzburg and the office to stay in their lane. A clear threat to not mess with the big boss.
On today's pod we take a look at recent reporting by the Better Government Association that focuses on the city's Anti-violence efforts and the inability of leadership to detail specific steps they have taken to reduce gun violence. This inability to detail their anti-violence efforts hasn't stopped leadership from claiming those mysterious efforts have had an immediate impact on reducing gun violence this summer in Chicago.
In the long tradition of Chicago politicians Mayor Lightfoot and Tamara Mahal, the Mayor's point person leading the city's anti-violence efforts, have been spreading misinformation about the impact of the city's anti-violence efforts in every forum they can. According to the BGA this is not the first time Mahal has spread information that is clearly untrue to bolster her resume or the forcefulness of a program she is running. Mahal led the city's effort to distribute COVID 19 vaccines and was caught by the BGA bragging about how Chicago's efforts to distribute vaccines was the most equitable of any large city. Unfortunately an academic study rated the city's efforts at best 10th best out of the 16 largest cities in the country. Mahal was also caught spreading misinformation about her role in disaster relief including being a point person for a university as they worked through a drought. The only problem is city officials remember that their recommendation to the university consisted of water their grass less. It is this kind of puffery and dishonesty that gets you promoted within city government to lead citywide anti-violence efforts.
Also on today's show we discuss Robert Boik's firing from the Chicago Police Department's Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform for having a disagreement with Superintendent Brown. Boik is widely respected within the CPD as a straight shooter. The disagreement seems to stem from him request for 23 additional officers to be assigned to the police academy to help the CPD meet their obligations related to training officers throughout the department that has a deadline specified in the consent decree for March of 2023. Brown not only didn't approve the 23 officers he request over 40 officers from the academy be transferred to the Bureau of Patrol for street duty. Thus assuring the CPD would not meet their obligations for in-service training for all their officers.
To end today we examine an column by some local religious leaders claiming to know that the was to reduce gun violence in Chicago is to improve the CPD's clearance rates for violent crime. Clearly from the piece you know for sure the authors don't know anything about clearance rates or what impact putting pressure on officers to clear homicides might have in communities of color. Thankfully we do.
As crime & violence increased in many cities in America as the pandemic took hold in 2020 the media coalesced around a narrative that the increase was driven mostly by an increase in youth offending. This narrative about youth offending seemed to fit the circumstances as the pandemic got worse schools shut down and there was a a belief that there would be a huge increase in unsupervised youth roaming the streets free to reek havoc on the streets. The question posed by our guest this week is whether or not the data backs up this narrative or challenges it.
Today we speak with Richard Mendel who is a Senior Research Fellow for Youth Justice at the Sentencing Project and author of the study we focus on today. The study is titled "Data Reveals Violence Among Youth Under 18 Has Not Spiked in the Pandemic". Mendel's research directly challenged the narrative about the youth being the main driver of increases in crime and violence in 2020. The research focuses on violent crime including homicides, robberies, carjackings, rape. robbery.and aggravated assault.
Mendel clearly lays out:
the share of crime committed by youth continued to decline in 2020 Serious violence offenses committed by youth decreased in 2020. There is not national data collected on carjackings as they fall into the robbery category. In 2020 the data shows that robberies by youth declined in 2020.
Mendel's findings are provocative and certainly challenge the narrative that has been pushed by the media, especially in Chicago. Mendel does specifically highlight Chicago when addressing carjackings specifically as this issue has been in the media significantly. Mendel points to the fact that arrests have only been made in 5% of carjacking cases so it is impossible to determine from that small sample who is responsible for the majority of carjacking offenses.
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Today we feature a discussion with newly appointed Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. Witzburg previously held a variety of positions within the office including most recently being the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. It is in this role she was able to drive the activities of the office and have the office start actually making an impact on the administration of justice within the Chicago Police Department and the polcie accountability system in Chicago.
In our discussion with her we take a closer look at a recent report issued by the DPSIG on the lack of policies and procedures within the police accountability system in Chicago to administer accountability in a fair and consistent matter across all the cases they investigate. We then turn with Witzburg to a wish list of research the office published late last year and highlight several possible research topics and get her to comment on why each of these topics is leading the agenda for the DPSIG. There is no doubt that policing in Chicago and well as the system that tries to hold officers accountable provides a target rich environment for Witzburg's office. The research topics we highlight would make a significant positive impact on how our communities are policed and how Chicago's incredibly complicated police accountability system does their work.
We then end the interview getting Witzburg to respond to Mayor Lightfoot's comments about how she/the office need to stay in their lane. An obvious comment meant to intimidate Witzburg and the office to not interfere with decisions that the Mayor has made. So typical Chicago.
Here are links to our previous interview with Witzburg on various topics while she was the DPSIG:
Deborah Witzburg Extended Interview
Deborah Witzburg Interview on ShotSpotter
Exploring CPD’s Response to George Floyd Protests
COPA Compliance with Video Release Policy
Today we focus on the work of the Final 5 Campaign as they push to force the closure of Illinois' juvenile youth centers. According to the Campaign's website 10 years ago the centers across the state used to house as many as 1,200 youths in their 10 facilities. The reductions in the number of youths incarcerated is due mostly to changes in Illinois law have put a stop to housing those who were convicted of misdemeanor offenses. Also contributing to the reduction in the number of those incarcerated is that the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice created their own parole oversight mechanism which has reduced the number of youth that are incarcerated for technical violations of their release.
We are very excited to have Nicole Negrete from the Campaign on our podcast today to discuss their work. The Campaign is driven by formerly incarcerated youth or youth impacted by a family member, friend, or community member. This reality adds to the urgency and dedication to those behind the campaign.
America more broadly and Illinois specifically has for a very long time been a carceral state that is convinced that locking youth up for even the most minor offenses will in the long term bring about safer communities. Unfortunately for the youth in Illinois it has taken policymakers far too long to learn what criminologists have known for a long time, deterrence is not as successful as ideologues believe it is. This has led the state to incarcerate too many youth for far too long regardless of what best practices and social science research shows works. This has had incalculable impact on communities and youth throughout Illinois.
A recent investigation by Pro Publica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that many schools within Illinois are ticketing students for rather common misbehavior in schools. Much of the ticketing either skirts state law or outright breaks it as schools are not allowed to ticket students and in 2019 the state outlawed completely the practice of ticketing students for truancy. The change in state law did not slow the practice of ticketing students for truancy regardless of the practice being outlawed. It seems as if many schools in Illinois viewed the law as optional or not applying to them.
Today with speak with the two authors of this amazing piece of investigative reporting Jodi Cohen from Pro Publica Illinois and Jennifer Smith Richards from the Chicago Tribune. Their story is a deep dive into a practice that is used by countless schools districts around the state. Years ago the state outlawed schools themselves from directly ticketing students. So, many school districts did not want to give the practice up so they instead hand the kids over to police to do the ticketing. Many schools have school resource officers stationed in the schools so it is a quick walk over to that office where they hand the child off to the officer and pretend that the schools are not involved in ticketing the students. If this sounds highly corrupt and very typical for Illinois you would be correct.
Of the many problems inv0lved in this practice is that many times the ticketing of students is hitting students from the most under-served communities with the least resources possible to pay the fines and fees. Then their is the quasi legal process where students who want to fight the legitimacy of the ticket have to appear in front of hearing officers in mock courtroom settings or in front of judges in courtrooms but are not provided counsel at any point. As Cohen and Smith Richards discuss today the entire process regardless of the setting is set up as an assembly line to process kids through an unjust mockery of due process.
The Chicago Park District sex scandal should have been an opportunity for leadership in Chicago to rise to the occasion to protect victims from being re-victimized and from others from not being victimized at all. Instead, Chicago got exactly what most Chicagoans would expect. Political leadership at the Park District and at city hall chose instead to go in to coverup mode or outright deny their power to impact the response to allegations of widespread sexual harassment, abuse, and assault at the city's pools and beaches.
Dan's reporting clearly detailed that Michael Kelly, the CEO and superintendent, received materials that detailed an allegation of sexual misconduct involving employees and he say on it rather than the legal and moral thing to sound all the alarms possible and demand immediate action to protect not only other Park District staff but the tens of thousands of Chicago children that frequent the city's pools and hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists that visit Chicago's many beaches each year. Kelly actions unfortunately were not an outlier when it came to Park District officials. Chicago Park District Board President Avis LaVelle told 32nd Ward Alderperson Scott Waguespack in a meeting that all the allegations that Dan uncovered were nothing more than "sour grapes" from women who had consented to the sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. Instead of demanding the Chicago Police Department and Cook County State's Attorney's Office get involved to make every effort to protect the women the Park District leadership did nothing more than coverup the allegations including firing the Deputy Inspector General running the investigation and later forced out the Inspector General. Not the response of ethical and moral people but exactly what you would expect from Chicago politicians.
In our conversation with Dan we will touch many aspects of the scandal including how Kelly and LaVelle got to their positions of power. We also discuss the unbelievable fact that the Park District has a history of going back to at least 1975 of ignoring allegations of sexual misconduct at the city's pools and beaaches.
On the show today we feature a discussion with 22nd Ward Alderperson Michael Rodriguez on the topic of criminal justice in Chicago. Our wide ranging discussion cover topics from examining Mayor Lightfoot's record on police reform, the Mayor's inability to bring the George Floyd protestors to the table, and the recent move by city officials to extend the curfew for minors.
The Mayor despite her rhetoric to the contrary when she was running for Mayor she has had a very mixed bag when it comes to police reform. It is clear she really is a centrist when it comes to finding a new way forward in policing. She is slow walking building up new systems to respond to 911 calls that do not require a police response and her move to extend the curfew will only increase negative interactions between BIPOC youth and the CPD. All of this makes our discussion with Rodriguez all the more important.
Rodriguez is a vocal critic of the Mayor and the Chicago Police Department when their is cause to question their actions. As a member of the progressive caucus in the city council Rodriguez has distinguished himself by fighting for investment in communities as the long-term solution to crime and violence rather than the constant reactionary move by political leaders to throw more and more money at the CPD. A move the Mayor and many of the alt right contingent within the city council want to do currently.
Rodriguez grew up in Little Village the same community he now represents in the city council. Rodriguez was a community organizer with Little Village Community Development Corporation which would later change names to ENLACE Chicago. He rose to lead that organization before running for and eventually winning a set in the city council to represent his community.
The long lasting FOIA battle for historical records related to police accountability within the Chicago Police Department made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. The arguments in front of the Illinois Supreme Court stem from the Chicago Police Department failing to respond within the 5 days required by law to a request for records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. By law this failure eliminates the ability of the CPD to claim the request is overly burdensome. An exemption that is routinely used by public bodies across Illinois to get out from under the law’s requirements.
In this case specifically a lawyer filed a request for historical police accountability records ion Chicago. The request spanned multiple decades and included tens of thousands of pages of records at a minimum. After the CPD eventually got around to denying the request because it was overly burdensome lathe lawyer filed used in Illinois courts. At the trial level the lawyer won access but the appellate court reversed that decision which is why this case made it to the Illinois Supreme Court.
This sordid case also includes the city offering Charles Green the man whose name is on the request and whose supposedly is trying to access these records to clear his name for a crime he says he was wrongly convicted of, $500,000 to drop the case. In the end Green never got his money and depending on how the Court rules he may not get his records either.
Also on the show today we cover
- Fox 32 Chicago exploiting violence in Chicago to frame a multimillion dollar donation from a Illinois based billionaire to a University of Chic ago think tank as fighting gun violence in Chicago when it has nothing to do with gun violence at all.
- Governor Pritzker signing a bill that is as weak and useless on creating an alternative response system rather than sending cops to crimes that don’t require them to be there as it can be.
On today's how we discuss three examples of media coverage of crime and violence in Chicago that perfectly demonstrate just how bad the coverage of these issues is in Chicago. There is little doubt that the tried and true methods of covering crime and violence in Chicago on a daily basis serves nobody's interest but the outlets and journalists' themselves.
The internet has served not as an empowering tool for the media to crime and violence in a more nuanced and thoughtful way without the space and time restrictions that printing deadline or nightly newscasts put on local journalists. Instead it has mostly served to increase space available for the same horrible reporting. The secondary problem the internet has allowed for is the ever increasing pressure from political operations that disguise themselves as media outlets and push "reporting" that serves a fringe political ideology. Unfortunately for Chicago, there too many fringe political operations that put pressure on local media to report the news inline with their political ideology.
All of this leads us to the three media stories we we discuss on today's show: Arrest rates have dropped over past few years in Chicago as crime rates go up -- why?
Trump’s Operation Legend’s legacy: 2 years later, Chicago gun defendants getting stiff sentences
68 bullets fired in Near North shootout, but man accused of taking part only faces misdemeanor after prosecutors reject felony charges All three are horrific in their own way. Sometimes it is heard to figure out if a report on crime and violence in Chicago in Chicago is from a mainstream outlet or one of the fringe political operations if you read them without knowing what outlet it was coming from. Crime and violence reporting has always been an issues in Chicago unfortunately the internet has not brought about a boom in meaningful and thoughtful coverage of these issues.
On today's episode we sit down with 49th Ward Alderperson Maria Hadden for a wide ranging conversation about justice issues in Chicago. Hadden coming in to office at the same time as Mayor Lightfoot understands the impact the pandemic had on public officials and how the pandemic transformed their first terms in office.
We start the episode by asking Hadden to give Mayor Lightfoot a grade on police reform to this point in her first term. It is pretty clear that Mayor Lightfoot pulled somewhat of a bait and switch when it came to police reform as her rhetoric during the campaign not really matched the her actions while in office. There is little doubt that she has confronted the Fraternal Order of Police and their alt right regime that is running the union. While this is something those that voted for her to push police reform would want her to do that is hardly the extent of the reforms her supporters were expecting.
We also discuss with Hadden how the Mayor uses the consent decree to some extent to limit the range of legislative reforms that can pass the city council. Reforms like Hadden's Anjanette Young ordinance that would reform the Chicago Police Department's warrant practices including eliminating no-knock warrants and forcing the officers to actually wait 30 seconds after knocking to kick doors down. Hardly radical reforms but reforms non-the-less that Mayor Lightfoot is doing whatever she can to block the legislation from passing.
We end our conversation discussing Mayor's very recent announcement that the Christopher Columbus statute will be returning to grant park. Hadden talks about how this is just another failure of process by Mayor Lightfoot because the city has a monument committee supposedly working on a city wide plan for all monuments and yet the Mayor makes a unilateral announcement before the process has been completed. Sadly this is very typical for the Mayor and is just one reason her approval ratings are not where she wants them.
There is at times some good journalism that makes way through the it bleeds it leads dribble that comes out everyday all day in the Chicago media. In today’s show we talk about 2 fine examples of good journalism from WBEZ and the Chicago Tribune. These two examples are not the investigative journalism that we would usually feature but they come from the unlikely source of more traditional beat journalism. I usually reserve the content produced by beat repporters for scorn because how shallow and propagandist the coverage usually is; however, today we have two shinny examples of good journalism produced by more or less beat reporters.
The first example we cover today is a piece by Chip Mitchell at WBEZ titled “A top suburban prosecutor blames Waukegan police for a boy’s false confession”. In this piece MItchell does a great job of digging in to the fact that the cops clearly did something they know is illegal but because of the weakness of our state legislators there is no real punishment for the cops despite their illegal bebavior.
Our second example of good journalism is a piece by Annie Sweeney and Stephanie Casanova at the Chicago Tribune titled “Surge in Chicago violence highlights teens in trouble and efforts to save them: ‘The stakes feel higher.’ This piece actually digs in the the science regarding brain development of youth and it discusses how punishing the youth with incarceration rather than rehabilitation actually is more likely to lead to a life spent justice system involved.
Later in the show we also discuss the ridiculous letter written by 12 alderpeople to Mayor Lightfoot demanding a special city council hearing on ending the City’s vaccine mandate for city workers. The letter is a shining example of just how delusional our elected officials in Chicago are because it certainly seems as if they believe the pandemic is completely over. They are also showing their constituents that they believe it is fine for first responders to not take the vaccine and possibly bring with them a deadly disease as they respond to serve the people of Chicago.
On today’s show we feature a interview with Dr. Joseph Richardson who is the Joel and Kim Feller Professor and MPower Professor of African-American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Maryland and the Executive Producer of the Life After the Gunshot.
We discuss this incredible platform that Dr. Richardson created to launch a discussion about what life is like after the gunshot. This platform provides a space to humanize the victims of urban violence and learn about what it is like to be a victim of a gunshot and what your life is like after the gunshot. You learn about all of this not from the perspective of the researchers but from the survivors themselves. You learn about the social circumstances not just in their personal life but also in their communities and in the District of Columbia that are at the root causes of the violence.
Life After the Gunshot brings voices to the forefront that are never really heard in the daily newspapers or nightly newscasts when they are covering gun violence. All too often the report is as shallow as person is the victim of a gunshot and the motive seems to be gang violence or drug related. Coded language to let their viewers know that nobody worthy of their sympathies was the victim of a gunshot.
Also on the show today CJP takes a closer look at a horrific OpEd recently published in the Chicago Tribune authored by Alderpersons Silvana Tabares from the 23rd ward, Raymond Lopez from the 15th ward, and Anthony Napolitano from the 41st ward. The OpEd reeks of pointing fingers while they refuse to take any responsibility for the public policy they pas that is contributing to creating the circumstances in these communities that drive the violence.
In today’s episode, we cover a few examples of both journalistic and political malpractice in Chicago. There is little doubt that the Chicago media routinely generates proof of malpractice when covering the Chicago Police Department. Not to be undone, politicians throughout Illinois make sure to keep up their malpractice numbers on an almost daily basis. This unfortunately forces residents of the city and the state to put up with an unrelenting storm of malpractice.
The first journalistic act of malpractice that we dive into is the Chicago Sun-Times’ coverage of the episode involving the traffic stop of the niece of CPD Chief of Internal Affairs, Yolanda Talley. The reporting has been sensationalized, relying on a single source to report on abhorrent behavior within the CPD. A week later, the Sun-Times still hasn’t found another source to confirm the behavior, yet they also haven’t retracted the reporting.
Next, we move to the malpractice of ABC 7 Chicago’s Stacey Baca. She basically read 3 press releases on-air about the Magnificent Mile Association’s complaints about prosecutors and judges. Baca seems to be clueless regarding the state of the social science research completed on these topics, that provides empirical evidence that the claims made by the Association just aren’t supported by the facts. Baca also seems to be unaware that the Chicago Tribune published a story recently proving the similar claims made by Mayor Lightfoot and CPD Superintendent David Brown are not based on any facts. To do this story without including the research and the Chicago Tribune reporting is just basic malpractice.
We finish today’s podcast by taking a closer look at some great journalism proving that GOP gubernatorial candidate and Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin’s campaign is one big act of political malpractice. Coming out as a staunch supporter of hard-on-crime policies and boasting about his 5 years as a prosecutor, but ignoring his 15 years of criminal defense defending people accused of the most serious crimes, is a prime example of political malpractice. Not to mention Irvin is suddenly a supporter of all lives mattering when just a few years ago he was a very strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and defunding the police.
On this episode we discuss recent developments in the ongoing misconduct saga of Chicago Police Officer James Hunt. You will remember him from a viral video where he tells a group of black males that he “kills mother fuckers”. The video of Hunt saying this and then getting out of his patrol car to continue harassing the men went viral as the video was being uploaded live to the internet. Hunt must have realized that at some point in the interaction that he had screwed up because he falsely arrested the individual who was recording him. Hunt’s actions that day resulted in a $100,000 payout by the city. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability investigated the incident, sustained allegations against Hunt, and recommend a one year suspension. Hunt is fighting the suspension through the arbitration in accordance with the union contract and has yet to serve a single day of his suspension.
Hunt has just recently been striped of his police powers and put on desk duty but not for the incident for which he was recorded but another set of allegations that allege he physical abused a women who got caught up in a black lives matter protest shortly after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The real reason Hunt was finally put on desk duty isn’t even about his new incident, one of 23 complaints in his 7-year career, but that he was applying for and had qualified to become a field training officer. Someone in the department must have through the optics of Hunt training cadets fresh out of the academy. It wasn’t going to look so good so they sat him down.
Also on the show today we will be discussing a WBEZ article about the toll being an anti-violence worker in Chicago takes on the workers themselves. We also discuss Mayor Lightfoot’s recent revelations about the connection between remote learning in the Chicago Public Schools and carjackings in Chicago. Hint, once again Mayor Lightfoot’s comments do not square with the data.
In this episode we feature an interview with Prof. Todd Clear from the School of Criminal justice at Rutgers University. Clear is one of the top voices in criminology as his resume includes stints as a Distinguished Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, president of The American Society of Criminology, The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and The Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice.
Our discussion with Clear focuses on the uptick in gun violence in many cities around the country and how there are many warning signs that America may take steps backwards in responding to this violence. Many cities, like Chicago for example, have seen an uptick in gun violence and is also experiencing a huge increase in the call for the return of draconian policies we know don’t work but make great headlines in the media.
Clear details how the huge increase in gun purchases starting in early 2016 and continuing in to 2020 and the onset of the world wide pandemic were predictors that we were going to see gun violence increases. Clear also discusses research he was involved in that looked at 50 years of crime. This research flies in the face of the constant calls for longer sentences to be handed down by judges.
Also on the show today we discuss a terrible report by WGN TV news about the CPD’s Gun Recovery Numbers and how they are being manipulated. This is a practice that has been ongoing in Chicago for decades so one has to wonder why this report is being done now.
On today’s show we feature a discussion with Katherine Large who authored CJP’s new report on the transparency of Chicago Police Department and police accountability system data. Large is a 3rd year student at the University of Chicago and former CJP intern. The report she authored is titled “Transparency and Accountability of the CPD: 1980-2021” which takes an in-depth look at the data available about police accountability in Chicago and then analyzes that data to present a true picture of just how impotent the police accountability has been over the last 40 years.
It is of no surprise to anyone paying attention in Chicago that the CPD has always been for exploiting the idea of transparency for the organization’s political gain but always have to be dragged kicking and screaming to release any meaningful data. Large’s report details all of the wholes in the transparency practices of the CPD and a long stream of mayoral administrations starting in the 1980s and going right up to the current administrations of Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown. Both of which continue to brag about their transparency practices but when you go look under the hood you realize it is all shallow rhetoric and little to no meaningful change is actually occurring.
The two main takeaways from Large’s report and our discussion on today’s show is just how minuscule the rate at which the police accountability system sustains findings against officers and then how little full, or any, discipline is actually enforced as the secretive process contained in the union contracts nullifies the vast majority of the discipline the police accountability system brags publicly about handing down. The lack of transparency in the process has allowed the CPD and the police accountability to avoid public scrutiny for its absolute dismal performance.
Also on the show today we cover:
- an OpEd in the Chicago Tribune written by a former Cook County Criminal Court judge who wants to exclude the court from the public discussion around justice reform.
- a crappy article in the Chicago Tribune about the lack of progress by the city and the CPD to install reforms to policing in Chicago.
Our guest today is Albert Fox Chan who is the founder and Executive Director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). The organization fights to end discriminatory surveillance by the New York Police Department and police departments across the country.
According to Chan STOP was set up as an abolition focused organization because they don’t believe domestic police departments have earned the right to be allowed to use the wide ranging surveillance technologies. Domestic policing in American has a long history of inappropriately using force against minority communities and according to Chan these same agencies regularly use these surveillance technologies against the same communities even through they were never approved for use against those communities. Chan provides on riveting example where the NYPD used one of these technologies to surveil and map the movements of the homeless in New York City that were not suspected of committing any crimes. There is little doubt that police agencies throughout urban areas in America have a long history of using state of the art surveillance technologies against the most vulnerable communities. As with force you rarely see the use access use of surveillance technologies used against rich white communities according to Chan.
In our discussion with Chan we delve deep in to a variety of different surveillance technologies that are being used by the NYPD and I would bet most other large urban police departments throughout the country including stingrays, x-ray vans, and the domain awareness system. The unregulated use of these technologies should scare people interested in making sure that minority communities throughout our urban centers are free from mass surveillance.
Also on the show today we take a look at a couple recent articles in the Sun-Times that are all about a rumored no confidence vote in the leadership of Superintendent David Brown. For more context on Superintendent David Brown make sure to read our report on his hidden suspension for lying multiple times in an internal misconduct investigation while in Dallas and his suspension for his lies.
Alderperson Raymond Lopez, 15th ward, is a frequent critic of Mayor Lightfoot’s policies and certainly her appointment of David Brown to the position of Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. Alderperson Lopez is regularly on Twitter unleashing board side attacks against almost every policy that Superintendent Brown has announced since arriving. Unfortunately for everyone Alderperson Lopez unleashes his criticisms on Fox News shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Sean Hannity Show frequently. One can only wonder why a local Chicago Democractic politician would be drawn to the news channel a much as Alderperson Lopez is giving the channel’s history of racism, homophobia, and their diehard support of the big election lie.
Superintendent David Brown is not without his own problems. Given his history of lying during an internal misconduct investigation during his time in Dallas he certainly was a questionable pick for the job. On today’s show we chat with Alderperson Lopez about his topic of crime and violence in Chicago. Alderperson Lopez frequently takes to Twitter to push claims of Chicago Police Department being short officers and that many districts are then also short of officers. These claims are not uncommon in Chicago despite the fact that those lobbing to criticisms cannot say how many officers the CPD should have or how they should arrive at that number.
We also touch on the subject of the CPD switching in 2014 from pursuing cases where an individual fired a gun in the commission of a crime to pursuing gun possession arrests. This switch was revealed by a webinar put on by the Kim Foxx’s Office. Alderperson Lopez discusses his feelings about that switch and the inability of an agency the size and budget of the CPD to counter Foxx’s narrative while at the same time the Mayor and Superintendent Brown challenged Foxx’s narrative by bringing zero evidence to back up their claims.
Also on the show today we take look at Mayor Lightfoot’s Public Safety speech she delivered on Dec 20th. A speech full of flowery rhetoric that paints her administration in great terms but in no way matches the actions and policies of her time in office. In her speech she takes in great detail about the problem with the use of electronic monitoring for pre-trial release. Her claims have now been completely discredited by a recent article that takes a close look at the data and compares it to numbers used repeatedly by the Mayor.
Chicago Alderperson Scott Waguespack, 32nd Ward, joins the pod today to discuss the absolute abhorrent sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape scandal at the Chicago Park District. A scandal driven the the public consciousness by the stellar reporting by WBEZ’s Dan Mihalopoulos. What is clear from Mihalopoulos’ reporting is that the Park District leadership throughout the ranks is a very incestual affair that when challenged will close ranks to protect their own in the very Chicago style we are all way too familiar with. They did this for many years if not decades at the cost of the safety of the bodies and lives of females employees.
While it is technically true that the Park District is a “sister agency” and as such is independent of the Mayor and Chicago City Council it has never really been independently except when it is politically expedient for politicians in Chicago. When the scandal broke the Mayor was very quick to distance herself from the leadership of the Park District of course and to put off calls from the public for the her to fire the Park District’s leadership. Of course as Mihalopoulos kept breaking story after story on the scandal the Mayor eventually had to publicly call for firing of the Park District leadership at which time they saw the writing on the wall and stepped down. This just shows the Mayor could of and should have done this as soon as Mihalopoulos’ frist story came out be she continued to put forward the myth that she had no influence on the Park District.
Also on today’s show we discuss a recent Greg Hinz column on the Chicago Police Department being short officers despite having no ability to prove that more officers equals less crime. Hinz joins the group of Chicagoans who are convinced Chicago needs more officers despite the ability to back up their assumptions with facts or evidence.
On today’s show we discuss the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter with Alejandro Ruizesesparza from the Cancel ShotSpotter Coalition and Jonathan Manes, an attorney in the MacArthur Justice Center’s Illinois Office. Our discussion focuses on why activists and communities are rising up to confront the Chicago Police Department on their use of ShotSpotter.
The scary truth about ShotSpotter is that the technology has never been independently validated so really the only evidence that the technology is reliable is from the company itself and from police departments that use the technology. It is pretty clear that both the company ShotSpotter and the various police departments that use the technology are rewarded for saying it works regardless of whether it does or not. The company gets additional sales of their technology while the police departments get a automated probably cause generator. Whether or not there was an actual shooting is irrelevant to the officers being sent to the scene because they have a system that says there was and that is all the probably cause they need to stop and frisk anyone they want in the vicinity of the alert. The incentives are built in to have both parties lie or completely ignore the validity of the ShotSpotter technology because they both benefit from the system.
You also need to remember that the CPD with its $1.7 billion plus budget could not provide any statistics or data to prove the technology helps the police do their job. At the CPD’s budget hearing Supt. Brown could only say that ShotSpotter helped them get to scenes quicker and has most certainly saved lives. Great! Show us the data. He had nothing.
The first episode of season 2 of the Chicago Justice Podcast drops on Wednesday Jan 5th. The first episode will feature Jonathan Manes and Alejandro Ruizesesparza from the LucyPparsons Lab. We will be discussing a gun shot identification system called ShotSpotter, now it works or doesn’t work, and the Chicago Police Department secretly extending the contract with ShotSpotter months ahead of the current contract ending and without any public discussion about the validity of the technology.
Other guests that will be featured in season two:
- 32nd Scott Waguespack discussing the Chicago Park District sexual harrassment, sexual assault, and rape scandal
- Jonathan Manes _ MacArthur & Alejandro Ruizes-esparza Lucy Parson’s Lab – discussing ShotSpotter
- 15th Raymond Lopez – discussing crime and violence in Chicago and bail reform
- Albert Fox Cahn is the Founder & Executive Director of Surveillance Technology Oversight Project’s (S.T.O.P.’s) – discussing the LA Police Department’s use of predictive policing
- OLIVIA FARRELL – is the Director of Policy, Advocacy, & Research at The Network – discussing domestic violence
- Dr. Todd Clear – is Professor of Criminal Justice at the Rutgers Univeristy in the CRJ department. He is also a past president of the American Society of Criminology – discussing the urge by law makers and the media to revert back to 1980s types of policing and incarceration
Today on the Chicago Justice Podcast we sit down for a conversation with Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell, Jr. to discuss the state of the administration of justice in Chicago and Cook County. Mitchell Jr.’s office employees over 650 staff and handles around 100,000 criminal cases, including both misdemeanor and felony, per year.
Mitchell Jr. unsurprisingly is a strong supporter of bail reform and a strong critic of both Superintendent Brown’s and Mayor Lightfoot’s attempts to point fingers at bail reform and its supporters for the increases in crime Chicago has experienced since the onset of the pandemic. There is little doubt that Brown and Lightfoot are being disingenuous with their finger pointing and are really just trying to skirt political responsibility for the crime and violence. Both of their terms in office have been packed full of finger pointing.
Their terms in office have also been filled with a continue the Emanuel administration’s efforts to get gun possession to be considered a violent felony rather than a non-violent offense it has always been categorized as. Mitchell Jr. discusses his theories as to why this push is happening and why the CPD switched at the end of 2013 from pursuing people that committed violent crimes with guns that than just those who possess guns. This switch is reflected in data released by the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office that details that when this switch happened the CPD’s rate of clearing gun related felonies cases plummeted.
We also get Mitchell Jr.’s thoughts on the media’s reporting on issues surround crime and violence in Chicago, including bail reform, and the impact that reporting has on the administration of justice in Chicago. The media is in a tough spot as they complete with social media and alt right websites like CWB Chicago and others for attention. However, the media still fails pretty miserably at properly contextualizing violence and crime and especially how the crime and violence Chicago is experiencing compares to what is going on around the country.
Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara has officially resigned from the Chicago Police Department after his recent hearing in front of the Chicago Police Board demonstrated he was going to fired. Despite this being extremely good news as Chicago is much better off without this man having the authority and power police officers enjoy the city is not yet rid of the man as he retains his position within the FOP. As we read the FOP guidelines he is able to complete his term in office but is unable to run for re-election as you have to be a sworn officer in good standing to run for the office. How having 50 complaints against him in 23 years meant he was still in good standing is anyone’s guess.
Don’t worry though Catanzara has a plan to stay in the media spotlight and do his best to launch attacks against those he believes are responsible for aggrieving white men in power like himself. Since his election the media has been really bad at legitimizing Catanzara and his views on policing as if he has the credentials of someone who has earned the respect of the public and his fellow officers. I am sure this pattern is going to continue. On this site we started referring to him as John50 to denote the amount of complaints he was able to rack up during his time as an officer on the street.
Oddly enough a sizable number of complaints against Catanzara come from internal sources like fellow officers and superiors. So one could say that the rank and file officers within the CPD are just a lucky he is gone as the public is. Imagine how bad Catanzara had to be for that many internal sources to file formal complaints against the man. This of course didn’t stop a significant number of members of the FOP from voting him in. Our course say he got elected by courting the vote of retired members of the department. It is pretty clear from his history of social media posts and just his language on camera that those that voted for him were alt righters also.
CJP report on Catanzara’s history of misconduct.
CJP podcast interview with author of the report.
Charges filed against Catanzara with the Chicago Police Board.
Also on today’s how:
- fired Ferguson cop protesting Rittenhouse prosecution
Chicago Contrarian is nothing more than a platform for extremist views that have been growing in Chicago and around the country for decades. In this episode we take a look at a couple recent posts that provide insight in to the mind set of the insurrectionists on January 6th. The posts from Chicago Contrarian also provide insight in to minds of far too many Chicago police officers.
The first post we look at from Chicago Contrarian is a post authored by Second City Cop an alt right blog that folded mysteriously shortly after the insurrection and then appeared posting to the Chicago Contrarian site. It is our belief that the timing of the the shutting down of their blog was no accident. The comment section of the blog was home to some of the most hate filled content on the internet related to Chicago. The interesting part of their posts on Chicago Contrarian is that there are no comments allowed. Just more evidence that Second City Cop is trying to distance itself from the comments they attracted and encouraged.
The second post on the Chicago Contrarian site is authored by Benjamin Blair. His post details a spoof of a memo that he says would come from Mayor Lightfoot's desk. It is filled with hatred and privilege that Blair seems immune form recognizing. As is typical for this webstie this post it is based on what we call IKnowItAllism - a somewhat rare affliction that affects white straight conservative men in Chicago that makes the impervious to facts or reason.
Also on the show today we discuss the city trying to fire the Sergeant that oversaw the raid on Anjanette Young raid.
The pro cop media bias in Chicago was on full display when the media failed to report appropriately on a domestic violence incident involving two police officers that resulted in one officer shooting and killing her husband. The media instead writes headlines and stories about how the two officers were involved in an altercation or argument that resulted in a struggle over one of the officer's guns.
There is no way the pro cop media would have been so standoffish in their headlines if the two people involved in the incident were not cops. This of course is weird considering the pro cop media is actually involved in a massive left wing conspiracy to paint all cops as bad and turn the simplest of brutal beatings of civilians at the hands of officers in to major incidents. it is crazy to think that that the left winged bias media refused to report the incident as a domestic violence incident yet it is very easy to understand a pro cop media doing that.
This incident hearkens back to another shooting when a male officer was murdered by his wife while in bed in the same district. The police covered up the incident and the pro cop media bought the suicide explanation immediately without question because that is what you do when you lose objectivity and have aligned your worldview with that of the police. This isn't to say that there are not good independent reporters working hard everyday to expose police abuse and misconduct, because they are. It is just means that the shallow beat reporting on police is very bad and is very pro cop centered.
Also on the show today:
Is Kim Foxx a Scapegoat Female cop charged in stupidest of shootings
Video from today's show:
Mayor Lori Lightfoot flip flops on here commitment for full transparency in the Anjanette Young case despite making such a commitment publicly.
Lightfoot has received a report from the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety that contains the results of their investigation of the case. An investigation that was stymied from the beginning by Lightfoot's arranging for an external investigation of the handling of the Young case as well as the actions of the Law Department and her office from the law firm of Jones Day. Lightfoot external investigation made the records and statements collected inaccessible to DPSIG under bogus attorney client claims. There is good reason to believe that the Jones Day investigation was started in part or mostly to prevent the DPSIG from being able to look in the actions of the Lightfoot's office in this matter.
Let's not forget this is not Lightfoot's first flip flop on this case. When the video was made public by CBS 2 Chicago the Mayor originally claimed she knew nothing about the case. Then emails came out she was in fact briefed on the case. Oops! Lightfoot's Law Department is still to this day fighting the civil suit in court and seems committed to not settling the case. One would think she would be smart enough to stop fighting the case and settle to get it out of the headlines and to stop wasting tax payer money fighting the case.
Also on the show today:
Weak Traffic Stop Analysis
Video of today's show:
Republicans House Leader Jim Durkin and State Senator John Curran authored a horrific OpEd in the Chicago Tribune calling for a return to the good old days of law and order Cook County style.
You remember when people like Richard Daley and Dick Devine were doing their level best to wrongfully convict people as long as it served their political interests. When the Cook County State's attorney's Office worked like an extension of the Chicago Police Department and never questioned their abusive and corrupt actions.
The truth is Durkin and Curran are yearning for a time that never existed. The criminal justice system has always been broken and racist in Chicago but of course not during the time Durkin and Curran were part of that system. It is only after they left that the system broke down. While there is not easy to nail down the exact years both Durkin and Curran where in the office it is pretty clear that their terms overlap the terms or Daley - Devine - and Anita Alvarez. Not sure if i was Durkin or Curran I would be using my affiliation with those individuals as a measure of my credibility on any issue. All three ran offices rocked with internal corruption and with long histories of political favors and letting abuse by the CPD run rampant.
The Chicago Tribune was all to happy to run this horrific piece because they also with they could go back in time to when black and brown people knew to keep their crime in their communities so white people didn't have to put up with it. This is basically what Durkin and Curran are also talking about but of course they use coded language to to veil their racism. Durkin & Curran with the assistance of the Chicago Tribune are pushing for a return to policies that failed us in the past and will doom us to be back where we are 10 years from now.
Video from today's show:
Superintendent David Brown tried to prevent the city from moving forward with the firing of Sgt. William Spyker but ultimately a single Chicago Police Board member decided to allow the case against Spyker to move forward. Why did Brown do this? We don't really know because the Chicago media allows Brown to make all these decisions without really having to explain them.
Spyker was caught on video from his body camera trying to suppress a complaint against one of his officers in exchange for not arresting the complainant for allegedly corrupting a crime scene and obstruction of justice. This very type of misconduct what happens everyday on the street and plays a significant role in poisoning the relationship between communities and the CPD.
If Brown was serious about truly reforming the CPD this is the type of misconduct he would be going after aggressively. Instead, he make a unilateral decision that despite the conduct being abhorrent and on video this officer should only be suspended rather than terminated. This move ends up as just another reason why Brown should not continue to be the superintendent of the CPD.
Brown owes the residents of Chicago an explanation about why this officer should not lose his job. He will not provide one because the media will not force him to do so.
Also on the show today:
The failure of NYPD's "No-Fly List" Anjanette Young pushes for report release
Video from today's show:
Democrats around the country are folding like cheap suits when it comes to defunding the police as mayors across the country move to restore funding for police departments or like in Chicago raising their budgets. As usual an increase in crime has the Democrats running for cover as if the protests of last summer after the murder of George Floyd never occurred.
This ridiculous move by the Democrats is exactly why we are in the position we are in currently. The protests in 2020 are directly linked to public policy decisions from 5, 10, and even 20 years ago. You cannot starve communities and expect to not experience some repercussions form those decisions. As the Democrats like Rahm Emanuel have closed schools and sucked social services from these communities they are in fact continuing a long tradition of segregation and deprivation of these communities that spilled out in to the streets last summer.
Mayor Lori Lightfoot campaigned as a new type of progressive Democrat. Unfortunately her governing style has not reflected the values of a progressive democrat. In fact, unlike many Democratic mayors she never embraced the defund movement and moved instead to increase police budgets despite what occurred in Chicago last summer. This is exhibit number one in the case against Mayor Lightfoot in her fraud trial when she seeks re-election in winter 2023.nWe can only hope that each of the Democrats that folded find the same pain at the voting booth that it seems Mayor Lightfoot may very well experience.
Also on the show today:
Mayor Lightfoot's Private investigation of Anjanette Young case Dr. Jen Ludwig's OpEd on gun violence in Chicago
The Chicago Tribune's editorial board has never been a bastion of progressive ideas centered on uplifting Chicago's under-served communities. Instead the editorial board has been a home for criticism of non-strongman candidates that they believe cannot control an incredibly corrupt city government not realizing the entire time the strong-man leaders backed by the editorial board are the main drivers of corruption within city government.
Today we discuss a horrific editorial recently published by the editorial board trying to spread blame for the vaccine issues with the Fraternal Order of Police's membership. While Mayor Lightfoot has proven to manage a highly incompetent administration there is absolutely no reason to lay blame at her feet for cops not getting vaccinated. The editorial board seems to think that somehow the Mayor played a role in hundreds of officers within the Chicago Police Department being sooo filled with hate of government (which they are a member of) that they would rather put their lives, the lives of their families, and the lives of their neighbors at risk just to pick a fight with the Mayor. Their mantra of "the government cannot tell us what to do" falls on deaf ears when one realizes that is exactly why these same cops do everyday to the residents of Chicago. The hypocrisy radar for the FOP must be switched off.
The most interesting part of the arguments they put forth is that the officers should have say over their bodies. A funny argument coming from the right especially now as the nation combats the most significant attack on Roe v. Wade in our lifetimes. It is pretty clear the right only cares about the sanctity of one's body when those people are male. The editorial board must also have their hypocrisy radar turned off.
Also on today's show:
CPD guessing about success of ShotSpotter
Video from today's show:
Today's we sit down with Deborah Witzburg, the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. We discuss her report from June 2020 titled "Review of the CPD Management and production of records" and her recent follow up report that looks in to what if any of the recommendations within the report the Chicago Police Department has started implement. The latest report is titled "Follow-up: Review of the CPD Management and production of records"
Both the initial report and this follow report from Witzburg document a police department that is a very complex organization whose internal processes regarding data collect and record retention are antiquated, non-existent, or broken. Many of Witburg's recommendations from the initial report have been ignored by the CPD or they have taken no meaningful steps to correct the problems documented within the report.
As we discuss with Witzburg in this extended interview the problems identified harm the people litigating against the CPD as the agency has no guidelines or quality control measures in place to make sure the CPD is living up to their obligations to fulfill subpoenas. The practices also harm the organization goals of the CPD because they cannot harness the power of the records and data they create on a regular basis because the agency fails to have procedures and guidelines in places that would allow them to do so.
Witzburg's two reports document an agency being run by Superintendent David Brown that has little concern for fixing the broken management system within the agency. Brown was brought in by another supposed reformer who turned out to be anything but, Mayor Lori Lightfoot. One would think the lack of progress by the CPD to address the faults that Witzburg identified would be a major concern. Instead it is not even acknowledged by the Mayor or her office.
The Chicago Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) and their President John Catanzara are driving a bus filled with their membership right off the COVID cliff with their ridiculous stance on the city's vaccine mandate.
Only the in the minds of the alt right cult that has taken over the FOP could anyone believe that vaccine mandates are anything new in America. The FOP leadership has had to at one time or another go to school in American at which time their parents had to disclose to the School, mostly run by the local government, the vaccine status of their children. If any of the current leadership has children they have done the same thing. I wondering why they felt comfortable disclosing the vaccine status of their children but are not comfortable disclosing their COVID 19 vaccine status? Yes, once again Catanzara's hypocrisy is very obvious.
The COVID 19 pandemic is the most serious health threat the world has faced in 100 years. The data on officer deaths in the line of duty in 2021 backs this up as COVID related deaths are almost 5 times greater than the next highest cause of death. If you add up the topic 15 causes after COVID you will see that COVID deaths are almost 3 times the total of the next 15 causes. Catanzara should be endorsing the mandate and motivating his members to get the vaccine so they can take steps to protect themselves, their families, and the communities they serve. This should not be an opportunity where the FOP is trying to extort money from the city in return for trying to protect their members. On the pod we reveal new info we received that details what the FOP demanded to not fight to vaccine mandate.
Breaking news just before we recorded says the Mayor has filed a complaint in Cook County Court against Catanzara and the FOP for “for engaging in, supporting and encouraging a work stoppage or strike.” (Craine's).
Also on the show today:
Horrible report from CBS 2 Chicago on police staffing
Video from today's show:
Crain's editorial jumped onboard hedge fund billionaire Ken Griffin's propaganda train to help him steer attention from the biggest grift in the city that also has the most detrimental impact on communities - Chicago's tax increment financing program.
This pro-business cult for some reason have absolutely no problem with the city using taxpayer funds to subsidize corporations. This is traditional Chicago grift on steroids as corporations whose sole purposes it to make money have found a source of endless money to subsidize their efforts in TIFs. Mayor after mayor after mayor have used this grift to steal money from taxpayers and have used it to reward their donors and keep white wealthy Chicago happy. I mean someone has to pay for all those cranes you see all over the Fulton Market and the West Loop.
In 2020 this grift siphoned off just over $1 billion from the city's general revenue fund and put it in to special off the books accounts that the mayor controls and doles out for political favors. Richard M Daley started this grift in Chicago and both Emanuel and Lightofoot have continued it despite their public rhetoric about reforms and transparency. No mayor candidate should ever be voted in to office without a firm commitment in writing to end TIFs in Chicago. No mayor should ever be re-elected without ending TIFs in his/her first term.
Poverty is the main driver of crime and violence in Chicago but that is something that neither Crain's nor Griffin want to discuss because that would force them to do some soul searching about their role in creating the circumstances that these communities confront everyday. Instead Crain's give advice to Griffin and the business community to donate to street outreach organizations. The same organizations named by Crain's said themselves on our podcast that they are a mere band aid and that even with a massive increase in funding they will never be equipped to confront the real drives of crime and violence in Chicago, poverty.
Also on today's show:
Patrick Daley Thompson's incredibly dumb defense Citizen app is much worse than we even thought
Video from today's show:
The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) raided the offices and home of the outspoken President of the New York Police Department's Sergeants Benevolent Association Ed Mullins last week. While the motivation for the raid was not known immediately it has now been reported that the FBI raid is tied to a wide ranging investigation centering on Mullins financial dealings.
In the wake of the FBI raid the SBA Board of Directors asked for and received Mullins resignation. The SBA also announced that they will not be funding Mullins defense if and when the investigation leads to charges. Mullins remains a sergeant with the NYPD at this moment even though he is currently striped of his police powers and gun pending the outcome of an ongoing internal investigation that is not related to the recent FBI raids on his office and home.
If you look closely at Mullins' history you will see the stark similarity between his outspoken history attacking people online every chance he gets and the history we documented of Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara. They both use social media to attack anyone that has the guts to disagree with their version of reality. They both have a very anti-science perspective and only have a extremely casual relationship with facts. They are both striped of their police powers and gun pending internal accountability processes that will most likely see they lost their jobs at the end.
Also on today's show:
CPD's inaccurate foot chase dashboard data CPS' school to prison pipeline is strong
Video from today's show:
Social media surveillance by police departments like the Los Angeles Police Department (LAPD) is growing steadily. In a poll conducted by the International Association of Police in 2017 70% of responding police departments said they were actively using social media to conduct surveillance and for operational awareness.
In January of 2020 the Brennan Center for Justice filed open records requests with four police agencies seeking records related to how the agencies use social media. In today's show we sit down with Rachel Levinson-Waldman to discuss the Brennan Center's findings specifically as they pertain to the LAPD. The LAPD uses advanced software platforms to connect the general surveillance data they collect including license plate and street stop data with the social media data the private companies collect from the various platforms.
The LAPD uses platforms like Geofeedia, Media Sonor, and Palantir to greatly expand the power of their surveillance capabilities. These platforms can build dossiers on individuals and go as far as identifying communities they live in frequent socially. This is where police department like the LAPD take seemingly small independent bit of data their surveillance programs scoop up, connect them to outside sources, and create a more 360 degree view of an individual's life. According to Levinson-Waldman the LAPD can connect their data they collect to other government sources like the DMV records all in an effort to boost their insight in to the lives of average people across Los Angeles.
Of course the LAPD doesn't currently have in place sophisticated guidelines that limit the discretion of officers and the potential abuse of these sophisticated surveillance platforms. Levinson-Waldman was able through their efforts to obtain a social media guide from the LAPD and the guide in fact encouraged average officers to use social media for situational awareness and surveillance and details how there is no restrictions and oversight.
Facts all to often get in the way of political agendas, the exploitation of violence for political again, and just plain opportunism. Unfortunately in Chicago we have all of these in spades. The continual finger pointing and scapegoating by Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown regarding violence in Chicago and who is responsible is horrific. They just cannot help themselves but do it every time they are questioned about violence in Chicago and they are routinely refuted by the facts in short order.
Brown and Lightfoot have a true villain that is responsible for the increases is violence in urban centers around the country and its culpability is supported by the facts but for some reason they just keep pointing at Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx. She then regularly trots out the facts that are all too easily obtained and wins the day, and then the next day, and the next. Soon Foxx is going to have an entire section of her office dedicated to refuting bullshit claims made by Brown and Lightfoot. The real sad part is the facts Foxx brings out are not unknowable. In fact, Brown and Lightfoot know the facts exist and have the same access Foxx does they just seem to choose to ignore the facts when they open their mouths. They probably get in the way of the political exploitation and finger pointing that they have become so practiced in.
We are now in a city where despite all the political rhetoric about being anti-Trumpism and hating all his lying many politicians cannot help themselves but use the same tactics over and over again. Regarding criminal justice matters, and criminal justice reform, during the entirety of the Lightfoot / Brown tenures this is how they have operated regardless of what the facts say. We are moving very aggressively towards being a city where facts just don't matter. That is a very scary proposition.
Rex Huppke Column
ABC News Repot
If you are watching the news in Chicago you cannot help but be inundated with reporting on the September's homicide numbers that are provided without the needed context to help Chicagoans makes sense of what is really going on and how it compares to previous year. The main context needed is that while we are still in the middle of a worldwide pandemic you cannot compare year to year crime numbers in a reliable and valid way. The pandemic is a unique once in a hundred year event that is an unprecedented in its ability to add devastating stress across every aspect of peoples' lives.
In today's show we discuss a report by Matt Masterson at WTTW and look at the inappropriate manner in which crime data is presented without the needed context and the way Masterson switches from comparing data from 30 years ago and last year without discussing why he cannot consistently use data from 30 years ago. The reality is the media just cannot help themselves but use the homicide statistic as the barometer for how the police are doing when in reality the police have very little to do with whether someone lives or dies once the gun his fired. If the media was really interested in context and data driven reporting they would use the shooting stat as that is a more appropriate statistic to use but that makes it much harder to write splashy headlines that get clicks.
Also on the show today:
Chip Mitchell from WBEZ on Twitter raising a good point COPA being underfunded even under Mayor Lori Lightfoot
Video from today's show
The Centers for Disease Control (CDC) have finally moved to increase funding for research in to gun violence and the impact it has on the lives of individuals and the vibrancy of our communities. The funding of this research has been blocked for years not by the CDC but by corrupt legislators who are worried that the results of the research will spur much needed regulation of guns in America. Over 100 people per day are killed by guns in America either through suicide, accidents, or crimes and despite all of this the gun lobby in Washington including the National Rifle Association have blocked this vital research.
There are very rudimentary questions that despite it being 2021 the CDC cannot answer and until recently was blocked from collected the data needed to find an answer. Unfortunately, data collection by the federal justice agencies is weak at best under the best circumstances. Now given all of the roadblocks the gun lobby has thrown up the CDC is going to have to force in new data collection methods and data reporting mandates on local justice agencies start to collect and report on gun data in the manner needed to empower the CDC to be as thorough as possible in their research.
Also on the show today:
NPR on gun violence being up everywhere Illinois Attorney General Investigating the Joliet Police Department
Video of today's show
On today's show we examine a recent interview from WGN Radio's Bob Sirott where he interviews a former spokesman for the Fraternal Order of Police Martin Preib who has a long history of endorsing wild conspiracy theories. Preib is know for his strong support for conspiracy theories ranging from their being a massive left wing conspiracy between the media in Chicago and civil rights lawyers to free convicted murders and now an updated version that Black Lives Matter is super well funded and is entirely set up to push an anti-police agenda.
Preib's close relationship with conspiracy theories is widely known to anyone that isn't blocked by him (like CJP is) on social media or anyone that reads his posts at the Chicago Contrarian alt right website. You will hear in our piece that Preib sort of slow roles his left wing media conspiracy because he probably knows that most people listening to WGN Radio are no going to buy in to it and it will make him look silly. This is proof enough that politically he likes to rant and rave about these conspiracy theories but he isn't quite ready for them to go mainstream despite they are plastered all over his social media. Preib also extols conspiracy theories during the interview that include Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx who is a major target of his disdain & the defund the police movement which he calls part of a radical left agenda. For some reason protesting the murder of unarmed black men at the hands of police is a left wing radical agenda.
Sirott should have made it a point to explain to the audience just how Preib was selected to be on his show and that he is a known conspiracy theorist. From the show it seems like they present Preib as just a random cop that just happened to book on the show. There is no context about his long history of blaming every wrong within the city on a massive conspiracy that only he knows about. This added context would give the audience the information that need to understand where his comments are coming from and they probably would have just turned the dial rather than listen to him rant.
Video from today's show
On today's show we discuss how Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzata may finally be reaping what he sowed with all of his extremist rhetoric and horrific social media posting history. In a recent YouTube post Catanzara informs the FOP's membership that while he attempted to recruit the Local 2 President Jim Tracy to sit down with the FOP and other police unions with the Mayor's office to discuss the vaccine mandate (a mandate Catanzara compared to the Nazi gassing people during Word War II). Apparently Tracy decided he did not want to be associated with Catanzara and his rhetoric on camera and on social media. Of course Catanzara is completely clueless about why Tracy would feel the way he does.
The reality is the media should have long ago treated Catanzara like the extremist he is and either avoided quoting him all together or made sure when they did they put his history in the article so that readers had the context they need to assess his credibility. currently they just treat him as if he is any other FOP President. He is not. He is an officer with a history of 50 complaints, one that the CPD is currently trying to fire for the third time, and that has a history of horrific social media posts targeting just about every minority group in American. This is context you will never see included in reporting that quotes him. So the public fails to understand just who is making the comments that are included in the stories that quote Catanzara.
CJP documented much of Catanzara's history of police misconduct and hate filled social media posts in a report we published this summer titled "Catanzara: 23 years of Misconduct Complaints and Social Media Controversies." it is a history that everyone who cares about police, the criminal justice system, and police reform in Chicago should now well. It definitely shines the FOP and their membership in a different light when you think about the fact that he won an election to get where he is.
Also on the show today we discuss:
Nakkita Brown walking her dog on North Avenue Beach Mayor Lightfoot's $500 per month assistance to 5,000 of the most vulnerable families in Chicago.
Video from today's show:
On today's show our main segment we cover the sentence of probation that 47 year-old former Chicago police officer Erik Elkins received as part of plea agreement. Elkins was arrested for his role in a bar fight and charged with several felony counts. In the end the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and Elkins reached a plea agreement that includes Elkins pleading guilty to 2 misdemeanor counts for which he received sentence of probation, 40 hours of community service, and he agreed to a ban from being employed as a law enforcement officer.
Here is some context about the former Chicago police officer's history on the wrong side of the law.
The question in this case is Elkins plea agreement just when considering what others who have committed similar crimes have had to endure as part of their plea agreements. Well, the short answer is we really have no idea because the court does not release any data on sentences and plea agreements. This leaves the public powerless to asses the validity of Elkins sentence in this case. The justice system should prioritize publishing mean sentences based on crime type and plea agreement terms. Without this it is simply too easy for ideology to steer people looking at the sentence to believe it was too stiff or lienient.
Now as we discuss in this podcast there is also the other issue of whether or not Elkins should have been held to a higher standard than any regular resident of Chicago that might commit similar acts. There is a strong case to be made that officers who are trained to use violence and have the legal authority to use deadly force should be held to a higher standard when breaking many laws.
Also on the show today:
Tribune story on guns stolen from Wisconsin gun shop Washington Post story on officer who shot friend and CPD coverup
Video from today's show
46th Ward Alderperson James Cappleman, elected in 2011, routinely walks the ward and intervenes in public disorder. Now, Cappleman's interventions go beyond just telling people they should stop doing what they are doing to physically intervening in the event. This weekend one of those street interventions led Cappleman to physically try to throughout a table some men were using to place their drinks on (in the public way of course) and attempt o throw it out. Their reaction was exactly what everyone except Cappleman thought it would be, it got physical.
CJP abhors physical violence from anyone and we are very sorry Cappleman and his husband were assaulted by the men. This outcome was to some degree predictable to the question has to be asked what exactly was the intended outcome by Cappleman when he decided to throw out the table. We cannot see at outcome where just throwing out the table was going to make any real impact on getting the men on the street to stop drinking on the public way.
If this was a political stunt it is horrific. If there was an outcome planned that we cannot see we look forward to discussing it with Cappleman on our show and this is why we have extended an invitation to Cappleman to come on our show and discuss his street interventions.
Also on our show today we discuss another installment of the alt right spreading conspiracy theories. Today thought we discuss one of the grandfathers of conspiracy theories in Chicago Martin Preib and a recent post of his on the Chicago Ctrontrarian website. A site read so you don't have to. His latest post is fact challenged but continues the alt right's conpiracy about how the entire Chicago media is part of a massive left wing conspiracy to report negatively about police.
Video from today's show
A recent NBC 5 Chicago interview of former Deputy Mayor Susan Lee is just another demonstration of the short comings of the Chicago media to hold powerful people's feet to the fire. The interview by reporter Chris Hush was a total softball fest where Hush failed to ask a single meaningful question about the time Lee spent in the Mayor's office. Lee is now working for Chicago CRED an organization that does violence prevention work. We featured Chicago CRED in a past episode of our show & podcast which you can find here.
Lee came to Chicago to help build the community response to violence infrastructure in her words; however, she only lasted a single year and left her position without an explanation a year after she arrived. After her departure a trove of internal emails from the Mayor's office became public including emails where Lee raises the alarm in early July 2019 about how both the Mayor and Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown were publicly blaming bail reform and lenient judges for violence in Chicago. Lee stated pretty directly that both their community partners and justice system partners were complaining that those accusations were not reflective of what the data said about what was driving crime.
Hush failed to ask any questions about Lee's time in the Mayor's office, the response to her emails, and why she left. Instead the interview with Lee was centrally focused on her recent opinion editorial in the Sun-Times that was co-authored by 19th Ward Alderperson Matt O'Shea. Even if you focused on just the editorial Hush missed opportunities to push back on the false narratives that Lee and O'Shea were pushing.
Also on the show today we discuss a reoccurring segment titled social media fails. Today it is a repeat offender - CWB Chicago.
Video from today's show
The misconduct of former Chicago Police Detective Reynaldo Guevara just cost the city another $20.5 million in a settlement of the wrongful conviction case of Jose Montanez and Armando Serrano who were convicted of a 1993 murder of Rodrigo Vargas but later exonerated.
Over the last several years activists and civil rights lawyers have started to chip away that the horrific history of Detective Reynaldo Guevara during his time with the CPD. to her credit Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx has had people within her office look in to the accusations against Guevara which has led her office to embrace the obvious, that Guevara was an exceptionally brutal and corrupt officer. As of July 2020 there had been 20 exonerations involving the misconduct of Guevara and his colleagues and as of that date the CPD had spent approximately $50 million on payouts and costs associated with defending the cases according to the law firm of Loevy and Loevy.
In the payouts this month the Finance Committee approved the payouts without asking a single question or any public discussion. Of course this doesn't mean there wasn't of the record and behind closed doors discussions of the facts of the wrongful conviction case involving Guevara and why the city needed to settle. All of this should be in the public record but that is not how the city operates.
If you want more information about our groundbreaking Police Settlement Transparency and Accountability ordinance you can visit our CJP Nation website here. This ordinance will total restructure the way the city council, the CPD, and the police accountability system in Chicago responds to civil litigation settlements and judgments against the CPD and any of its officers. This will bring in unprecedented amounts of transparency and accountability to the city.
Also on the show today we discuss the horrific OpEd by former Deputy Mayor Susan Lee and Alderperson Matt O'Shea.
Images from today's show:
Few politicians in Chicago attract such levels of hatred and misogyny as does Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx. Foxx was elected in a direct response to the murder and coverup of Laquan McDonald. While the McDonald case was definitely the catalyst for the wave of protests that forced out Chicago Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy, Chief Administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority Scott Ando, and Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez this case was just one of hundreds that came before that under-served communities throughout Chicago were upset about. Of course, the white north side of Chicago was not so upset about the McDonald murder or the hundreds of other incidents of police brutality and police misconduct that people of color experienced through the years. This background is needed context to understand the disconnect between the policies and actions of Kim Foxx during her term as State's Attorney and the horrific response she gets online, especially on Twitter.
While I usually leave what happens on Twitter out of our show and podcast I couldn't help but talk about a recent Twitter thread I was part of that focuses on Foxx and what can only be understood as bail reform even though the posters were not really clear about what they were mad about. To be clear to some degree, although minor, Foxx has brought this on herself by her conduct in the Jussie Smollett case. Leaving that aside the responses to this Twitter thread provide insight in to just how far down may people in Chicago fell down the Trumpian rabbit whole. Almost all the posters could careless about that the research shows about the policies Foxx has brought to the office. They know better than the data. They know better than anyone because they have common sense. So in today's show I discuss this Twitter thread on Foxx and her policies as well as what is behind all of these response.
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Today on our show we feature an interview with Dr. Dave Olsen who is the Co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and Practice and a professor in the Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology at Loyola University Chicago. Today we discuss a research brief he published in July of this y ear titled "Arrests in Illinois for Illegal Possession of a Firearm, Examining the Characteristics and Trends in Arrests for Illegal Possession of a Firearm Within the Context of Crime Involving Guns."
Olsen's research lays bear the propaganda that the Illinois General Assembly uses through the naming of their bills to drive the public's fear of crime and exploit it to increase sentences for non-violent crime. The research also details how despite the rhetoric around gun possession and the attempts by Mayor Lightfoot, Superintendent David Brown, and Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara to equate gun possession as a violent crime very few of those arrested with gun possession are charged with an associated violent crime. Almost 90% of those that are arrested for possession with a felony conviction in their history actually have been convicted of a non-violent offense, mostly drug related.
Olsen also details that despite all the hype by politicians trying to exploit the violence in Chicago under Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx's time in office the sentences for possession have actually be longer than they have be throughout the rest of the state. This goes against all the reporting you see in the media and all the bloviating you hear from Alderpeople like Raymond Lopez (15), Nick Sposato (38), and Anthony Napolitano (41). You can also count in this group politician want to be Paul Vallas and Bob Fioretti. There is never a violent event that any of these people will not try to exploit. Video from today's show
Today's show features our discussion with Deborah Witzburg who is the Deputy Public Safety Inspector General in the Office of the Inspector General for the City of Chicago. Witzburg recently published a report analyzing internal Chicago Police Department data and data from the Office of Emergency Management & Communications with one basic goal - to determine if there is demonstrable operational benefit to the CPD from their use of ShotSpotter.
ShotSpotter is an autistic gun shot identification technology that places speakers throughout a location that supposedly identify the sound of gun shots and get that information to police well before calls to 911 start coming in. Witzburg in her report was able to determine that the CPD can not prove with the data that is currently available that there is a demonstrable operational benefit to the CPD to use the technology. As Witzburg detailed in her report the CPD's contract with ShotSpotter was supposed to end on August of 2021 buy for some reason the CPD decided to renew that contract for two additional years at a 5% increase in cost despite being unable to prove definitively that their was helping them reduce gun violence. When Superintendent Brown was pushed by activists and the media to provide a justification for the contract renewal Brown said they are getting to victims of gun violence much quicker. When asked to prove that he was unable to.
There have been only a couple of studies done to validate the effectiveness of ShotSpotter according to Witzburg and both of those evaluations failed to prove any real benefit in reducing the prevalence of gun violence. Also, recent media coverage by Vice News was able to document a handful of time officials at ShotSpotter manipulated the results of their technology to reverse the findings of their algorithms to say sounds were shootings that the algorithm said were not strictly for the benefit of the individual police departments.
We explore all of these topics with Deborah Witzburg on our show today. Video of today's show
On this episode we sit down with Lauren Cole to discuss her two recent reports about Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown's hidden suspension for lying in internal misconduct investigation during his time in Dallas. The suspension was actually for providing false information to a responding officer and then that officer's superiors during the follow investigation regarding action taken by Brown and his partner during a chase of a stolen car that resulted in two accidents. Brown gave these false statements when he knew there was eyewitness testimony to the events that occurred that had to contradict his untruthful recount of events.
The second piece the Lauren published is about who must have known about the suspension and didn't say anything to the public or alderpeople who had to confirm his appointment. It is clear that the Chicago Police Board through their vetting process had to know about the suspension but decided anyways to put Brown's name on the short list of candidates that they delivered to the Mayor. Lauren also documents that before the Board sent Mayor Lori Lightfoot their short list she was already interviewing candidates and as Lauren documents there is reporting that the Board knew that Lightfoot wanted Brown as her superintendent and manipulated the short list to make sure Brown was the clear choice. This of course was all done despite his suspension that all of the above covered up.
CJP is not saying at this point whether the suspension itself should be disqualifying but instead we hope that we allow people to know the degree to which the process for selecting Brown was corrupted despite the promises of candidate Lightfoot to do things differently than her predecessors. The corruption of the process to select a candidate for superintendent of the Chicago Police Department with a confirmed history of lying multiple times during an internal misconduct investigation should demonstrate the degree to which the Mayor will use her political power to an end that she wants despite it not being good for the city or the residents of Chicago.
David Brown Suspension Uncovered:
Who Knew About David Brown Suspension
Channel 5 Coverage of our report - here. Video of today's show:
Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara responded to Mayor Lightfoot's announcement of a vaccine mandate for all city employees in the worst way imaginable. He compared the mandate by the Mayor to the atrocities carried out by the Nazis in Germany during World War II. Catanzara has a history of opening his mouth and saying the absolute wrong thing. A great example of this is when he stated on video that he didn't see anything wrong with what happened at the US Capital on Jan. 6th and that he understands why people would be mad about a stolen election.
Catanzara has a long history of misconduct and absolutely appalling social media posts attacking just about every minority group in American. CJP documented that history recently in our report on Catanzara that you can find here. His history of misconduct that we detailed is definitely is one of an officer that has no regard for the rules as the numerous complaints filed by other officers and supervisors against Catanzara prove.
Catanzara leads the largest union affiliated with Chicago Police Officers and only 30% of the entire department is vaccinated. This is from a agency that prides itself in being centered on public service and public safety. Clearly, Catanzara does not see a problem with thousands of officers everyday interacting with the public from all over the city and very likely spreading the virus.
Also on the show today we discuss
ridicules Sun-Times editorial Supt. Brown firing 4 officers
Images from today's show
In today's show we sit down with Jennifer Vollen-Katz who is the Executive Director of the John Howard Association. We discuss issues around the accountability and transparency of the Illinois Department of Corrections. Vollen-Katz was the perfect person to have this conversation with as she leads the only privately run agency that regularly has staff and volunteers monitoring IDOC facilities from inside the facilities.
It is pretty clear from both CJP;s experiences and from the work of Vollen-Katz that IDOC does not really have an interest in being transparent. The Larry Earvin case is a prime example of why IDOC sees the work of Vollen-Katz and CJP as a threat to the agency and its staff. The fact that IDOC facilities were allowed as late as 2018 to have blind spots where cameras were not picking up what was occurring within a specified area of the prison is a perfect example of just how far we have to go before we even get close to having these facilities be remotely safe for inmates and staff. One of the more important aspects of our conversation with Vollen-Katz is when we discussed the morality of allowing the college students to tour prison facilities. Pre-pandemic her organization regularly sends in trained volunteers to monitor many aspects of the operations of IDOC facilities so she has a unique perspective on the issue. It is clear that transparency around prison conditions and operations are vitally important but that has to be balanced with respecting the rights of those incarcerated.
Also on our show today:
Social media fails - CWB style
Images from today's show
Video's of today's show:
The Better Government Association's David Greising sits down with the Chicago Justice Show to discuss a recent post he authored on the BGA's website. Greising's post was titled "Finger Pointing Isn't a Crime-Fighting Plan, Mayor". The post gets a lot of things right about how the Mayor and Superintendent David Brown seem to be more interested in pointing fingers to deflect blame than coming up with a coherent plan to combat Chicago's ongoing issues with violence.
Greising calls out the Mayor appropriately for having her "whole of government" apporach to violence that sounded good in the media when it was announced but doesn't seem like the Mayor is committed to really bringing about the change in the city's governing practices to really impact violence. This is evident in the Mayor repeatedly blaming the Cook County Courts for being closed for 15 months and putting criminals back on the street when in fact most court operations continued through the pandemic and jury trails resumed in March of 2021 according to Greising.
Supt. Brown is also called out be Greising for using anecdotes about violence to prove his case that the courts are releasing too many criminals and that this practice is the basis for the gun violence surge in Chicago during the pandemic. Unfortunately for Supt. Brown Greising correctly calls him out for using anecdotes to combat the sophisticated analysis produce not only by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office and the Office of the Chief Judge buy independently by Loyola University Chicago researchers.
Both Supt. Brown and Mayor Lightfoot seem totally overwhelmed by the crime and haven't found a plan that they can stick with over the long-term to reduce violence. We discuss all of these issues with David Greising today.
Also on our show today:
NYT's article about dropping rape cases Nick turner from Vera on Biden Relying on Cops
Images from today's show
Video of today's show
Today we speak with Sharon Fairly, former Chief Administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority and Citizen Office of Police Accountability, about what if any possibilities exist to use the police accountability system in Chicago to separate white supremacists cops from the Chicago Police Department.
In all the hoopla around the outing officer Robert Baker as allegedly having ties to the white supremacists organization the Proud Boys the reality about what the CPD or the police accountability system can do to remove this officer from the department has been lost. Fairly is the perfect person to discuss the realities given her experience.
The media and the politicians went for splashy headlines rather then providing the public the facts they so dearly need in these situations. First, they failed to explain what having ties to this type of organization meant and whether those ties are by themselves enough to terminate an officer's employment. While the media and politicians bloviated about the fact that the officer needs to be terminated immediately nobody explained exactly under what authority the CPD would make this happen. We discuss with Fairly the real life challenges facing the police accountability system in this matter.
Superintendent Brown at a press conference spoke eloquently about doing everything in the department's power to route out these officers. That is great but still nobody has talked about what they are going to do once they somehow miraculously connect an officer to a white supremacist group. The CPD's rules governing officer behavior were not created to take on this challenge. As Fairly talks about that they are going to have to connect the officer's white supremacist beliefs and their actions while on the job. This is not going to be an easy task as we discuss with Fairly.
Also on the show today:
City limps towards setting up a crisis responseSurveilling Dissent
Images from today's show
Video's of today's show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zyIZ3xHL1fQ
According to a recent Fox 32 report that cited Geraldo Rivera gang members in Chicago outnumber police officers by a ratio of 10-1. You can tell this was a very serious report as it cited one of the most respected journalists in the country with a specialization of looking for long lost vaults. Rivera supposedly was actually citing statistics on gang members in Chicago that he heard from Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent David Brown.
This report is proof of why it is so important for elected leaders and criminal justice officials to make sure the are citing only verifiable statistics. Now, in this specific instance this is exactly what Lightfoot and Brown wanted to occur when they cited this bogus statistic. They wanted the media to run wild and report this statistic without forcing them to cite exactly how the determined the number of gang members in Chicago.
This number is most likely generated by the Chicago Police Department and their horrific and broken gang database. ProPublica reporting by Mick Dumke has proven that the CPD has basically no controls over who gets entered in to the database and for what reasons. Some of the gang members listed in the database were well over 100 years old. Simply put the CPD and city officials have absolutely no way to reliably know how many gang members there are in Chicago and neither does the media. But this reality has no stopped the media from continuing to serve as a mega phone on this issue.
Also on our show today:
FOP Watch Segment: FOP President Public Safety Committee commentsWBEZ on CPD officer burnoutCWB Backlog story
Images from today's show
Videos from today's show
John Catanzara, FOP President, public comments at meeting of Committee on Public Safety.
Fox 32 Report
After five years of pushing from activists and communities of color the community commission has finally passed the City Council. Its passing has been hailed by many on the left as the transformative reform that Chicago has been waiting for. The commission is now at least the 6th transformative police accountability reform that has come to Chicago since 1960 when the Chicago Police Board was created to allow O. W. Wilson to run the Chicago Police Department.
Despite campaigning on passing the commission in her first hundred days in office is has actually taken Mayor Lightfoot almost 800 days to to pass this legislation. The version the passed by the City Council is as weak a version as there could possibly strictly because that his the version the Mayor wanted passed. Despite endorsing a version where the commission would have significant powers the Mayor worked hard to retain as much power within her office as she possibly could. Very Chicago move to be sure.
It needs to be understood that while this version still maintains some very limited potential to make an impact there is no evidence to suggest that anything in the way of transformative change is coming to Chicago visa vie the commission despite many on the left hailing the passage of this legislation. Many on the left that are championing this ordinance lack the experience in police accountability to have a bassis to judge its potential. The way to determine how much potential the ordinance has to bring about real reform is that the Mayor allowed it to be passed. That is the surest way to know that the commission has at best very little potential to deliver the reform communities want.
Also on our show today:
Alderperson Napolitano's useless ordinance Supt. Brown brings back the corrupt merit promotions CPD's new gun team shows how broken the department really is
Images from today's show
Mayor Lightfoot established a fund to incentivize people from the community to come forward and provide tips on people that possess guns illegally. At initial blush the fund doesn't seem like the horrific program it is but once you spend some time thinking about it you understand that the fund is ripe for abuse from the community and most likely will just result in a huge spike in minority contact with the police. Many of which could be instigated by rivals in the community seeking revenge and not to serve the intended purposes of taking guns off the street.
This move by the Mayor is intendend not as an effective strategy for taking guns off the street but rather to make it look like the Mayor's office and the Chicago Police Department are dong everything they can. The creation of this fund is for all intensive purposes a part of a propaganda campaign by the Mayor to reduce the political heat she is taking for the spike in violence in Chicago since the start of the pandemic. The fund did get massive media attention so it is very possible that the fund may have already served it purposes regardless of how it actually plays out in reality.
The Mayor is taking heat from all sides about the violence in Chicago and her never ending campaign to basically flip flop on every single progressive campaign promise she made. This podcast is publishing just as the the Chicago City Council is getting set to vote on what is believed to be the final version of the community commission ordinance. Something candidate Lightfoot promised to pass in her first 100 days in office. As she is now quickly approaching 800 days in office the Mayor may finally get the ordinance passed. The only problem is in true Lightfoot style the ordinance is so weak as to be virtually worthless. This new fund created by the Mayor is also weak and virtually worthless. I am seeing a pattern emerging in Mayor Lightfoot's administration.
Also on today's show:
FOP Watch - anonymous complaintsBGA on carjackingsIDOC's blind spotsIL's crime victim's fund
Photos from today's show
Videos from today's show
FOP Friday Update 7/14
CBS 2 Chicago 7/2/21
Chicago police officer John Catanzara has a history with the police accountability system in Chicago that is exhibit number one in why the system is broken. The failure of the system to remove him from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has allowed Catanzara to ride a Trumpian movement within the Fraternal Order of Police and win election to be their president. It is like the membership of the FOP was proud to vote for someone that quite literally could be one of the worst officers within the CPD.
Catanzara in his 23 years with the CPD managed to rack up 50 complaints from a mixture of complaints filed by everyday people and his fellow officers and superiors within the CPD. In 2007 he managed to rack up 7 complaints within a single year. In 2008 in two separate cases within the same year Catanzara managed to save his job as the CPD sought to termination his employment. Instead the weak Chicago Police Board both times found him guilty of some of the charges but reduced the discipline for Catazara from termination to a suspension of 20 days in each case.
Catanzara is the ultimate hypocrite in that he has spent his 23 years on the CPD holding people to account for brekaing rules set by our legislators. Yet, during his entire career he has done nothing but break the rules, dis-obey authority, and show complete disdain for anyone in a position of authority besides himself. This is on full display in the range of social media posts that show his deep seated hatred for a whole range of minorities. The one theme that runs through his social media posts is his strong misogyny.
On today's show we talk with intern Lauren Cole who authored our recent report about John Catanzara.
On today's show we also cover:
Supt. David Brown under fireCity / CPD lie about minority hiring
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The Chicago Tribune Editorial Board authored what can only be described as an extremest editorial where they call for everyone to support Chicago's families by offering them nothing but condemnation and "constructive nudges" to instill discipline in their kids. Obviously, Chicago's gun violence issues has nothing to do with the structural issues in Chicago's finances or justice system and has everything to do with poor parenting.
Structural issues like the Tax Increment Financing (TIF) program that shifted almost $1 billion from the City of Chicago's general revenue fund to a special off the books account for the Mayor to spend however she likes. For the Tribune the last three Mayor's have spent that money just the way they like - on the loop and business district and not on communities on the south and west side. The Tribune has no problem continuing to starve those communities as long as the plants all over the loop are regularly changed.
The Tribune bemoaned talk from activists, politicians, and researchers about needing to invest in communities on the south and west sides of the city and makes changes to the structures within the city. The Tribune thinks that if we just instill a little discipline in to the lives of the children growing up in rampant inter-generational poverty then everything will be ok. Of course, this is coming from the Chicago Tribune a paper that long ago abandoned these parts of the city and instead has written for an audience in the suburbs. You would swear that this editorial came from a Tribune in the 1950s or 1960s and certainly not 2020. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Also on today's show.
USA Today / Ipsos poll on policingFOP says deal reached on financial part of contractSocial Media Fails - FOP style!When UUW is not a violent crimeCommunity based violence prevention not a long-term solutionMayor Bully in the Chicago Reader
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Video from today's show
https://youtu.be/7-FzRZtbuQU
Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx and Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell appeared on Chicago Tonight to discuss the never ending dis-information coming from Mayor Lightfoot and Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown about the impact of bail reform on gun violence in Chicago.
A few weeks before this appearance Foxx and her office held a webinar for journalists in Chicago to learn about how to use the data Foxx and her office office release to get more insight in to gun violence arrests and how bail reform is affecting violence rates in Chicago since it was implemented in 2017. During the webinar Foxx was able to use the data to prove that while gun possession arrests have shot up since 2013 while at the same time the Chicago Police Department's ability to arrest people for shootings has gone done.
Both Brown and Lightfoot had a very public response to these facts that were filled with a bunch of we knows and well this is what is actually happening on the street. However, neither Lightfoot nor Brown have produced data to back up their claims. In fact in the days leading up to Foxx and Mitchell's appearance both Brown and Lightfoot had pivoted their criticism to point squarely at the judges because they have seemed to admit defeat to Foxx. Their claims againsts judges are no more supported by the data.
Also on our show today:
Alderperson Napolitano on Fox NewsAlderperson Beale on Fox 32 Social Media Fails Alderperson Lopez style
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Chicago Tonight 7/7/21
Chicago Tonight 7/7/21
Fox News
Fox 32 Chicago
Today's main segment we feature part two of our interview with extremely frequent social media poster and former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools Paul Vallas. Vallas does not keep his opinions to himself. He is also a very public supporter of the police and the Fraternal Order of the Police (FOP) so much so despite his trying to spin his efforts regarding his participation in ongoing union negotiations between the city and the FOP as working for both sides. His son is a police officer, he definitely prefers one side to the other.
In part 2 with Vallas we focus mostly on economic and financial issues facing the City of Chicago and the police department. One issue both Vallas and CJP agree on is the need to eliminate tax increment financing districts (TIF). This program is literally siphoning almost one billion dollars a year from the general revenue fund and putting that money in to a special corruption account for the mayor. Something Mayor Lightfoot has done nothing to change.
We also discuss the policing tactics of Supt. David Brown as he pulls detectives from their cases and puts them in squard cars in stationary posts with the lights on. This is a very dumb effort by Brown to try to deter crime by cars that never move. We knew this very tactic that Vallas decries was coming to Chicago because unlike the Chicago media we actually did some research about his time in Dallas. This is a commonly used tactic by Brown in Dallas leading up to his annual city council appearance. Vallas calls this scarecrow policing and we think he is correct on this one. This is a tactic of a leader who doesn't know what they are doing and are over their head. This is just one of many, many issues that should have already lead to Brown's dismissal.
Also on today's show we discuss:
Alderman pouncing on Mayor Lightfoot & Supt. Brown
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Paul Vallas, former CEO of the Chicago Public Schools, is a very frequent poster to social media and all too often those posts cover issues of crime and justice. Vallas also is volunteering his time to help the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) in their negotiations with the city over their latest contract terms. It is an odd choice for Vallas given his absolute hatred for education related unions.
Vallas can speak intelligently about education and fiscal policy matters related to the city because of his experience in government but all too often his comments related to justice issues only seem to echo the political line of the FOP. An organization that has proven itself time and time again to be untrustworthy, radically against reform, and authoritarian as can be. Certainly not an organization that one would like to align themselves with for no good reason. Vallas of course, has a good reason. One of his children is a union member.
On today's show we feature part one of our interview with Paul Vallas. In this part we talk about the issue of the FOP, and Vallas, claiming the city is short of cops even though nobody seems to know how many police officers the city needs because they refuse to do the analysis needed. This includes the FOP who worries the analysis will show they need less officers.
Also on the show today:
Friday's special city council meetingCPD officers goes off when he gets pulled overStop & frisk is the answer!
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Videos from today's show
A new direction for the Office of the Clerk of the Cook County Circuit Court Clerk would be most welcomed. The Office is an public body few people know exists and rarely pay attention to unless they somehow end up involved in the court system. For 20 years the office has been run in the most incompetent and corrupt way possible by the former Clerk Dorothy Brown; however, last November voters elected a new person to the office, former State Senator Iris Martinez. However fleeting this moment is, it certainly is an opportunity to change the direction of the office and have it at the very least serving the needs of Cook County residents most of the time.
Today we sit down with Alexandra Block, a Partner at Miller Shakman & Beem LLP & Annie McGowan, Senior Research Associate, Civic Federation, to discuss a report they authored for the Chicago Council of Lawyers and the recommendations included for how the Clerk's Office can move in another direction. Their suggests for moving the office in a new direction rely heavily on updating the technology of the Clerk's office. Anyone who has spent any time trying to get information out of the pre-Windows 95 terminals that the Clerk's Office maintains knows this is a vital step for them to take to convince the public they are serious about moving in a new direction.
Also on our show today:
Social media fails - Supt. Brown StyleNewsmax v. Mayor LightfootLetter for City Council hearing on policing
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The Chicago Police Department's broken grievance system has allowed abusive officers to either greatly reduce their exposure to discipline and in some case completely remove it form their records. The rules governing the system are outlined in the contracts between the CPD and the various unions that represent the sworn officers within the CPD.
CJP was informed many years ago by a high level source within the Independent Police Review Authority that the system is so broke that most officers automatically grieve their cases and that the CPD loses in arbitration so much that the they had resorted in to almost always just reducing or eliminating the discipline without going to the arbitrator. This practice of course incentivizes officers to grieve any discipline that they ever face.
On today's show we feature an interview with Deborah Witzburg who is the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. She authored a recent report titled "Review of the Disciplinary Grievance Procedure for Chicago Police Department Members". The report backs up much of what CJP has been told through the years about the grievance system.
The grievance process if purposely opaque so that it shields the public from learning that in many, many cases the CPD either outright reduces the discipline or an arbitrator, that must selected through mutual agreement, reduces the discipline through their almost absolute power. This is a process that is in desperate need of transparency so that the public can learn the real details about just how much the police accountability system fails the residents of Chicago and the good officers within the CPD.
Also on the show today:
Why cops have been quitting in drovesThin Blue lies behind crime wave hypeWhy we shouldn't expect much from Biden's plan to counter crime
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Unsurprisingly residents of the City of Chicago appear to be divided on the issue of defunding the police. We know this because of a poll the MacArthur Foundation had conducted and an OpEd they published in the Chicago Tribune. It is very obvious the concept of defunding the police is very controversial so the word of the questions in the poll is vital. Despite problems with the questions there is still much to learn from this poll.
To anyone paying attention to events in Chicago for the last several decades it will not be surprising that communities of color who are most often bear the brunt of police misconduct and brutality view the concept of defunding the police more favorably. White Chicago on the other hand has the lowest levels of favor-ability to the idea of taking money away from the police and shrinking the police force. Clearly we did not need a poll to tell us these results.
One of the more interesting parts of this poll is that real estate taxes in Chicago polled second to gun violence as the most pressing problems the city is facing. While not surprising it only collected a whopping 10% of the vote. Maybe the propaganda around taxes pushing people out of the city and the state are really not as true as those pushing this line want it to be.
We did in to many of the poll's findings in our main segment,.
Also on the show today:
Brown / LL spin on gunsTribune editorial on another MondayCWB fighting science with hatredCrain's on LL crime claimsCPD strips power years too lateWeird OpEd in Tribune on Consent DecreeBiden being Biden - always more cops
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Chicago Police Department (CPD) officials are experts at using the promotion of officers to the maximum benefit of the agency. Of course when the script if flipped and they have to announce a demotion of a high ranking commander their lips are sealed even though their is a vital public interest in knowing why the official was demoted.
The current practice within the CPD to not comment on demotions only provides fuel to drive the rumor mill about why the demotion occurred. In this most recent case the CPD's 1st District Commander Jacob Alderden was demoted by Supt. David Brown. The CPD has said nothing about why he was demoted given that he was promoted just 18 months ago and was the recipient of the CPD's highest honor in 2018 for his actions in a hospital shooting. The CPD's silence has allowed rumors to go public including one that has the demotion tied to Supt. Brown demanding a squad car be placed in front of his favorite restaurant to guard it during an weekend of unrest in Chicago. Another rumor involves the Mayor but since it has not been published I will not repeat repeat it here.
Demotions of high ranking officers are of vital public interest especially for those that are concerned with police accountability in Chicago. It is pretty clear that officers within the agency do not trust management at any level. They believe there is always some massive conspiracy behind ever promotion and demotion. The way to counter this is being transparent about each demotion so that the public and the officers can understand the underlying facts surrounding any demotion of high ranking officials and trust the decision making process within the agency. Without it every demotion, whether justified or not, just fuels the distrust between the agency and its officers as well as the public.
Also on today's show:
Social media failsTwitter handle Cook County ASA goes off in the wrong directionCPD recruiting Backlogged 911 calls Racism is a public health crisisBiden sending federal agents to Chicago
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The city has moved to get the court to throw out the civil suit by Anjanette Young despite public promises by the Mayor to resolve the matter quickly. This move by the city is about trying to leverage a better bargaining position with Young in the settlement negotiations as well as trying to avoid exposure for past and future bad raids by the Chicago Police Department (CPD).
The little reported context to this story is that the first case filed by Young was tossed out by the court so it might now be that far fetched that the City could get the court to throw out this case also. The politics of getting the case thrown out for Mayor Lightfoot would be very damaging as Young and her attorney have no problem generating media coverage about the case. I am at a loss about why the Mayor hasn't just paid out the settlement to Young and moved on from the case.
The Mayor has said no camera that she was going to do what was right regarding the Young case and get to the bottom of what actually occurred. I don't think the voters of Chicago interpreted her remarks to mean that she was going to go to court and get the civil suit thrown out by the court so that Young wound up with no money for what she had to go threw. It seems like there is no end to the Mayor's thinking she knows better than everyone else. The Young case is a really bad mountain to die on politically for the Mayor.
Also on our show today;
CPD retirements - CJP Top 5 Cities PostCommunity Commission stalls againCops owns Englewood house NYT article about people being bad at understanding crime trendsCops out of CPS continuesNY City Hall stalls police reformHow cops avoid jail
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Videos from today's show:
The appointment of a second special prosecutor to look in to the actions of members of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office (SAO) demonstrates the problems within the SAO but also the great bias within the the Cook County Courts. Kim Foxx, who ran as a progressive and is implementing some progressive reforms, seems to garner very critical attention for actions that are far less egregious then her predecessors were caught doing.
The special prosecutor appointed in the Jessi Smollett case is pure politics and when compared to the Vanecko case the actions are incredibly minor. The the Vanecko case a nephew of Mayor Richard Daley almost got away with murdering someone and it wasn't until the courts appointed an independent prosecutor that Vanecko was charged. To the last day in the case former Cook County State's Attorney Anita Alvarez turn down charging Vanecko and said there was no corruption in the case despite the Sun-Times printing multiple front page stories documenting the corruption within the Chicago Police Department and the SAO. No special prosecutor was ever appointed to investigate the actions of the SAO in that incredibly important case.
This latest special prosecutor is indeed needed but honestly it is like 40 plus years overdue. The role of the Cook County State's Attorney's Office in the Jon Burge torture saga still is unexplained. The appointment of the special prosecutor at this point seems a little odd given the decades of malfeasance by the SAO.
Also on our show today:
CPD arresting the wrong people8 people shot Gun violence prevention rallyPolice refusing to turn over use of force dataCalifornia Governor displays typical democratic weakness
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Videos from today's show
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aq3I875QSjU
The Public Safety Committee of the Chicago City Council has an opportunity to both demonstrate its independence from the Mayor and deliver a really meaningful opportunity for oversight of the Chicago Police Department (CPD). The Committee can as do something they have only really done over the last 20 years which is use the authority of the oversight committee to try to stop the abuse and misconduct with the CPD.
Our report on 20 years of agenda items from the Committee proves without a shadow of a doubt that this Committee has virtually nothing to restrain the CPD and oversee the police accountability system until it is way too late for their actions to have any impact. They have passed three major reforms over the last 20 years but all three were essentially negotiated with the Mayor's Office with the Alderman doing nothing more than acting as a rubber stamp to legislation negotiated behind closed doors with little to no input from the alderpeople. The Committee exists to provide democracy theater for the public to believe their is informed debate happening.
Also on our show today:
CPD's Insurrection copFOP WatchBrown promises to root them outProud boy copMary Mitchell's horrible columnSun-Times called for failed policiesGun ownership insurance
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The "Our Kids Becoming Extinct" headline I am sure was great for attracting clicks but it is a massive dis-service to the very communities the kids discussed in the headline are coming from. This headline serves only to drive fear about out of control violence and push reactionary police and public policy to get the headline out of the news.
As the article itself states juveniles victims of gun violence are on part with previous years it is just that since the onset of the world wide pandemic shootings overall in Chicago, and every other major city, are up. So, the headline probably should have read "Our Kids Are Becoming Extinct at the Same Rate They Have in Past Years". This headline would not have been the click magnet the Sun-Times was looking for. In Chicago, almost no institution is immune from exploiting the violence to make a buck.
The extinct headline is actually a quote from Rev. Michael Pfleger. He has been a strong voice for calling on the city and the business community to address the gun violence in Chicago. He isn't necessarily wrong in using the word extinct I just think the Sun-Times exploited the word extinct for its own purposes and thus play right in to the political hands of militant pro police elements in Chicago. If their is a massive expansion of police powers or in their manpower in Chicago in the coming months it will be in no small part due to Pfleger's quote and the massive power of the word extinct.
Also on our show today:
Supt. Brown on GunsJohn Kass' Thin Line ColumnChicago Tribune Editorial on the UnrestCWB Lying to Their SubscribersCops on Social MediaCar Wreck vs. Brutality DeathLos Angeles Adding Cops
Images used on our show today
Video used on our show today
Our report on the agenda of the Chicago City Council Committee on Public Safety reveals damning truths about just how useless this committee has been on the topics of policing and police accountability over the last 20 years. This incredibly comprehensive report looked at 489 agenda items of 186 meetings over 20 years from 2000 through July 2020.
Our report leaves the members of this committee no room to wiggle out responsibility for their lack of interest in regulating the one department in the City of Chicago that is costing taxpayers tens of millions of dollars a year in settlements and judgments for misconduct each year. Instead the alderpeople have decided to spend as much time in their committee work focusing on donating use police and fire equipment abroad then they have on regulating policing and the police accountability system.
It is a mind blowing abdication of the responsibilities as legislators and members of an oversight committee. It is clear that our report proves that over the last 20 years alderpeople have no desire to take any responsibility for what the police department does on their streets in their communities and uses the police accountability system as a shield to insulate themselves from the repercussions of their lack of action.
In today's main segment we feature an interview with the author of the report intern Lauren Cole. Lauren is a recent public policy graduate from the University of Chicago and is interning with CJP this summer.
Also on our show today:
CJP's response to Alderman Christopher Taliaferro;s comments about our report in the Sun-TimesFOP Watch15th ward Alderperson Lopez's
The promise of more resources for districts made by Chicago Police Superintendent Superintendent David Brown is pure politics as he attempts to combat criticism from union officials and the media about his creation of roving citywide units that have "stolen" resources from local districts.
The most craven part of this effort is Brown knows that even his citywide units are going to fail at their mission just like they would if those resources were left in the district. The union and the media's comments about district resources stem from a false belief that the police play a far greater role in reducing crime and violence then they really do. This of course makes sense if you are the union because pushing this belief allows you to maintain high staffing levels within the Chicago Police Department despite any science to show that those resources actually have an impact on crime and violence. The media has no excuse making such unverified claims of the impact of these resources on crime and violence in Chicago. They are just parroting union claims about resources.
We also cover on the show today:
Lorenzo Davis' 2nd lawsuit victoryLightfoot campaign EmailThe firing of an SOS cop 16 years laterPolice reform one year after FloydHuge step for police unions?How violent cops stay on the jobSun-Times editorial on gun laws
Photos used on today's show
Video used on today's show
Note:
Due to our report release last week the posting of podcast episodes has been delayed. We are now starting to catch up. Thank you for your patience.
Despite the fact that President of the Police Accountability Task Force Lightfoot and Candidate Lightfoot acknowledging the crimes committed by former Police Commander Jon Burge and his colleagues within the Chicago Police Department, Mayor Lightfoot’s Department of Law is arguing that many of his crimes never occurred. This of course flies in the face of the City Council acknowledging these crimes and paying many of the victims for their suffering.
This is part of a significant pattern as the actions of Mayor Lightfoot's administration vary greatly from the rhetoric she previously used to garner public attention. CJP has experienced this first hand as in her previous life before becoming a politician Lightfoot went off many times about the need for the city to engage in true transparency. This of course contradicts completely how her police department and the law department are responding to FOIA requests. We have no noticed a single difference between the Lightfoot, Emanuel, and Daley administrations related to transparency so I did not expect anything different from the Lightfoot administration when it came to police misconduct litigation. Power corrupts.
Also on our show today we cover the following topics:
Horrific Sun-Times editorial on Community CommissionLightfoot strange placement of new youth clubBrookings Institute's 7 Myths about DefundingMinneapolis Mayor blames defund movement for crimeCharlotte Police arrests drop 46% Citizen App testing on-demand security services
Images used on the show today
The Mayor's summer violence program is unique is that is does address violence a little differently than past mayors but it is not unique in how it is not part of a long-term solution for communities.
What differentiates Mayor Lightfoot's summer violence plan is that is seems to be data driven to laser focus on 15 Chicago Police Department beats with the most violence. This is truly unique as previous mayors have always taken more generalized approaches. So koudos to Mayor Lightfoot for using data to help her create the violence plan. The big problem is her plan like all the others does nothing to address the fundamental conditions in the neighborhoods that are the root causes of the violence.
The fact that there is a summer violence plan and not a plan to pour in massive economic resources and social services in to these communities over the long term shows that the focus from city hall is in reducing numbers in the short term with absolutely no plan on changing these communities for the long term. While I do believe that Mayor Lightfoot genuinely wants to reduce violence in these communities and does care about the lives in these communities she just doesn't care enough to do what needs to be done over the long-term in these communities. This is why we have a summer violence plan. It is not that it is a bad one it is just that the summer violence plan exists at all. We will certainly be back here in summer 2022. If the summer violence plan is successful we might have 15 new beats to be laser focuses on but is that really progress?
Also on the show today we discuss the following topics:
New CPD foot pursuit policyAlvarez shooting reviewOfficer Evan Solano pulling gun in off duty incidentCommunity safety team bad raidCook County government try #2 at defund resolution
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NBC 5 Chicago
The recent email hack in the Mayor’s office was released to the public and has shown that Lightfoot is failing at her job. We have learned that Mayor Lightfoot does not seem to be on the citizens’ side.
Lightfoot has repeatedly released misleading and outright false information to keep the citizens of Chicago in the dark about the true circumstances surrounding the Mayor’s office, the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and other city offices. The first major offense is that Lightfoot created a subpar police oversight proposal after months of promising to create her own oversight proposal, although she had a surplus of time to create it.
While Mayor Lightfoot previously supported Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) in its pursuit of the oversight proposal, Lightfoot decides that she would create her own version and has only just announced that she would be releasing it soon. Because of this, the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) and GAPA have joined forces to continue to work on a more beneficial proposal called the Compromised Proposal.
The second offense to come to light from the email hack is that Lightfoot has purposely contributed to stalling the Police Misconduct Database. The vote on the database was pushed back because of last-minute changes. Charles Green sued for access to every complaint against Chicago police officers since the 1960s but the mayor’s and city council offices appealed to overturn the decision while proposing a watered-down version of the plan.
Instead of disclosing data from the 1960s, the new version would only disclose data from 2000 to the present. The revision would also limit what information would be included in the released files. Lightfoot previously held the positions of President of the Chicago Police Board and the Chair of the Police Accountability Task Force. Considering that both of these roles are meant to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions, Lightfoot now stands against everything she stood for before taking office as Mayor. This watered-down proposal gives the police no reason to fear being held accountable for their past actions.
The third, but certainly not last, offense that was unearthed due to the email hack was that the CPD and Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, were in a contract together. This contract violated the Illinois biometric laws. Not only did the CPD have a contract with Clearview AI, but they previously entered into a contract with Data Works as well.
Data Works is also a facial recognition AI company. To add to that, the CPD paid for this Clearview AI contract with Chicago’s counter-terrorism funds. Not only did the Clearview facial recognition give false positives mostly for Black people, Mayor Lightfoot later released a statement saying that the CPD was not in any way involved in using facial recognition software.
There are many suspicions as to why she would release such a statement even after the big email hack. Did she know about the contracts with Clearview and Data Works and tried to cover it up? Was she lied to about these contracts? If so, who is responsible for relaying this information to her? Or did she simply not know at all? Does Mayor Lightfoot have any clue as to what goes on in her office? Despite the suspicions surrounding the email hack, what we do know is that it was Clearview that canceled the contract with CPD. Clearview even pulled out of Illinois altogether to avoid a lawsuit.
There is much that Mayor Lightfoot has failed to take accountability for. Be sure to listen to the entire podcast to become more informed about what the Chicago legislation truly believes in the face of the recent email hacks.
Doctored information from CPD is rampant in Mary Mitchell’s recent column. The Sun-Times is no stranger to biased information. And Mary Mitchell is no stranger to biased writing either. Mary Mitchell, a columnist for the Sun-Times, has been writing columns condemning the CPD for decades. Mitchell has written columns criticizing their lack of due diligence and police practices.
Additionally, Mary Mitchell’s column is full of doctored information that the CPD has released to the public to improve its own reputation. Her column is complete with baseless facts and misleading information that serves to confuse readers about what the CPD does compared to what they are supposed to represent. Mitchell has spent years condemning the CPD for doing a bad job. Yet, because of a personal relationship, this article is the exact opposite of what she often writes.
The media is no stranger to nepotism. Mitchell is one of many columnists that has written columns condemning the CPD and its reputation only to turn around and try to save their reputation through her column. Columnists like Mitchell promote and encourage nepotism when dismissing valuable and relevant information in favor of biased statistics to support personal relationships.
Correspondingly, Mitchell has no desire to fact-check or research any of her sources while writing her column. Throughout the history of the CPD, there has never been a time where the statistics were not doctored to show the CPD in a favorable light. The clearance rate right now is 58.45% compared to 51.88% in 2019. In, 2017 the city’s murder clearance rate was 29%. Under David Brown’s leadership, the clearance rates doubled since Charlie Beck’s tenure. But Charlie Beck made changes since Eddie Johnson’s administration. Under each leadership, things changed but the policies never worked.
Since the policies enacted by each Chief of Police have not worked, why are the clearance rates doubled? It is because of doctored statistics. When a person is arrested, they can be guilty but there are various convenient excuses as to why they cannot be charged, and they eventually walk free. But the Chicago justice system has produced a system to where they can claim they have cleared that case by putting the blame on lack of evidence.
On today's show comes from a March 10th conversation we had with 47th Ward Alderman Matt Martin to discuss the status of the community commission for police oversight. At the time of our discussion Mayor Lightfoot had pulled out of negotiations withe the two groups pushing their individual versions of the commission and instead announced publicly that she would introduce her own version of the community commission ordinance. The Mayor has yet to unveil any new version of the community commission ordinance.
Since early 2016 a diverse set of community groups have come together to line up in support of two different versions of the community commission. The two ordinances are from the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) and the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC). Both of these groups have been active since shortly after the murder of Laquan McDonald and have been working to pass their versions since that time which now adds up to more than 5 years.
During her campaign Mayor Lightfoot promised she would pass some version of the community commission in her first 100 days in office. We are now approaching her 730 day in office and she has walked away from the negotiating table and has now failed to introduce her version despite having months to do so. Obviously, this is a campaign promise she is failed to deliver on.
We are very happy that we were able to sit down with Alderman Matt Martin to discuss his position on the community commission, his reaction to Mayor Lightfoot walking away from the table, and what he thinks the possibility for passing a version of the community commission is in the city council.
Note: This conversation was live streamed on our Chicago Justice Show on March 10th. This was before the supporters of CPAC and GAPA unveiled their compromise ordinance.
A secret purchase of a drone by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) with full knowledge of Mayor Lightfoot and her administration raises all kinds of privacy concerns around 1st amendment activities. It also raises concerns for just how much the Mayor cares about community input in to the massive expansion of police surveillance capabilities at the same time both the city and country are in the midst of the largest unrest in decades stemming from a murder of a black man by a white police officer.
Justice agencies always exploit rare events to expand their ability to surveil the public as they know it is the only way they will be able to win the political argument. In this case Mayor Lightfoot not only had full knowledge of the CPD's acquisition of a drone but encouraged it. She also allowed the purchase of this drone in secret to prevent the public from fulfilling their role as citizens and participating in the discourse around whether this massive expansion of surveillance capabilities that drones bring with them should be allowed. If nothing else the Mayor has shown, like her predecessors before her, just how little she cares about public input.
We only know about the purchase of the drone because of a massive hack of records that were in the possession of the Jones Day law firm. The firm is running an independent investigation in to the handling of the Anjanette Young case. A hacker group was able to get in to their computer system and access a very large trove of city official emails and documents. The treasure trove of emails and documents revealed that the CPD purchased the drone and we setting up an internal system to start testing the drone.
Also on our show today:
CWB doesn't understand how policing works3 cops talk to Fox 32Brain drain @ city hallSocial media fails What cops learn in the academy - NewsweekFalse trope about media and cops - Newsweek
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Video from today's show
Today we sit down with Illinois State Representative La Shawn K Ford, 8th District, to discuss his proposal to create a critical race theory academy for police to attend and learn about how race impacts policing and the administration of justice.
Going through this academy would be mandatory for any individuals seeking to become a police officer before the state could certify any new officer. Also, it would be mandatory continuing education for current officers so in theory all police officers within the State of Illinois would have to go through this academy within some period of time after the law goes in to effect.
Critical race theory is using the lens of race to examine laws, the legal process, and the administration of justice in an effort to uncover bias within any or all of these areas. The recent deaths of Adam Toledo and Anthony Alvarez underscore the need for this conversation at this moment. Police supporters and large parts of white Chicago refuse to admit either or both shootings had anything to do with race as they believe, strangely, that an interaction between to people from different races can be completely devoid of any impact of race. They shout down any attempt to even ask a question about the impact of race because it simply cannot exist. Their refusal to engage in the conversation about the impact of race demonstrates the need to have the conversation about race. Police violence is unfortunately concentrated against a certain segment of the population both in Chicago and around the country.
Also on our show today we discuss:
Who Should Investigate Police ShootingsCWB anonymous letter to Kim Foxx FOP Watch Lightfoot Qualified Immunity Push Causality is Really HardSolis Deal
Clips used on the show today
Clip #1 - Detectives Being Used to Protect Property
Comments on Sydney Robert's Resignation & Kim Foxx
Images Used on Today's Show
Sydney Roberts, Chief Administrator of the Citizen Office of Police Accountability, (COPA), resigns her position effective Friday, May 14th. Her exist is one in a line of justice related positions that individuals seems to be fleeing from in the Lightfoot administration.
CJP was not supportive of the appointment of Roberts to the position back in 2018 when then Mayor Rham Emanuel picked Roberts to lead COPA. Her background in the Secretary of State Police certainly did not seem like it was adequate experience to come and run an agency that would try to hold accountable a police department so fraught with corruption and abuse issues,.
CJP has covered the operations of COPA before in a previous show discussing an audit conducted by the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety Deborah Witzburg. You can find it here.
Roberts tenure has been marred by pretty much the same things the tenure of each of her predecessors was marred by. The agency from its inception was set up to fail in that it was never provided the necessary resources to do its job properly. Obviously if the agency cannot close investigations fast enough then the agency is going to need more resources to do it, i.e., additional investigators and staff. One of the many consistencies between the Daley - Emanuel - Lightfoot administrations has been their desire to not increase the budgets for the police accountability system no matter how much the evidence proved they needed more resources. Instead they do what all corrupt and soulless politicians do, make the leader of the agency, Sydney Roberts in this case, a scapegoat for the failures of the agency and find another to be scapegoat to take over and promise changes. The one difference is Lightfoot ran a police accountability agency for Daley in the early 2000s and should know better. I guess the experience was not that impactful.
Also covered on today's show:
Lightfoot's New Deputy Chief of StaffFallout in the Cook County State's Attorney's Office ContinuesBGA FOIA ReportSocial Media FailsCWB District Staffing Non-senseCPD's Drop in Raiding HomesFederal Indictments in George Floyd Case
Images used on the show today
The Chicago Tribune published an article with a headline that makes you think they have a scoop on the new foot pursuit policy from the Chicago Police Department (CPD). What the Tribune delivers can best be labeled as notes from a possible brainstorming session about what might be included in a new policy someday. The Tribune cannot confirm anything in the document they obtained is in the current draft of the policy.
fsddsfCJP has covered both the Adam Toledo and the Anthony Alvarez shootings on our show. These two shootings are the impetus behind the CPD accelerating the revamp of their foot pursuit policy.
A close read of the document reveals that the contents seem merely aspirational and not even remotely in a form that one would consider the document close to the finished product. The article also reveals that the Tribune journalists, Annie Sweeney and Jeremy Gorner, don't have any idea what is in the current draft. In the story they quote CPD Superintendent David Brown saying he has one in hand. It would seem to me that the document the Tribune journalists received would only be useful as a tool to show what was on the table early and how close or far from that aspirational document the final version is. Publishing a story on this document alone seems premature to me at best and at worst click bait as the Tribune journalists cannot say with any confidence that what is in this document is in the current version Brown says he has,.
One aspect of this story that I did think was interesting is how close this aspirational document is to the foot pursuit policy put in to place by Brown during his tenure in Dallas. If anything this is the scoop in the story. The fact that this aspirational document mirrors what was put in to place in Dallas. Now, if the Tribune journalists did their job and put some context about how the document was created and who was involved we would have a better idea who close or far this is from the most recent version.
We discuss this article in-depth and cover the following other topics in this episode of the Chicago Justice Show.
Topics:
ShotSpotter Analysis from MacArthur Justice Center - Link, Social Media Fails (new regular segments) Link, LinkMayor Coming up Short on ReformCPD Offices Not Getting VaccinatedChicago Reader's Carjacking AnalysisFox 32's Fire Arm Trafficking Story
Videos from today's show
The videos collected in the Anthony Alvarez shooting was released late last week with by the Citizen Office of Police Accountability (COPA). One of those videos was from a home security camera outside the house where the shooting occurred. From the video is seems like Alvarez never did anything that could be construed as threatening towards the officer.
The video shows Alvarez fleeing from the officer on foot, falling down, and then continuing to run before the officer shoots him multiple times. From what we can see on the video we cannot think of any legitimate reasons for the officer to have shot Alvarez that evening despite any rhetoric you will hear from police officials and the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP). in a short time after releasing the video COPA recommended that the officer be stripped of his police powers. They usually only do this when they believe their is good reason to believe they will be recommending the termination of the officer for his/her actions in the case being investigated.
The spin from the FOP has been as long as an offender possesses a weapon and is holding it or trying to grab it they are empowered to shoot the person. This of course flies in the face of common sense but this is an organization that flies in the face of common sense routinely. The election of John Catanzara, who has almost 50 complaints against him, defies all kinds of logic. The inability of the FOP to ever voice a negative word about shootings like the Alvarez and McDonald shootings proves the organization has no interest in reforming their practices.
On today's show we also cover the following topics:
COPA Stripping of the officers in the Alvarez shootingLightfoot pointing fingers again the Anjanette Young investigation ends FOP Watch - rather bizarre Facebook contentIs the CRJ system causing crime?latest aldermanic indictments
Images included in today's show
Video clips from today's show
Home Security Video
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Links from today's show
https://abc7chicago.com/cpd-officer-who-fatally-shot-man-has-4-complaints-watchdog-group-says/10560757/
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/29/22409991/anthony-alvarez-shooting-lightfoot-copa-chicago-police-superintendent-officer-stripped-portage-park
https://twitter.com/fspielman/status/1387428959432978432
https://www.courtinnovation.org/publications/nonprosecution
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/4/29/22409827/patrick-daley-thompson-pensacola-place-scotland-yard-washington-federal-bank-savings
https://chicago.suntimes.com/crime/2021/4/29/22410631/former-alderman-ricardo-munoz-charged-federal-indictment-relative-college-tuition
The murder of a west side black politician in the early 1960s is one that the city just didn't want to solve according to our guest today on the Chicago Justice Show, Mick Dumke from ProPublica Illinois. We discuss his latest piece titled "The Murder Chicago Didn't Want to Solve".
According to Dumke Lewis was the first black alderman elected on the west side of Chicago. The 24th ward then and now encompasses large swaths of the North Lawndale community. As blacks starting to move to this west side community the Daley political machine knew they had to at least attempt to show the new residents that the machine had their interests in mind. To do this the machine recruited and promoted a black man to run for alderman. One they knew would not challenge the status quo of political corruption as well as mafia control of vice and gambling in the community. As anything in the 1960s in Chicago there was all kinds of mafia, political, and police intermingling in Lewis' life and murder. Of course the last person we know that saw Lewis alive was a Chicago Police officer. There is even an FBI report about the murder that states the machine was purposefully spreading rumors about Lewis in the local media so the public wouldn't care about the loss of this politician.
Dumke's story is a fascinating deep dive in to the intersection of the political machine and the mafia told through the life and murder of a west side black politician that seemed to have a cozy yet complicated relationship with both. Dumke isn't able to identify the person responsible for the murder but instead he goes in to real detail about all the powers that be in the city and the community that had reason to see Lewis gone and his murder go unsolved.
Images used in this show
Former Congressman Luis Gutierrez recently held a press conference to lash out at Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx for failing to review the body camera video in the Adam Toledo case before one of her prosecutors offered a proffer in court stating that Adam had a gun in his had at the very moment he was shot.
As I cover in the show there is certainly something wrong with this demand. It reeks of exceptionalism and the fact that it would acceptable for Foxx to allow a prosecutor to do their job without oversight in ordinary cases because it is not important if they lie in those cases.
It seems like former Congressman Gutierrez might be exploiting this tragedy to get himself back on the stage in an effort to make himself more relevant than he has been since he left congress. It is hardly a secret that he has all but disappeared from the public stage. This is certainly not above any Chicago politician to exploit a tragedy for their own purposes. Congressman Gutierrez even goes so far to demand a meeting with Foxx. It seems like he is committed to making sure he stays on the stage for few weeks.
Also on today's show we cover the following topics:
the city filing suit against an Indiana gun storea Tribune columnist that believed the mayoral candidates when they say they will solve Chicago's violence issuesWBEZ's review of Supt. Brown's first year in officea new recurring segment titled "FOP Watch" where we keep an eye on the Chicago Fraternal Order of PoliceThe Marshall Project's story on veteran cops as bad trainers
Images from today's show
Links for today's show:
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/84116736550?pwd=aFBzMFlOaDZxY0dmdlFzVVRnVGUyQT09
https://chicago.suntimes.com/news/2021/4/25/22402871/ex-rep-luis-gutierrez-slams-foxx-failing-watch-adam-toledo-video-before-prosecutor-shame-you
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-chicago-lawsuit-westforth-sports-gun-sales-20210426-d6ctfjf2vje4rndtk52urvcsly-story.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/columns/dahleen-glanton/ct-prem-superintendent-david-brown-one-year-anniversary-20210426-bgpa6hacvvcapn4twpjecbegdm-story.html
https://www.wbez.org/stories/david-browns-first-year-as-chicago-police-superintendent/2bebeb33-85e2-450e-8624-03f44898b877
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huMLm_UaRsA
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yTgiD_QGWdY
https://www.fox32chicago.com/news/cpd-releases-video-of-female-cop-being-beaten-by-man-on-drugs
https://abc7chicago.com/anthony-alvarez-video-portage-park-chicago-police-shooting/10555640/
https://www.themarshallproject.org/2020/07/22/one-roadblock-to-police-reform-veteran-officers-who-train-recruits
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-police-officer-posts-on-facebook-work-hustle-kill-cpd-still-investigating-after-15-months/2fb03618-349d-4b06-8120-65a0789f60dc
The processing of a rape kit seems like it has always been a problem in Chicago and Illinois. For as far back as we can remember the Illinois State Police Crime Lab has had some sort of backlog in processing rape kits to determine if there is biological evidence that could be used to match to profiles in the DNA database. There has also been, and may still exist, a problem with local police departments submitting kits for testing.
Read CJP's Data Brief titled "Rape Kit Backlog - What We Do and Don’t Know" here.
These problems exacerbate an already humongous problem of just getting responding officers and detectives to believe the survivor is telling the truth. Then there is further obstacles to prosecuting offenders within the system when prosecutors refuse to press charges based on non-legal factors like how the survivor was dressed, whether the survivor consumed drugs or alcohol prior to the assault, and whether the assault was committed by someone known to the survivor.
For all of these reasons and more we decided to feature this topic in our first town hall we titled "Re-imagining a New Paradigm of Rape Kit Transparency". Tonight our panelists are:
Maria Balata
Mariá Balata is Director of Advocacy Services. Since joining the team in 2012, Mariá has directly worked with and supervised the provision of services for nearly 3000 survivors and their loved ones. Today Mariá oversees the largest team at Resilience who walk with survivors navigating legal and medical options in the aftermath of sexual violence. Mariá also works closely with institutions to promote the implementation of survivor-centered practices throughout the Chicago area.
Ilse Knecht
Ilse is the director of policy and advocacy. Ilse has 20 years invested in victim advocacy and is a nationally recognized expert on the rape kit backlog. She leads Joyful Heart’s End The Backlog campaign, which is at the forefront of identifying untested rape kits across the country, appealing for laws and policies to improve criminal justice responses to sexual violence; and working with jurisdictions to assist them to develop and implement survivor-centered reforms.
Donna Plier
Donna Plier, is program manager, has been with GACS since 1998 years and currently serves as the Program Manger for Sexual Assault Service Center and the Partner Abuse Intervention Program. Donna earned her Bachelor of Arts degree as well as her Master’s degree in Criminal/Social Justice from Lewis University. Donna serves on the Illinois Coalition Against Sexual Assault (ICASA) Executive and Program Committee and Chairs the ICASA Personnel Committee.
The Community Commission on Public Safety (Commission) is one of the campaign promises that Mayor Lightfoot just has not been able to deliver on and seems to do nothing but take wrong step after wrong step trying to implement this legislation. Recently, the Mayor announced she was walking away from the negotiating table with the various community and reforms groups behind the Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) and the Citizen Police Accountability Council (CPAC) versions of the Commission and she would be submitting her own version in to City Council.
On today's show we play part 1 of our interview with Tamer Abouzeid, a representative from the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, the organization behind the CPAC version of the ordinance. He joins us to discuss a recent announcement that the groups behind GAPA and CPAC have come together after Mayor Lightfoot walked away from the table a few months ago to author a compromise version of their ordinances that will create the Commission and allow the public to vote on a binding referendum on exactly how much power they want the Commission to have.
In this episode we also cover:
the revelations in court this weekend that prosecutors have seen the body camera video in the Adam Toledo shooting and they confirmed it showed Toledo had the gun in his had as he turned towards the officer.
an article by Chip Mitchell from WBEZ looking at just how white the leadership of Chicago's Fraternal Order of Police has been for the last 20 years.
a report by NPR about an alternative crisis response system that does not involve the police responding to certain types of calls for service. (Here is a link to our recent interview with two leaders of the CAHOOTS program in Eugene, OR that the Denver program is modeled after)
Images from today's show
Cook County Clerk of the Circuit Court Iris Martinez pulled what was always expected and flip flopped here campaign pledge to make her office be responsive to the Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). Instead Martinez backed an Illinois Senate bill to make the office responsive to what is called the local records act.
The Clerk's office was created under the Illinois Court's Act and thus it is deemed to be exempt from FOIA. The hitch is that under the Illinois Court's Act court records are deemed open as the court hearings unless sealed by a judge. The Clerk's office maintains the court's records and data so it makes sense that the records, whether in paper or digital form, would be open for public inspection. The Clerk's office has the infrastructure to make the Court's paper records available for inspection but obtaining digital versions of those same records is nearly impossible.
If you want to read more about Martinez's flip flop you should check out a good article from Josh McGhee from Injustice Watch (link below).
Also on the show today we cover:
The CPD not making real progress on transitioning from away from their old was of capturing and retaining gang affiliation data. The CPD preparing for demonstrations after release of Toledo shooting video, Chauvin verdict. This was covered in a Sun-Times article - most likely planted to some degree from the CPD.Hispanic Caucus endorsing the compromised version of the community council that Mayor Lightfoot dismissed. CPD still behind on progress mandated by the federal court monitored consent decree.CWB's really bad analysis of violence on the Redline in Q1 2021.CPD movies to fire officers for shooting on the platform at Grand Ave. stop on the Redline.
Images for today's show
Links for today's how:
https://www.injusticewatch.org/news/courts/2021/cook-county-clerk-of-court-foia-transparency/
https://igchicago.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/03/OIG-Follow-Up-Inquiry-on-the-Chicago-Police-Departments-Gang-Database.pdf
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2021/4/9/22375981/chicago-police-preparing-demonstrations-adam-toledo-shooting-video-chauvin-george-floyd-verdict?tpcc=email-breaking&utm_campaign=Chicago%20Sun-Times%20Breaking%20News&utm_content=20210409&utm_medium=email&utm_source=Revue%20newsletter
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2021/4/7/22372204/adam-toledo-police-shooting-chicago-city-council-hispanic-caucus-civilian-oversight-ordinance
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/breaking/ct-chicago-police-consent-decree-monitor-report-20210331-i6hst3f64vgzvhn6cnltvvfzne-story.html
https://cwbchicago.com/2021/03/ridership-is-low-but-violent-crime-is-through-the-roof-on-red-line-data-shows.html
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-chicago-police-discipline-red-line-shooting-20210409-sf46sdkvkbdnrmbstqw6y7d2a4-story.html
The Fraternal order of Police (FOP) has long be known be a force working against reform even when it is in the best interests of their membership. They are also known for backing up a single officer no matter the long-term consequences for the organization and its membership. The Adam Toledo case may turn out to be just another example of this.
FOP President John Catanzara now does these videos that he posts every Friday to the FOP YouTube channel called the Friday Update. This week our first segment focuses on the most recently posted video from Friday 4/2 where he discusses the Adam Toledo shooting. In our first segment today we play clips from the video where Catanzara is discussing the shooting and the body camera video as if he has seen the video. From my sources he would not be in a position to have seen that video. He is just making claims about what occurred by taking the officer's word for what happened while trying to get his audience to believe he has some sort of access to independent corroborating evidence like the video. This is just the FOP continuing a long tradition of spreading propaganda about officer involved incident he they know nothing about. Seems like we have heard this tune before.
On today's show we also discuss the following topics that are in the news right now.
An editorial by the Sun-Times about a new study on whether it is better to arrest and prosecute low level offenders. This is based off of a study published in the National Bureau of Economic Research and studies 15 years of data. The Chicago City Council's moral failures is a column by Neil Steinberg. We discuss the failures as it pertains to criminal justice matters.CJP's new weekly blog series analyzing weekend gun violence coverage. Get insight in to how the 7 outlets are or are not covering the violence. Updates on CJP's two active FOIA lawsuits - this covers our active litgation against the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State's Attorney's Office.A Politician being a politician. In Chicago you can always count on a politician to exploit violence in Chicago for their own political gain.
Images for today's show
Links for today's show:
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/3/30/22356790/national-bureau-economic-research-nonviolent-misdemeanors-criminal-justice-reform-kim-foxx-editorial
https://chicago.suntimes.com/columnists/2021/3/25/22350224/india-resolution-muslims-islam-islamophobia-trump-modi-chicago-city-council-steinberg
https://chicagojustice.org/2021/04/05/analyzing-media-coverage-of-chicago-gun-violence-over-the-weekend/
https://chicagojustice.org/2021/03/23/cpd-foia-suit-updates/
https://chicagojustice.org/2021/02/08/sao-foia-suit-updates/
https://twitter.com/Paulvallas/status/1379757420239552520
The Chicago Police Department's (CPD) response to the George Floyd protests turn out to be chaotic, unorganized, and under prepared. This comes from a review of the CPD"s response from a report recently released by the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety (DPSIG), Deborah Witzburg.
Floyd was murdered on a Monday and despite spreading protests around the country and open source intelligence (social media) CPD Superintendent Brown and other officials within the CPD failed to realize the scale of the protests and unrest Chicago would experience during the upcoming weekend and over the next several weeks.
The Minneapolis police's murder of George Floyd was the spark that the powder keg of job insecurity, housing insecurity, and health insecurity that the pandemic brought on was waiting for. Despite this Superintendent Brown and other officials completely discounted the intelligence despite the fact that other police agencies like the Illinois State Police and Cook County Sheriff's Office reviewed the same intelligence and knew the response to what happened to George Floyd was not going to be good.
The report also talks about the massive disorganization throughout the ranks within the CPD. They were unclear about the tactics that had been authorized and what general orders were in affect and guiding their actions. According to the report this led to massive numbers of protestors being arrested for no reason or released from custody when they should have been held and prosecuted.
The report also details a massive under reporting of the use of force by officers throughout the first 10 days of protests and unrest. Anyone paying attention to local TV news or what was streaming on social media could easily find uses of force that greatly out numbered those officially reported by officers.
Despite all of this the Mayor, Superintendent Brown, and the President of the Chicago Police Board Ghian Foreman to hold a press conference on Saturday morning after the first night of protests and praise the actions of officers. The report by the DPSIG shows just how poorly things within the CPD actually went on the first night of protests responding to the murder of Floyd.
Today our guest is Deborha Witzburg, Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. She will be discussing her recent report that takes a closer look at the Chicago Police Department's response to George Floyd protests.
On today's show we discuss covering the George Floyd protests from the streets with a former Marine that brings with him a unique perspective on the freedoms being exercised by protestors and what it meant to him to be one of the people that put his life on the line to fight for those rights.
Our conversation is framed both from what our guest reported during the protests and some of findings of a report recently released by the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety on the Chicago Police Department's (CPD) handling of the protests. It is pretty remarkable how much of our guest's experiences seem to mimic the findings in the report.
If you read the report you will see just how unprepared the CPD was and how that served to cause confusion throughout the ranks w1ithin the Department. This type of confusion within the chain of command as well as what tactics had or had not been authorized creates environment where misconduct and abuse can spread unchecked. The CPD seemed particularly unable to understand from the open source intelligence available to them that the protests stemming from the murder of George Floyd were going to be large and unruly. All of these mistakes combined for an atmosphere where police were going to be highly likely to use force that was not inline with CPD guidelines.
Our guest today is freelance journalist and now 1L law student Jonathan Ballew. Jonathan hit the streets for the first major protests responding to the murder of George Floyd. Jonathan continued to go out and report on protests across the city night after night, documented the actions of the CPD in real time through his Twitter account. Jonathan not only documented abuse by officers but was a victim himself as he was pepper sprayed live on Twitter by a CPD officer despite him showing his press credentials to the officer before being assaulted.
Being that Jonathan served for several years in the US Marine Corps he has a unique perspective on the George Floyd protests and the rights protestors were exercising right in front of him. Unlike most reporters Jonathan has put his life on the line protecting the very rights the protests were exercising during the George Floyd protests. This leads us to discuss Jonathan's response to seeing the American flag burned on the streets during the protests.
This episode of our podcast comes directly from our Chicago Justice Show that is streamed live every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday on our Facebook Page, Twitter Page, YouTube Channel, and Twitch Channel. You can watch archived versions of our show on our YouTube Channel. Below is the video from our interview with Jonathan.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0W5TLK-sMpE
In this episode we dive in the the reforms found in HB 3653 passed by the Illinois General Assembly in mid January. Specifically we focus on the front end reforms or those reforms that mostly deal with policing that are found in HB 3653.
For those unaware this nearly 800 page bill is what is considered an omnibus bill. This means it is made up of many different bills up together to passed as really as a package. Many if not most of the reforms found in bills like this have been introduced on their own or as part of smaller packages and didn't pass. These omnibus bills like HB 3653 usually pass when their is a change in public sentiment as there is an opportunity of major reforms to pass despite stiff political opposition within the legislative body and within special interests.
It is pretty clear that HB 3653 contains some major reforms to the entire criminal justice system throughout Illinois. Due to it containing a bunch of smaller bills the scope of the reforms are significant. Does this mean the there is not room for further progress, no. There is plenty of room to move the state forward in very important areas. That said there is plenty to like in HB 3653 especially regarding policing.
Today Sarah Staudt Senior Policy Analyst & Staff Attorney at the Chicago Council of Lawyers, We talk in-depth about the reforms around policing including:
it can now be a class 3 felony for officers to purposely turn off their body cameras or dash cameras if they are trying to hide misconduct
it can now be a class 3 felony to purposely write a fraudulent police report trying to cover up misconduct. It can also be a class 3 felony if you have knowledge of a fellow officer engaging in this conduct and failing to report it.
Uniform Peace Officers Disciplinary Act 0- Remove requirement to provide complainant’s name to officers - no sworn affidavit is required to file a complaint against an officer - creates anonymous complaint policy
establishes legislative intent to create a statewide use of force standards for law enforcement agencies.
We discuss all of these reforms and more in today's episode.
The impact on sentencing and incarceration from the recently passed omnibus bill HB 3653 in very significant. We discuss many of the these specific reforms on today's show. Our guest is Jobi Cates, Founder and Executive Director of Restore Justice Illinois.
This large bill is packed with reforms. It is far from everything the state legislature could have done to reform the criminal justice system or just the incarceration system we have in Illinois but on many fronts this bill equals a few good steps in the direction we need to go.
On today's show we focus exclusively on the back end of the justice system and look at how this bill specifically reforms how the state of Illinois sentences people convicted of committing crimes and how the incarceration system has been impacted.
We discuss the changes to the sentencing and incarcerations systems including:
the felony murder rule adjustmentsadjustments to how we define someone to be a habitual criminalSentencing Creditsfelony drug crimeschanges to mandatory supervised release
This is a very significant list and there are even more reforms packed in to the legislation that provide real needed changes to the sentencing and incarceration systems. Is it far enough? No. There is still plenty of work that needs to be but Illinois has taken some good steps forward.
For a discussion about how three innovative community based programs are fighting gun violence acorss Chicago check out our this podcast episode featuring representatives from Chicago CRED, READI Chicago, and Communities Partnering for Peace (CP4P) here.
Understanding the impact of the intersection of the multiple problems that communities are facing on the south and west sides is not something that politicians and the media in Chicago have been very good at. The media has a systemic issue with allowing local alderman off the hook for their votes on financial issues that contribute to creating the conditions in these communities that drive crime.
On today's show we talk with three organizations that are doing the long-term work on the streets in these communities that have a chance of really making a difference. Sadly, until the mayor and city council step and do their part to realign the economics of these communities there will be a need for these organizations to do their work.
Leading up to 2020 Chicago had seen a few straight years of reductions in gun violence. It is not clear what those reductions should be contributed to. This is always the billion dollar question as deceitful police agencies and corrupt politicians take credit for these reductions absent any actual evidence they had anything to do with it. The media unfortunately just amplifies this propaganda rather than righteously criticizing it.
For those that are interested in trying to determine where 2020 fits in my advice is to not try to consider it at all. The reductions previously to 2020 have to be considered independent of 2020 because of the massive disruption in the social fabric of our society that was 2020 is not comparable to any year in American in the last 100 years. When you see the media and politicians trying talk about 2020 please be very skeptical. It is pretty clear that they will exploit what has happened in 2020 to their own ends.
Our guests for today's show discussing gun violence reductions are:
Vaughn Bryant, Executive Director, Communities Partnering for Peace CP4P
Eddie Bocanegra, Senior Director, Heartland Alliance READI Chicago,
Peter Cunningham, Senior Communications Consultant for Chicago CRED.
In today's show we discuss two really bad articles from Fran Spielman and the propaganda coming from Superintendent David Brown's YouTube series.
Spielman is known through our Chicago as a reporter that is seeking nothing but sensational headlines and salacious quotes that can make headlines. We discuss two recent articles from her covering Alderman Beale's cop house idea and carjackings. Neither article is good and clearly demonstrates she is all about featuring quotes rather than digging in and doing the legwork necessary to really inform the public on these topics. In short, it is typical Spielman.
We also discuss Chicago Police Superintendent Brown's YouTube series titled "Real Talk with Superintendent Brown". The one we are focusing on today was uploaded in November 2020 and is focused on CPD's reform efforts.
We was warned by media sources in Dallas that Brown has a strong dislike for the media and he will do anything he can to avoid having to deal with the media and get his message out to the public. We were ready to be on the lookout for these types of maneuvers by Brown. The YouTube series is a fine idea it just needs to be much more focused on facts rather than just spreading the CPD's propaganda. We were also warned that Brown is not terribly tethered to the facts. Something that has been abundantly clear in his first year in Chicago.
The second half of the show we discuss:
Mary Mitchell's call for expanding the powers of DCFs rather than using those resources in directly supporting communities.
An article bvy Pascal Sabino from Block Club Chicago covering community groups helping CPS find alternatives to cops in schools.
The Sun-Times's Matthew Hendrickson's article on a CPD officer being charged with official misconduct for chocking a suspect in 2019.
Bail reform is a very hot topic in Cook County despite the fact that there have been very few facts driving the discussion.
Bail was created to assure that people show up for court proceedings after being charged with a crime. The thought was that forcing people to put up a some of cash would make sure they show up for court. If they did show up for their court hearings despite the outcome of the proceedings they would receive the money they put up back.
It is pretty easy to discern that is system was discriminatory against the poor because even low amounts of bail could very easily be impossible for the poor to pay This would result in the poor being forced to serve time in jail when the rich did not even though they were charged with the same offense, had the same criminal history, and were of equal risk of re-offending. This is the very reason advocates for bail reform sought to change this system.
Despite the lies of critics bail was not set up to make sure people were incarcerated pre-trial. It was created to assure a defendant's attendance at his/her court hearings. The reality is that most defendants show up for court at a very high percentage regardless of whether or not they put up cash bail. This fact flies in the fact of accusations of critics but facts don't seem to be something that critics respect.
Today we sit down with two professors form Loyola University Chicago's Department of Criminal Justice and Criminology:
Dr. Dave Olsen - Co-director of the Center for Criminal Justice Research, Policy and PracticeDr. Don Stemen - Associate Professor and Chairperson
We are discussing their first empirical analysis of the impact of bail reform on crime and violence in Chicago. Their report is titled "Dollars and Sense in Cook County - Examining the Impact of General Order 18.8A on Felony Bond Court Decisions, Pretrial Release, and Crime"
This conversation comes from our Chicago Justice Show that is streamed on our Facebook Page, Twitter Page, YouTube Channel, and our Twitch Channel. Here is the video of this conversation from our YouTube Channel.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOgcbQKMEGE&feature=youtu.be
You can find more information about our show including how to become a sponsor by clicking the image below.
Sexual violence in Chicago is a significantly under-covered crime in Chicago and is only really covered if the media can exploit and sensationalize the event.
Today we chat with Executive Director Erin Walton and Director of Programs and Policy Sarah Layden from Resilience. Our discussion covers defining what exactly is sexual violence, how often it occurs, and the Chicago/Cook County justice system's response.
Despite how the Chicago media covers these crimes most sexual violence perpetrators are known to the survivor. This reality is proven both in what advocates from agencies like resilience see everyday in their work supporting survivors and national level survey research like the National Crime Victimization Survey.
While the gap has slightly narrowed in recent years for many years the gap between known and unknown offenders was 9-1. In our 2013 study on a year of domestic violence and sexual assault coverage in the Chicago Tribune and Sun-Times we learned that less than 4% of the articles on sexual assault were about assaults at the hands of known offenders. This is obviously completely opposite of how they occur in Chicago.
The issue with the problematic media coverage is that if the only types of sexual violence that is represented in the news is ultra violence stranger assaults this will lead to the false belief that less violent assaults committed by known offenders is not really a crime. This is why it is important for the Chicago media to responsibly cover the range of sexual assault in Chicago.
The important work done on the streets and in the hospitals every day by advocates for survivors is definitely an ignored part of our justice system. There are far too many facets of the justice system that traditional crime reporters only call on when they find out about an incident that can be exploited and sensationalized for clicks.
This is why we are so happy that Erin and Sarah decided to sit down with us for this vital discussion.
The affidavit override rule function within the police accountability system should have been a very powerful tool to help leaders bring in real accountability. A recent report released by the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety (DPSIG) documents that the power was rarely if ever used for many years despite evidence being contained in investigative files that would have supported the application of this power.
From 2004 until the moment the Governor signs HB 3653 in to law it has been a requirement in Chicago for anyone, who is not a police officer, who wants to file a complaint against a Chicago Police officer to sign a sworn affidavit under the threat of perjury that the contents of their complaint were truthful. Complaints filed without an affidavit are supposed to receive a limited investigation and if evidence can be found to support the complaint the leader of the investigative agency is supposed to seek approval of an override to the affidavit.
From 2007 to some time in 2018 the police accountability system in Chicago was was made up of the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) and the CPD's Internal Affairs Division (IAD). In 2018 IPRA replaced by the Citizen Office of Police Accountability (COPA). This report specially details how both IPRA & IAD almost never used this authority provided to them in law by the Illinois General Assembly.
The DPSIG reviewed a randomly selected group of case files from IPRA/COPA and IAD from the time period of 2016-2018. This time period covered the switch over to COPA and the first months of COPA's operations. The results identified multiple occasions over the two years were all three investigative bodies possessed evidence in the case file that was more than sufficient to support seeking an override of the affidavit rule and the investigative agency failed to do so.
In this episode we welcome back DPSIG Deborah Witzburg back to the show to discuss this review of the affidavit override rule.
You can watch a video of the live streamed video below as well as videos from Witzburg's two prior appearances.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZuhKjpGkGSg&feature=youtu.be
Here is the video from her appearance discussing the "COPA's Compliance with Chicago's Video Release Policy"
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OuH_eE49-MY&feature=youtu.be Oct 7, 2020
This is WItrzburg's first appearance discussing "CPD's Management & Production of Records".
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqrSYIIFuv0&feature=youtu.be
Too little effort from the Chicago Police Department (CPD) is going in to responding to sex crimes in Chicago according to a new report from the Chicago Alliance Against Sexual Exploitation (CAASE).
Today we sit down with Madeline Behr, Policy Manager, at CAASE to discuss a report she authored titled "Too Little, Too Late? The CPD's Response to Sex Crimes".
The report contained some startling statistics to back up CAASE's claims that the CPD is doing far too little to respond to sex crimes. Here are couple of those statistics:
80-90% of sexual harm reports to the CPD over the past 10 years did not result in an arrest.10-20% of survivors that saw an arrest in their case often had to wait weeks or months from the time of their assault to when their assailant was detained.
The failures by the CPD are strongly correlated with the media's failures on covering the issue. The Chicago media pays far too little attention to these crimes unless they can be exploited for clicks, scare their audience, or drive a political agenda. This is exactly what we found in our 2013 study of violence against women coverage in the Chicago Tribune and Sun Times. You can find that study here.
Behr and I discuss a range of issues spurred by the findings of her report including how survivors are exploited by those wishing to derail discussions about defunding the police and standing up alternative responses to problems in our communities.
The Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) is an association of multiple community based organizations working together on issues of police accountability in Chicago. The group came together after the release video showing the murder of Laquan McDonald by Jason Van Dyke.
GAPA's main focus has been the creation of a community commission that would provide communities with a vehicle for a direct role in overseeing practices and polices of the Chicago Police Department (CPD).
Read an OpEd I wrote on this issue in Crain's Chicago Business here.
In the summer of 2017 as Mayor Emanuel was working with other justice system stakeholders, including CJP, to create the Citizen Office of Police Accountability and the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety, GAPA was pushing the Mayor to not pass his version of the commission so they had time to work with their communities to come up with a more robust version.
Unfortunately for GAPA despite candidate Lightfoot's rhetoric about the need to pass GAPA she has made sure that the ordinance did not pass. In fact, Lightfoot has come out publicly and stated that she will be putting her own version out soon despite the fact that the community organizations that drafted GAPA have been working with the Mayor's office for more than two years before Lightfoot was even elected.
In today's show we discuss in detail the content of the community commission ordinance with Demond Yancy from GAPA.
An audit of the Citizen's Office of Police Accountability's (COPA) compliance with the City of Chicago's video release policy shows systemic failures in the police accountability system in Chicago that lead to COPA failing to live up to the office's obligations under this policy.
The policy was put in to place in the wake of the release of the video showing the murder of Laquan McDonald by Chicago Police Office Jason Van Dyke. The video was withheld by the Emanuel administration to help Rahm Emanuel win re-election.
Until this time the City of Chicago had no policy in place to mandate the release of video from police shootings and misconduct cases. This was exploited by Emanuel to hide the video of a white officer brutality murdering a black teenager.
In this episode of the Chicago Justice Show we sit down with Deborah Witzburg who is the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety in the Office of the Inspector General for the City of Chicago. We discuss her office's audit of COPA's compliance with the City's policy on releasing video from these types of cases.
The audit reveals massive system flaws in the how the Chicago Police Department and the police accountability system in Chicago policies and practices are aligned to almost guarantee that COPA will fail to live up to the requirements of the policy.
This is problem that started under Rahm Emanuel but still continue to exist under Mayor Lightfoot's administration. The basic fact is that the Chicago Police Department will not live up to any policy that is not in the interest of the Department or the interest of its officers. The Department must be forced to obey the simplest of policies because internally the agency is fundamentally broken and corrupt. It is perpetually in a coverup at all costs mode that is a complete disservice to the residents of Chicago as well as the majority of the officers within the Department. This audit is just another clear example of this fact.
Covering issues of crime and violence is very hard but that is no excuse for not doing it better. So says our guest this week on the Chicago Justice Show Jason Cherkis. Cherkis is seasoned reporter who started out working for weekly paper in Washington, DC covering these very issues.
Through be told reporters at daily papers and local TV stations have never really covered crime and violence responsibly. The pressure of daily deadlines forces them in to a position where they are forced to churn out content to feed the beast. Unfortunately, crime and violence stories are often very easy to create . This forces journalists to rely far too much on official sources for story idea generation and content.
Cherkis talks about how when he went back to review his stories from his days of covering crime and violence in the District he was dismayed at how little he centered the voices of the victims and offenders in his stories.
Cherkis talks about how he was in a different position than the daily reporters because he worked for a weekly publication so he was not burdened with the deadlines that most reporters working within the daily news cycle had to deal with. This allowed him to bring more depth to his reporting on crime and violence that you would not see in the daily churn simply because he had more time.
We also discuss the shift in the daily newspaper business to crime reporters where we used to have police reporters. The residents of Chicago have fallen victim to a new media that is obsessed with crime and violence and ignores their obligations to focus on the processes, policies, and practices of the justice agencies. This results in countless stories about crime and violence that have very little context in them but definitely generate clicks.
The coverage of justice issues in Chicago overall has and continues to be a huge problem for the Chicago media. The hyper-concentration on gun violence and the daily tally of shootings has taken center stage across the various mediums for which Chicagoans can consume news.
The legacy outlets also have to compete with agenda driven political operations that camouflaging themselves as media operations pushing constant theme of violence being out of control to stir fear and stoke racial tensions with little concern for justice.
This combination has a very real impact on the ability of policymakers and criminal justice officials to bring about reforms to the justice system that may in fact has some substantive impact on the violence over the long-term.
A prime example of this phenomena is the media's coverage of bail reform in Cook County and of Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx. The media and political operations continue their daily hunt for any sign that anyone that has been released through the bail reform program has re-offended while awaiting a conclusion of their case. These rare events are then blown up in the coverage as demonstrations of the program's overall failure despite the fact that the re-offending rates are remarkably low overall.
On today's show we discuss the media's coverage of justice issues with Mick Dumke, a reporter and columnist for ProPublica Illinois.
Also, just a quick note for context. We are mere weeks away from suing the Cook County State's Attorney's Office for violations of the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. Find out more insider details about our work through our Patreon Campaign.
Below is a video of our discussion posted on our YouTube Channel. You can find clips from this discussion, our Facebook Live show, and all of our discussions about justice issues on our YouTube Channel.
This episode features a discussion with Sharon Fairley who is a professor from practice at the University of Chicago Law School a, former federal prosecutor, and the former chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) and Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).
We discuss Sharon's recent commentary published by the Chicago Tribune titled "Commentary: Police reform steps that must be taken immediately". Over the hour we will take a deep dive in to her recommendations for police reform while also discussing Mayor Lightfoot's proposals for police reform.
Towards the end of the interview we do engage in a discussion around the moment we are in now and the potential for real change coming from the calls to de-fund the police. When you get behind the rhetoric and fearmongering associated with the term by many, just engaging in the discussion leads to all kind of possibilities for real solutions to community problems.
There have been experiments around the nation from alternative ways to respond to calls involving people in mental health distress to the most extreme possible response of literally replacing a police agency with a new public safety agency with more social services weaved in to their range of responses.
CJP believes that the Mayor missed a vital opportunity to lead a citywide discussion about how Chicagoans want their city policed and what are the possibilities for standing up alternative social services to respond to a whole host of non-violent calls for police service. Unfortunately Mayor Lightfoot shut down this conversation before it was even able to start.
Her refusal to engage the city in this discussion will certainly limit the range of discussions possible about alternative responses and in fact may shut down the conversation completely. Shutting down the conversation will definitely raise the chances we are back where we are now twenty years from now.
Link to CPD Press Release about Advisory Panel on Community Policing:
https://home.chicagopolice.org/cpd-release-supt-johnson-announces-new-advisory-panel-focused-on-community-policing/
Disaggregating the various functions of modern police agencies provides us the basis to start to reimagine how we might go about building better systems of layered responses to the social problems we have for too long left at the feet of policing agencies in American.
Today’s episode features our Facebook Live conversation with Professor Barry Friedman from New York University Law School and the Policing Project. Professor Friedman was just appointed as a special advisor to New York Attorney General James’ investigation of police actions responding to demonstrations.
Professor Friedman’s research paper with the same title as this podcast is centrally focused on the two major questions:
Are the police the best agency to be responding to the wide variety of calls that modern police agencies are forced to respond.If we disaggregate all of the functions of police agencies can we create a new system of layered response from social workers, trained mediators, and violence against women advocates that can find actual long-term solutions to the problems at the heart of the disputes police are responding to?
These are vital questions for a grand public discussion how we might reimagine policing especially considering the time we find ourselves in. As a society for decades have continued to do nothing but pull resources from social services and then told the police you have to cleanup the mess left by our political leaders.
In Chicago there are two clear examples of doing just this over the last several years including
Closing mental health clinicsclosing 50 schools
Sadly the only signals the Mayor of Chicago has sent are strongly against even engaging in the desperately needed pubic discussion around what policing should look and function like in a world where equal treatment under the law is a real requirement.
Disaggregating the police functions should be a focal point in any discussion around real reforms to police in America and especially in Chicago.
In today's episode we discuss the abuse suffered by credentialed media at the hands of local police forces. While police actions responding to protests have always been called in to question the ferociousness behind the abuse by municipal police departments across the county to local and national news outlets sure seemed different this time around. Today CJP Executive Director Tracy Siska and Beachwood Reporter Founder and Editor Steve Rhodes discuss these issues around the police abuse of the media.
In the protests that spread nationwide in response to the murder of George Floyd at the hands of Minneapolis Police Office Derek Chauvin there are multiple allegations and videos of police from numerous agencies directly targeting media outlets covering the protests. One of the unusual characteristics of the targeting of the media outlets this time around was that their blatant disregard for being caught on video and whether or not their conduct would be broadcast across the world on live television.
Here are a couple videos demonstrating the abuse at the hands of officers that we discuss in today's show. This incident takes place in Minneapolis, MN live on CNN.
https://youtu.be/ImoVdWZwnEQ
Here is another incident in Louisville, KY, which is also live on the air of the local NBC affiliate.
https://youtu.be/SlTHbtIvEV8
We close the show discussing the culture of coverup within the Chicago Police Department at site a video from TMZ of all outlets. (Correction: we sited in the podcast that the video came from TMZ but they cited Fox 32 but the video embed below is actually from the Sun-Times. We are unsure who first reported it).
This one show a Chicago Police Department officer attack a protestor for no reason, known the protestor to the ground, and without any justification throw several very energetic punches on to the body of the protestor. What did the other officers on the scene do, they created circle around the officer and expanded outward to stop anyone from seeing the abuse and recording it. Too bad for them the video did catch them all in the act.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_urY-W8otNA
On May 15th several mainstream media outlets each published their own interview with CPD Superintendent David Brown in what can only be the result of a coordinated media strategy from the Department.
When you review what was published by the various outlets they each make readers / viewers believe the interview was obtained through their labors rather than unwittingly, or knowingly and not caring, falling prey to a coordinated media strategy from within the Department.
This is a premiere what we hope will be a weekly addition to our podcast analyzing media coverage of crime and justice issues in Chicago. Our co-host for this venture is Steve Rhodes from the Beachwood Reporter.
In today's episode we discuss the coverage that resulted in the coordinated media campaign by the CPD. We have linked to or where possible embedded the coverage below for you to review before listening to our thoughts on the subject.
Make no mistake the media at its core seems to refuse to review the media coverage of Brown during his time in office. The wholesale refusal across multiple media outlets and a number of journalists makes you think about the possible causes.
Much of the coverage around Brown and his time in Dallas is just a single google search away but they just refuse to do it. We are not talking about a single journalist or a single outlet but basically all the journalists and all the outlets that have written about Brown since we was nominated to the short list of potential candidates.
CBS 2 Chicago - Megan Hickey
ABC 7 Chicago - Craig Wall
WGN TV - Ben Bradley (no video available)
https://wgntv.com/news/chicago-news/cpds-new-leader-says-more-cops-with-be-in-uniform/
Chicago Tribune - Jeremy Gorner
https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/criminal-justice/ct-chicago-police-david-brown-interview-20200515-2cski72wvvb7bfykiust5bgyc4-story.html
Chicago Sun-Times - Sam Charles
https://chicago.suntimes.com/city-hall/2020/5/15/21259127/chicago-police-supt-david-brown-murders-merit-promotion-consent-decree
WBEZ Chicago - Jen White, Reset
https://www.wbez.org/stories/chicago-police-supt-david-brown-lays-out-his-2020-priorities/b3b031f5-ef9c-442e-8caf-8a377ff2d6a3
Chicago's Million Dollar Blocks is an amazing website that details over a five year period how much money the State of Illinois spends on incarcerating people per block in Chicago.
In this episode we feature an interview with researcher and author Dr. Dan Cooper from the Metropolitan Planning Council, who together with his colleague Dr. Ryan Lugalia-Hollon and the technologists at Datamade, created a fascinating website that details the horrific amount of money we spend on our failing justice system.
The public is largely ignorant of the vast amounts of money spent every year on our criminal justice system. The scariest aspect of this site the hundreds of millions of dollar spent each year only account for costs associated with incarceration through the Illinois Department of Corrections. It does not account for costs related to operating any of the other levels of the justice system.
Adding in these costs would surely turn the hundreds of millions of dollars in to billions of dollars a year. Please remember just how little in return we are getting for this enormous investment each year.
Here is a quick summary of the other steps:
Office of Emergency Management & Communications Chicago Police Department Cook County State's Attorney's Office (Cook County JailCook County Public Defender's OfficeCook County Criminal CourtCook County Circuit Court Clerk
There is no real reliable data that would allow us to track costs reliably across the justice system for a single case to be responded to, investigated, prosecuted, defender, possibly incarcerate pre-conviction in Cook County Jail, and then deliver to Cook County Jail upon conviction.
We do have one terrifying statistic from the Chicago Council of Lawyers. They reported that they were told by the Circuit Clerk's Office that it costs the office $2,600 just to open a court file in every single criminal case that appears in Cook County's criminal courts. Multiple that by the hundreds of thousands of cases that go through courts each year and you can see just including a single additional level of the justice system and the costs spiral to astronomical levels.
The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) and their response to the COVID-19 pandemic is the subject of today's episode. We feature excerpts from a Facebook Live interview we did with Jobi Cates, Founder and Executive Director of Reform Justice Illinois (RJI).
RJI was originally created to work on issues solely focused on juvenile lifers, or people sentenced to life imprisonment for crimes committed as youth. But when confronted with intersection of many bad policies RJI expended their mission to address a multitude of policy issues related to criminal justice.
IDOC has reputation dating back many years of maintaining horrible data about every aspect of their work. This is why Cates was unable at the time of this recording to provide a reliable number of how many individuals were released from IDOC custody because of the pandemic.
IDOC has taken steps with Gov. Pritzker to speed up some number of releases for inmates that has 30 days or less until they were scheduled to be released. They have also moved to release a limited number of individuals who are over 55 years old and have underlying health conditions that would make the particularly susceptible to the ravage of this virus.
Exactly how many inmates were released due to the virus at this point we can only guess.
Also in this episode we quickly discuss the confirmation of former Dallas Police Chief David Brown as the new Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. In a previous episode we discuss media coverage of the Chicago Police Board's candidate selection process, the short list of candidates, and Mayor Lightfoot's selection of Brown.
All of this was covered in the Chicago media while ignoring Brown's history of manipulating crime statistics in an effort to kill crime in Dallas. This was obviously the first thing that the Chicago media should have uncovered in their work. Just sad that it was never mentioned in Chicago.
In this episode we discuss the media coverage of the process used to select former Dallas Police Chief David Brown as the nominee for the permanent Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department.
Our guest today is Beachwood Reporter Founder and Editor Steve Rhodes. On this episode we discuss the media coverage of the search conducted by the Chicago Police Board for potential candidates for the job, the process by which the Chicago Police Board narrowed that list to 3 candidates and how Mayor Lightfoot came to select David Brown.
Sadly the media coverage has been lacking the detailed reviewof Brown's history in Dallas. While the Chicago media focuses on his personal history with violence and loss they ignore very important allegations of manipulating crime statistics to kill crime in the city of Dallas. Allegations that both were very easy to find through simple Google searches and that seem implicate Brown as being right in the middle of the manipulation during his tenure with the Dallas Police Department.
How a city still dealing with the effects of the Laquan McDonald murder and with a history of its own with manipulating crime statistics could pick a potential leader with a similar history is mindbogglingly.
As the City Council Committee on Public Safety meets at 11am today to confirm Brown serious questions regarding his history need to be answered before the vote is taken. CJP is submitting what we believe based on our research are the top 10 most important questions to ask David Brown. Only time will tell if alderman will step up to the plate and actually ask him meaningful questions.
This conversation is pulled from our our FaceBook Livestream conversations that we do every Wednesday from 12-1pn. Here is the media coverage that we discuss in this podcast. The most important article from the Dallas media can be found here.
If you have questions about this episode or want to submit topic ideas for future podcast episodes or even suggestions for who we should interview on our livestreams you can contact us by posting questions and ideas to our Facebook page, message us on Twitter @CJPJustProj or email us at pod@chicagojustice.org.
The Illinois Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) is a vital tool that allows residents of the state to gain access to public records. Today's show features a discussion on FOIA and more specifically a memo authored by Matt Topic from Loevy & Loevy.
Our guest today is Merrick Wayne who specializes in representing residents, journalists, and nonprofits in their efforts to litigate for access to public records in Illinois. Merrick is also currently representing us in our ongoing litigation against the Chicago Police Department.
Topic was approached in the spring of 2019 by Lori Lightfoot's transition committee seeking his input on ways to improve the city's response to FOIA. Topic authored a memo documenting his recommendations. Many of which CJP things would be significant game changes in the battle to access government records in Chicago and throughout Illinois.
If you want to read the memo for your self you can download here: FOIA Memo. There are several recommendations that are contained in the memo that if implemented would significantly alter the world of FOIA in Illinois. In today's show we discuss a few of them including:
Law Department Review - this would force the law department to author memo about each FOIA complaint filed in Cook County Court within 30 days of the complaint being filed and the memo would then to be delivered to the mayor's office. Stop using deliberative exemption - this would open up access to records about how the city actually comes to making a decision.
There are more recommendations discussed in the episode that are really important for the city to adopt. One year after receiving the memo thought the city has not taken and meaningful steps towards the implementation of any of the recommendations that we can see.
You can access full episodes of the podcast and many clips on our Youtube channel
If you have any questions about this or any episode of our podcast please email pod@chicagojustice.org and we might feature your question on our next episode.
Below is CJP’s FOIA in the Sgt. Khalil Muhammad case to the City of Chicago Law Department in his unjustified shooting, and subsequent murder, of Ricardo “Ricky” Hayes in the Chicago's Morgan Park Neighborhood back in August of 2017.
This is part of a series of FOIAs that the Chicago Justice Project is filing to shed light on the highly questionable mediation of his pending termination case in front of the Chicago Police Board that resulted in a plea agreement of a 180 day suspension rather than termination. As we file the subsequent FOIAs we will be posting links. Also we will be posting responses we get from the agencies. You can find links to all of our FOIAs in in this case here.
Below is the content of our FOIA we filed with the City of Chicago Law Department on 2/18/2020.
In accordance with Definitions and Instructions below and the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, 5 ILCS 140, I request that your office provide the following public records:
- All video and audio recordings of any kind of Sgt. Khalil Muhammad’s Aug. 13, 2017 off-duty shooting of unarmed teenager Ricardo “Ricky” Hayes in the Morgan Park neighborhood of Chicago (the “Incident”) –Board Case # 19 PB 2956. Without limiting the scope of this FOIA request in any way, the response to this request should include at a minimum all of the following:
a. Electronic recordings from cell phones
b. Electronic recordings from nearby security cameras collected by Police as evidence or otherwise
c. Bodycam footage from Muhammad.
d. Surveillance video showing Muhammad driving past Hayes without stopping.
e. Video of the Incident reviewed by any members of the Board.
f. Video of the Incident reviewed by any hearing officers employed by the Board.
- All documents regarding the “Incident”. Without limiting the scope of this FOIA request in any way, the response to this request should include at a minimum all of the following:
a. Police reports regarding the Incident.
b. Statements regarding the Incident.
c. Evidence reviewed or considered by members of the Board regarding the Incident.
d. Evidence reviewed or considered by any hearing officers employed by the Board regarding the Incident.
e. Evidence in the Record of Proceedings before the Board.
f. The “stipulation” filed by the City with the Board in October, 2019, including all 11 exhibits to same.
-
Any documents or motions field by the City with the Board regarding the Incident.
-
Any charges filed by the City with the Board regarding the Incident.
-
Any final decisions handed down by the Board regarding the Incident. All documents regarding the “Plea Agreement”.
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All documents regarding the Board’s decision not to fire Muhammad.
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All documents regarding the Board’s decision that Muhammad’s use of deadly force was unjustified.
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The transcript and/or any notes or recordings (or documents reflecting) Muhammad’s statement(s) about the Incident. Without limiting the scope of this FOIA request in any way, the response to this request should include at a minimum all of the following:
a. Muhammad’s statement(s) to the Police.
b. Muhammad’s statement(s) to COPA.
-
COPA’s summary and findings about the Incident.
-
All documents (including electronic documents and communications) refer...
Below is CJP's FOIA in the Sgt. Khalil Muhammad case to the Chicago Police Board in his unjustified shooting, and subsequent murder, of Ricardo “Ricky” Hayes in the Morgan Park Neighborhood back in August of 2017.
This is part of a series of FOIAs that CJP is filing to shed light on the highly questionable mediation of his pending termination case in front of the Chicago Police Board that resulted in a plea agreement for Sgt. Muhammad of a 180 day suspension rather than termination. As we file the subsequent FOIAs we will be posting links. Also we will be posting responses we get from the agencies. You can find links to all of our FOIAs in in this case here.
Below is the content of our FOIA to the Chicago Police Board filed on 2/15/2020.
In accordance with Definitions and Instructions below and the Illinois Freedom of Information Act, 5 ILCS 140, I request that your office provide the following public records:
1. All video and audio recordings of any kind of Sgt. Khalil Muhammad’s Aug. 13, 2017 off-duty shooting of unarmed teenager Ricardo “Ricky” Hayes in the Morgan Park neighborhood of Chicago (the “Incident”) –Board Case # 19 PB 2956. Without limiting the scope of this FOIA request in any way, the response to this request should include at a minimum all of the following:
a. Electronic recordings from cell phones
b. Electronic recordings from nearby security cameras collected by Police as evidence or otherwise
c. Bodycam footage from Muhammad.
d. Surveillance video showing Muhammad driving past Hayes without stopping.
e. Video of the Incident reviewed by any members of the Board.
f. Video of the Incident reviewed by any hearing officers employed by the Board.
2. All documents regarding the “Incident”. Without limiting the scope of this FOIA request in any way, the response to this request should include at a minimum all of the following:
a. Police reports regarding the Incident.
b. Statements regarding the Incident.
c. Evidence reviewed or considered by members of the Board regarding the Incident.
d. Evidence reviewed or considered by any hearing officers employed by the Board regarding the Incident.
e. Evidence in the Record of Proceedings before the Board.
f. The “stipulation” filed by the City with the Board in October, 2019, including all 11 exhibits to same.
g. Any documents or motions field by the City with the Board regarding the Incident.
h. Any charges filed by the City with the Board regarding the Incident.
i. Any final decisions handed down by the Board regarding the Incident.
3. All documents regarding the “Plea Agreement”.
4. All documents regarding the Board’s decision not to fire Muhammad.
5. All documents regarding the Board’s decision that Muhammad’s use of deadly force was unjustified.
6. The transcript and/or any notes or recordings (or documents reflecting) Muhammad’s statement(s) about the Incident. Without limiting the scope of this FOIA request in any way, the response to this request should include at a minimum all of the following:
a. Muhammad’s statement(s) to the Police.
b. Muhammad’s statement(s) to COPA.
7. COPA’s summary and findings about the Incident.