August 22: North Grand High School Transcript by Maira Khwaja

*Note: The following transcription is semi-verbatim. Check audio above for original sourcing.

Olivia Albright:

14:00

OA: Can you hear me now? Can you guys hear me? Okay, good evening my name is Olivia and I am here tonight representing the Brighton Park Neighborhood Council Community Organization on the SouthWest Side of Chicago I'm also here in solidarity with the Bluest Lie Collaborative a high school student I work with was supposed to come here to testify and represent our organization tonight.

At the last minute her family didn't feel comfortable allowing her to come didn't feel safe allowing her to come here and speak so I can't speak for her but I am here on her behalf because their fear is very real and I feel it is something we can all agree must be all can address. Their fear is a result of the long history of violence against black and brown people in our country that is rooted in institutional and systemic racism. We see these systems of oppression play out in the numerous police shootings that have occurred in Chicago. The countless and wrongful arrest and profiling that occurs in our communities and in our nation's catastrophic immigration policies that tear immigrant families apart. Instead of empowering our communities to address these issues Alderman Ed Burk and others have introduced an ordinance that exacerbates the fear and further silences. the so called blue lives matter ordinance extends hate crime protection to police officers. This legislation will further marginalize and criminalize people of color in Chicago. When what is actually needed is a concentration on real reforms and accountability. we need independent review of police actions through a Civilian Police Accountability Council. We need timely investigation of allegations of abuse. We need retraining of our police in desclation. We need universal access to trauma informed mental health and violence prevention services and programs for youth and adult in our communities. Achieving these reforms requires maximum concentration and energy on the part of our elected officials. The blue lives matter Ordinance is a distraction and deviation from this important work. I urge you to oppose the BLMO to and support the true reform in the civilian police accountability council. Thank you!
 

Nicholas Cuba

16:20  

Hello my name is Nicholas Cuba and I am here representing the organization Showing up for Racial Justice and  we endorse and show up in solidarity with the bluest lie campaign demanding that the Blue Lives Matter Ordinance 4878 proposed by Alderman Burke to be rescinded. The ordinance would cover police officers and other first responders under current hate crime legislation, while there are already special protection that police officers receive under the current law and violence against police is at an all time low. The bill, a reaction to the black lives matter movement,  aims to take away the power of the people of Chicago to hold police accountable through activism, actions and, advocacy. We also know that this bill will be used to disproportionately target communities of color, individuals experiencing homelessness, and individual suffering from mental illness. Under this bill a negative encounter with a police officer can lead to up to $ 25,000  fine and  felony charge. The Chicago Police Department is currently under investigation by the DOJ for racially motivated police violence and police misconduct. The BlueMO would allow the CPD to avoid accountability for this state sanctioned violence against the people of Chicago by silencing those voices calling for justice don’t buy the bluest lie!

 

Theodore Daffin

18:12

I just wanna say you guys should do something because you are letting your constituency down. I grew up in Chicago I did all the right things. I ran a business people got jealous of me. They used to follow me in the clubs, harass me. I got broken bones in my body I couldn't get doctors nor a lawyer because cops would follow me and play some game of blacklisted certain people in Chicago. They also also accused me of using a chemical and biological weapons and framed me saying I was stupid but I have proof from doctor and lab reports to prove it. You guys should really consider that if somebody was to break your bones and not get a doctor or destroy everything you have or destroy your relationship with women. Something got to be done about this right away because they destroy innocent citizens lives there are people who voted for you. Then covering up and saying “ Oh we don't do that because we have integrity” some of these guys who are working for you such as police they got other jobs and they shouldn't be working for the police. They should put them on the terrorist watch list or have some action to investigate these things. Because it's been like this for almost 20 years. I had to run to other countries just to get away from abuse while ago. I used to seriously look at media stuff and have somebody in the council that council people can address serious things that happen like I can go to a hospital and no hospital will wait on me. I have serious broken bones in my body like I have 45lbs of stuff in my body told them before but they never listen. But I got the proof. Then they break in my house go slamming around my name but I never did anything to anybody. You should take a step to do something right away because it's going to affect your automatic jobs because some of you won by like 20,000 votes 5,000 votes. CPAC can get enough voters out and you guys won't be in because we need something right now. Don't play political game because they blacklisted me something has to be done right away. Other agencies could come in because these are serious violations of other laws. Thank you very much!

 

Jeff Baker:

21:07

I want to talk to the people in the audience. This council is going to make a decision on Police Accountability and they are going to tell you that they have solved your police brutality problem and police problem in your community. This piece of paper tells you what it is they are suggesting they are offering this piece of paper says that a community safety oversight board. The keyword is OVERSIGHT all they do is look this is not control this is suggestion. that is all it is you will still have no power. the problem with our system right now is not that you aren't seeing what is happening the problem with the system is that you have no power over any decisions. They want to offer you something to replace the powerlessness that you already have with more powerlessness. Do not accept an auditor. what does an auditor do? Looks at numbers looks at things and gives a suggestion. this is not for you to look at. we already know what the task force delivered to us. They told us that we have a racist police force didn’t we already know that. Didn't we already know we have a violent police force. Didn't we already know that they are not solving as many crimes as they could be because they are busy doing other things. we know all of this we don't need more auditing more data we already know what we need is power. Because when we saw that video fo LAquan Mcdonald we knew what we saw. it did not take us 400 days the problem is we had no power. the only proposal that is going to give you any power is CPAC. A Civilian Police Accountability Council that is it. What we are talking about is taking folks like you and I who are not affected by politics who are not worried about maintaining our jobs. We want you to say I saw that video and say “that was murder he needs to be fired immediately” and not have to worry about whether or not you making the mayor look bad whether or not he is going to support you in the next election. Whether or not the mayor that appointed you is going to let you keep your job finally they are talking about replacing IPRA understand this IPRA is just one piece of this multifaceted puzzle there is the police board and the superintendent. IPRA can say we think he's guilty and the police superintendent can say we don't and the police board can say we don't. So replacing IPRA is smoke and mirrors. We have to replace this entire system and put you (points to the crowd) in the driving seat. Thank you!
 

Bertha Escamilla

24:43

Good Evening my name is Bertha Escamilla. I have come out to hearing and heard everything about the city council and Alderman and so forth and I don't see any kind of changes that Aldermans who have been in office for 25 years let's say. I don't see any changes that have been made why should we start trusting you when you’re not doing anything to help us. You people know about the code of silence I don't want to hear that nobody knows about the code of silence. the mayor in a speech in December mentioned this and you all were there so you know what you all are accountable. For knowing about all of this when the time comes and they’re going to start pointing fingers let see who is going to go first. This is dead serious we’re not stopping we are going to continue to have the CPAC and believe me people will know we’re CPAC is from. Were going to have the power! We will have the power! And first off we're going to be putting people away you are doing wrong your going to jail that is what should be happening now but instead you people close your eyes and you dont hear dont want to hear and this has been going on too long. What are you going to do about it? You're going to sit there and just smoke and listen to us. No that isn't fair that's not what we want. That's not what you're getting paid for your getting paid to do something! What are you doing? What is the sole difference from what we're asking for than what the mayor is asking for? Ill tell you what the difference is. They don't want to have the police go to jail. They don't want their people to go to prison, they don't want them to take away their power but we will. Thank you!

 

Nancy Patoca

27:28

Last Friday I faxed and I emailed to the Aldermen and Arena’s office a three page letter detailing my experience with IPRA and internal affairs. Was very frustrated and very disappointed and I’m going to simply ask that at this time you enter that letter into the record if possible. Thank you.

 

David Satori

28:15

Let's see, I think we want to sort of define or look into that word ACCOUNTABILITY. Whoever signs off on the final investigation is the one that is accountable. and as long as that isn’t someone from the CPD internal affairs division like a sergeant or lieutenant then the person that is held accountable the most he has….we want to look at what's the most he has to lose and if in the last 10 years, 15 years IPRA has had 10 different leaders then someone has given up short term. If it's sergeant or a lieutenant who incidentally are the ones who are teaching the police officers on the street on the job how to do their job. They never come up and are not responsible for anything. If internal affairs handled the initial investigation and the sergeant or lieutenant  has to sign off on the conclusion...and that way if it's a cover up then they are the ones who have just gambled their 20 years of pension. More specifically if the complaints you make goes to IPRA instead of internal affairs which is how everything is set up now you don't even know who it is in internal affairs who looked at it. When your initial complaint goes to IPRA, once the thing is done you can't take it to states attorney or state police you can't take it to federal court civilly or criminally. Cause they’ve already been exonerated by IPRA all you can do is complain about something like IPRA. Whether it's a CPAC or IPRA it's the same it's a matter of what do they have to lose. The ones with the most to lose would be the sergeants and lieutenants who have also been training these people. So it the first investigation is handled by internal affairs then you've got some solutions. They are always going to get to whoever is in charge of overseeing this stuff. They are always going to get to them whether they just take the job until they get caught or look for another job it's not solving anything. Some of the problems with IPRA...number 1 as Ive said turnover in the leadership has been tenfold in like 15 years. Another problem is that when a person comes to your door to investigate your complaint he probably in my experience 40 times he’s going to be a chicago police officer. He is somehow deputized by IPRA so that the records show IPRA first handling everything even though it is still the CPD that are handling it. Another catch to the system they are using now is that when you call in to make your complaints. You might talk for 10 minutes what happened and they are only allowed 200 spaces to put into the computer so they are picking out 20 words out of your 2000 or 200 words and they’re deciding that's what your complaint is. Then when the police officer comes to your door he tells you to sign the affidavit swearing that it's true or else its perjury and when you say but it doesn't say anything on the affidavit it's blank just my signature. You ask if you can see the complaint they won’t let you see it. Then you say you can't sign it unless you see the complaint then they tell you that means you’re dropping your case. You'll see a lot of cases that are dropped and that's apart of the system.  the  system is going to be set up so that you lose. The best you can hope for is the person who signs off on the investigation is someone with a lot to lose 20 years experience or 20 years seniority of the police force. Like a sergeant or lieutenant would be the place to start. Thank you.

 

Sarah Ortiz

31:45

My name is Sarah and this pertains to my son William who has been incarcerated we knew the cop he was a detective and merely because he won't work for him as an undercover he placed him on a murder case. While he was in jail he was supposed to help him instead he left him further on becoming the murder victim so he has been in their 20 years and I couldn't find a lawyer or anyone that would help him. I went to the governor the mayor everything in detail and no one would help. I finally bumped into a friend and then met up with Bertha and came to learn about CPAC it's a wonderful organization. Its helps you, its helps the people that are in need it helps the mothers that have children who are incarcerated it helps mothers that have their children killed by these crooked cops. I don't understand why cops are doing wrong they weren't like when I was young I used to be proud. Now it's like here they come and they love children little children but when it comes to teenagers I don't know what is it but they hate teenagers so I find that they have created prison’s in the boondocks somewhere and the police out there they need jobs. So they use our children and place them on crookedness, murder charges that weren't even so and such so they can have a job for tomorrow. So my son has been in jail since he was 20, 21 years old. The guards and other prisoners all ask why are you here? Because he doesn't belong there he is a child of god. We met up with this one and everything has been downhill ever since now he’s in court and been in court for 2 years it's like a game. Nothing is serious all hell is breaking loose in the world the way man is creating is the way the world is turning. So when the floods start coming this way then you know and realize that man is doing wrong it’s the opposite of what god has created in this world. That is that.

 

Carla Velasco

35:18

Hi my name is Carla Velasco and I'm part of the 34th ward but I also represent Cultural Alliance and the facts are clear. We already know what the problem is and isn't not the people it's the racist police so it's time for alderman and the mayor to start listening to us because the revolution is not going to wait. We are here there are people who have supported us for a long time CPAC is a solution and it needs to happen now.

 

Anderson Chavez

36:04

Hey my name is Anderson Chavez representing myself but I am in solidarity with the Bluest Lie Coalition, solidarity with CPAC and, with solidarity with all the black and brown people that these fascist pigs have killed so far. So like Carla has said, so many people have said, before me have already said this is not something that is new not something that we need to figure out what the issue is, the issue is very clear the police officers are killing people and breaking the law. The are breaking their own laws on a daily basis and I say their own laws because they try to make it seem like these laws which are changing constantly are laws that we have to follow by force but we aren't paying attention. About the people that are enforcing these laws whether or not they are following them they are not following their own laws they are killing us on a daily basis alright look up homan square if yall havent even looked into that in your own city there is a building in homan square neighborhood that is completely illegal they are taking teenagers in and torturing them and doing all types of stuff to them. Someone has already died in there and it has been happening for a really long time and yall are sitting here pretending like we have to figure out what the issue is. John Berge? Yall dont know about John Berge? John Berge is the police chief in the CPD that was torturing people for over 20 years we found out that everybody knows about it but he's not in jail right now he's not in prison right now but the people he forced to confess to murders that they never did are still in prison right now. Why is this dude on vacation? Yall wanted an oversight you want us to keep looking at the police. We are looking at the police you're the only ones that are not looking. We are looking at the police. Real talk, so if you look at the police and start paying attention to what’s going on and what I just mentioned to you the few cases and laws that police officers are breaking. Stuff that happens on the daily basis you are not looking at it because you’re not in our community. Alright so that's what we need we need accountability we do not need to look at the police. When these videos come out we don't even look at them we don't even watch these videos no more. We don't need to watch them. I look out my window and see what the police are doing. We don't need no oversight we need accountability and we're not going to get accountability by looking at the police. I could look at those police up there right now. I have no power to hold them accountable if they shoot somebody right now. And unless there is a video something might not even happen to them and the person and if they survive they'll get charged with resisting arrest. He's probably gonna get charged with aggravated battery or resisting arrest because that's how they get away with what they're doing. So we need CPAC and yall need to start paying more attention to what's going on in your city.  

 

Camesha Jones

39:30

Good evening my name is Camesha Jones and I am apart of the bluest lie collaborative I know a few of you all have heard of us if not just a few minutes ago. We are a group of over 30 organizations who are opposed to the introduction of Ordinance 4878 which would provide hate crime protection to police officers. We have sent every alderman and everyone on this stage a letter beginning today asking them where they stand on this issue and I’m going to read that letter right now

We, the undersigned organizations, urge you to support our call to rescind Ordinance #4878 sponsored by Ald. Edward Burke (14th) in the Public Safety Committee of Chicago City Council, also known as the “Blue Lives Matter” bill. As proposed, Ordinance #4878 would expand the Hate Crimes statute to cover current and former law enforcement officers and first responder personnel. This ordinance is a direct violation of our First Amendment right, a completely unnecessary addition given already existing laws and a damaging precedent for the original intent of the Hate Crimes statute.  

The “Blue Lives Matter” ordinance wrongfully suggests that every community member vulnerable to an accidental scuffle with the police at a crowded protest is the same as a sniper on a rooftop. If “Blue Lives Matter” is passed, the justified “animosity or hostility” often involved in exercising one’s First Amendment right to protest police violence will be labeled a hate crime punishable by 6 months imprisonment or a $2,500 fine. We believe this ordinance cannot deliver increased protection or safety to anyone, but is likely to result in derailing First Amendment protections, suppressing political dissent and hindering pathways to police accountability in Chicago.

We know that law enforcement officials are some of the most protected public servants in the country. Police officers, community policing volunteers, firemen, private security officers, and even emergency management workers and emergency medical technicians are already protected under provisions 720 Illinois Compiled Statutes § 5/12-2. These laws classify any remotely physical interaction with an officer automatically as aggravated assault which at minimum is deemed a Class A misdemeanor. Penalties associated with this crime, specified at length in 730 Illinois Compiled Statutes 5/5-4.5-55, involve more than six months of imprisonment or a $2,500 fine. This renders any additional attempt to make officers a protected class redundant at best and a gross waste of taxpayer resources at worst.

Hate Crimes legislation is supposed to protect people like me, historically marginalized groups that could face violence because of their immutable characteristics. The “Blue Lives Matter” Ordinance seeks to trivialize the vulnerability of these communities with a dangerous precedent. Furthermore, our city is in no position to exacerbate the standing of our Hate Crimes statute. At present, Chicago Police Department’s Civil Rights Unit, which manages Municipal Hate Crimes complaints, is undergoing an investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice There are over 30 organizations. I repeat 30 organizations that are opposed to the proposal of this ordinance #4878 and we demand that it is rescinded immediately and we demand that you, Alderman Reboyras, make a statement that that proposal be even admitted into the public safety committee in city council.
 

Maxx Suchan

43:45

My name is Maxx Suchan and I am an attorney with the National Lawyers Guild. And the NLG issued a statement today that was endorsed by 7 organizations in solidarity with the Bluest Lie Collaborative against the proposed ordinance to add the police as a protected class in the hate crime law. And we oppose this ordinance and a lot of other speaker have spoken about this we are one of the 30 organizations who have endorsed the bluest lie collaborative that is pushing back against this appalling initiative. and as attorneys particularly criminal defense attorneys and other attorneys that are in court everyday we see the balance of power and we see how this plays out more everyday. We see and understand how much power the police have how much credibility, courts and judges give their testimony against the unarmed people that they are arresting or brutalizing and we believe that this ordinance would only add heightened protection to people who are already powerful and are an overly protected class of people and it's a slap in the face against those people the LGBTQ community, people of color and other communities who have been criminalized and continue to be criminalized by these various systems. I’m not going to now read from this letter, but I’m going to hand it over to be entered into evidence. And we ask that your would urge for the immediate rescinding of this proposed ordinance and we also are here in solidarity with CPAC as well.

 

Matt Madison

45:23

Good Evening. My name is Matt Madison I am with the organization Center for Social Justice. We are among many of the organizations that are in solidarity with the Bluest Lie Collective/ Collaborative in opposing the introduction of 4878 also known as the Blue Lives Matter Ordinance. I am a registered nurse. I work as a public health nurse in west side communities and I work with mostly black and brown clients who are living with mental illness and I can’t tell you how many times come across the situation where I have help my people navigate around emergencies and violence. You know, serious situations and it becomes really difficult when I’m working with people who have directly experienced police violence and you know there is somebody who would start telling them to do something very harmful. I'm supposed to tell them to call 911 knowing full and well that there is all this trauma around the possibility that that 911 call is gonna bring somebody to the doorstep that is going to result in their loved ones dying because they've experienced this in the past or known people who have experienced this in the past. I want to kind of ask everybody here how am I supposed to do my job when the accountability in the city makes it so that I can’t trust my emergency systems that are supposed to help my patients navigate the situations in their lives. Whether it be a heart attack, or psychosis or violence. A saying that a lot of us in the Nurses for Social Justice throw around is that you cannot put a bandaid on a massive hemorrhaging wound. I feel like some of the things that are happening in these communities feel like a massive hemorrhaging wound that we are trying to fix with a little bit of accountability. A little bit of oversight I should say definitely in solidarity with the folks that are talking about CPAC here. I think and I’m sure that my fellow nurses would agree with me that an ordinance that gives real power to hold police accountable is part for what we need I also want to skip back to what I also wanted to talk about by the Bluest Lie Collaborative. If we extend the hate crimes protection to the Chicago Police with the Ordinance 4878 we give more power to the police to deflect the accountability and we need assurance. We are asking for assurance that Ordinance 4878 will not be introduced and that instead the city will refocus energy on real reforms like CPAC.

 

Le’France Lucas

48:05

Hey how yall doing my name is Le’France Lucas with Westside Health Authority and I’m a youth Mentor. Its seems like me and my peers we got the same idea towards police and stuff like that, but it’s like it was a broken trust cause we get stopped for no reason we’ll just get stopped for walking in packs and walking with dreads stuff like that and it always seems like we don’t have a voice and like we feel like the police..the police... they can do whatever they want because they the police. Cause we see detectives hop out of cars and beat up our own and we don’t know what to say we ignorant to some of the laws and we don’t know what to tell the police to be against them. But when we do speak against them it’s like we get attacked or get hit or get put on the ground or something like that. So we really don't go against the police So we gotta just break that change and its like. Now it's coming to Chicago with the killing of teens by police and I never thought that i would see that coming to Chicago. We always say like the police always gon be the police but they not about to do that in Chicago because they know how we is, but it happened in Chicago when they took one of my fellow friends that I went to high school with and it’s like what can we do about it. And it was like nobody from the community stood up or said nothing against the police cause it was like they murdered a 16 year old. He was 16 I’m 19 so when I was 13 he was 10 so I knew him since he was a shorty and I’m still a shorty. That's how I look at it. When i sen him, I was up on Homan and I saw a bunch of police cars. it was just a random stop, we all go through random stops and I guess he wasn't as humble or as humble as me or somebody else to not go against that officer and I guess the officer got to attacking him and he tried to run for his life and he got killed. So it’s bad that stuff like that happen and we see stuff like that and we just shrug it off like we just in Chicago and we see stuff like that everyday. Well I just seen this opportunity as a way to speak out against stuff like that and try to break that change up.

 

Alize Streeter

51:50

Hello my name is Alize Streeter and I come from the Westside Health authority and I am one of the youth that's working there. I wanted to speak upon the Blue Lives Matter ordinance that protects the police against hate crimes and I want to understand. I don't understand that law. I don't understand why we need to give the police more protection if they already are protected. They have the guns and the badges so what can we really do. What can we really do to hurt them or cause any harm to them if they have the power against us. THey have the whole government and the entire city behind them. So do we really need the blue lives matter ordinance? Like, we don't! It’s like putting tape over our mouths and trying to silence us even more and allow the police to do even more. So I don’t agree with the Blue Lives Matter Ordinance. I believe we should pay more attention to the civilians that are being brutalized by police. Thank you.

 

Paula Roderick

52:55

Hi, I’m Paula Roderick and I’m an attorney. I’ve worked for the city… (Alderman interrupts briefly to call out second name)... Can you hear me? Okay. I’ve worked for the city, i’ve worked here for over 30 years i support CPAC for an elected police board. Y’all have that ordinance in front of you. It was introduced on july 20th it’s really interesting that on the police accountability hearings petitions you have here you don’t mention that we already have a proposal and that’s CPAC. When I was walking in there was some young african americans walking in with me and we were looking at the school like what a beautiful school. This is how every school should look. Well you know what? Every neighborhood should be safe. Everyone has a right to expect safety in their own neighborhoods but to keep your community safe if you’re afraid to call the police you can’t do that. That’s a failure of the police and a failure of the city of Chicago and a failure of all the aldermen who have the Control and the right to enforce CPAC. We have a right to expect every citizen black, white, brown, yellow. No matter what race what religion to be treated with respect we have that right. But if we don’t demand police accountability we won’t get that form the police department. We need true action when police fall down on the job. In regards to the city, I really do believe that. My grandfather was a police officer and I believe in law enforcement, but I also know that there are good police and they know how to do their job, but when they fall down on the job there has to be accountability cause if there is no accountability no matter what job you have you will never correct your behavior. So I say also no to the new inspector general. Why do we need another inspector general we already got an inspector general. What we need is an elected police board. You need to stop arresting protesters. Everyone has heard about the the blue lie collectives woman and she was so powerful. Blue Lives Matter? Really? There is an ordinance and it protects police already and that's enforced and it’s used every single day. We need to protect our protestors. I don’t even know how many got arrested today when they we're protesting, that’s not a crime. They are speaking out. They are exercising their first amendment rights and we’re treating them like criminals especially our black brown youth. Being treated like criminals for speaking out. For helping call attention to what the problem is. So I say no. Stop training these police to used militarized policing. We don’t need a higher police budget. We don’t need more money in the police budget. We need more more money in our communities to deal with our homelessness, with our food problem, with our job problem, with our education problems. Right right, we need mental health. So stop the Blue Lives matter ordinance. You have the right to rescind that so i'm telling you that young man who spoke. I’m here speaking for him because I’m older. I’ve got a job. You know what? As an adult I have I say we need to protect our young people because If they feel threatened, we have a responsibility to speak up. Be their voice. We let...We fell down on the job, we are asking you now to step up with CPAC. Join the alderman who have already Introduced that ordinance and sign up for CPAC. Thank You!

 

Michael Rabbitt

56.42

My name is Michael Rabbitt. I’m with the organization Showing up for Racial Justice. Also in solidarity with the Bluest Lie Collaborative. I’m here to strongly endorse the prior testimony of Nick Cuba and other members of the Blues Lie Collaborative. This bLMO must be condemned and must rescinded immediately. It only undermines police accountability it does not strengthen it. The status quo is unacceptable we must have police accountability now.

 

Frank Chapman

57:56

Good Evening sisters and brothers. Good Evening Aldermen. Excuse my back (his back is facing the aldermen). You know uhh, let me just remind you about what this whole process is about and how it got started. It got started with the blue senseless murder of a child named laquan McDonald. Had it not been for the death of that child, they would not be having no hearing here. The city wouldn't be in an uproar like it is. Rahm Emanuel would still be acting like a mountain instead of a little cockroach running around in the shackles. So we are here because of that. And what that revealed to us more than anything in the last 50 years in this town is that there is a serious abuse of power. They mayor abused his power by suppressing evidence in a murder case for 400 days. The council abused their power by signing off for a $4million hush money to the victim. That's why we are here. Now what happens when you abuse power and you are in power based on the trust of the people. What happens is the people have a right to recall you. The people have a right to change things and we are saving we have an inalienable democratic right to demand CPAC. We are not asking you for CPAC we are demanding CPAC. Because thats our democratic right. Who do you think you are? Who do you guys think you are? Dictators? Naw. we gon show you who you are. Yall just some men and women just like the rest of us and yall can be taken down. And we gon take you down. Cause we gonna have CPAC. you can ignore us on this little piece of paper which is what you have done. You can act like you don’t hear what we are saying. You can bring out your “experts” who have never stood in a protest with us.Who have never done anything to fight for justice in this town but they know all about justice. They “experts” they never lost a child, nobody in their family has ever been murdered. They never been beat by the police or falsely imprisoned but they “experts.” Naw, we are the experts because all that has happened to us. And you better listen up because it’s the experts that’s coming to get justice. We the experts. Us. that’s coming to get justice. Better listen up. After this, there is going to be one more hearing about the expert that’s coming up on Wednesday. Then after that on September the 21st, the Mayor is going to bring his package. Im closing it up. Mayor is going to bring his package and he is going to say we have had this process, now let’s pass my package. Okay. And we are gonna say HELL NAW. Not yo package. CPAC. So the next time we meet, the next time we meet big time, it’s gon be down at city hall and we ain’t gon be a few people like this, nah, we gon close it down.

 

Someone from the crowd: Why aren’t you guys advertising the meeting? Can you tell them to advertise the next meeting? We didn’t know about the next meeting!

 

David Potete

1:02:24

Hi uh, grateful for this opportunity, I would like to compliment North Grand high school on their air conditioning system, it works. I’m not aligned with any organization or any movement. I don’t know all the terminology, I’m new to this and a bit naive. I don't have a whole lot of answers. I’m just a citizen who watches the news and knows my neighborhood and I’ve realized that something must change. There must be major change. Where there are systemic injustices there must be systemic solutions. This will take courage by the city council and willingness to end the status quo. If the office of public safety and inspector general is created, this office must have teeth. The Public Safety Inspector General must have the ability to fully investigate accusations, complaints, and pursue prosecution of officers who commit wrongdoing misconduct and criminal actions. This IG must be a totally separate office. But i’m learning that there are other options that sound a little bit more better. There is huge mistrust of institutions and of government in our society. There must be total transparency and strong accountability to regain trust. Officials that refuse to be accountable to the citizens must not be allowed to serve. Elected officials that are unwilling to create that transparency and accountability should not be re-elected. I expected this room to be full tonight. I’m not involved in any movement and I thought, I need to be there. I expected this room to be full tonight. If our elected leaders will not commit to true change then we must not re-elect them. Thank you.  

 

Josh Jones

1:05:00

Good Evening, I’m a member of JCore which is the organizing body under the Jewish Council of Urban Affairs. I just want to thank the aldermen and Alderwoman for being here tonight. I really hope that you’re hearing and really taking into account what everyone is saying here tonight and not just going through the motions because there are a lot of people who have worked on this issue for a long time in this room and really struggled about it so I hope that you are really hearing that. I’m gonna make this really short. The people’s voice on this issue is clear, it’s CPAC. People want CPAC so you can put some other replacement for IPRA something for 5 years 10 years and then we are gonna be right back here figuring out what’s next and it’s CPAC. People are not going to stop fighting for CPAC until we have it. So um, that’s really it. CPAC is the answer that people are going to keep fighting for. Please do the right thing. Thank you.

 

Christena Tendeilla

1:06:19

Hi uh, Good evening my name is  Christena Tendeilla and I’m here representing Asian American advancing Justice Chicago and I’m also here standing with the Bluest Lie Collaborative. I should make that distinction. I just want to say that Asian American advancing Justice also demands that ordinance #4878 also known as the Blue Lives Matter ordinance is rescinded. I’m also here in support of CPAC as well and also here to remind our city officials of what the gentleman spoke of earlier: Homan Square. Also to support the folks who are currently occupying that space where there is state sanctioned torture of people in this city by CPD. Mostly Black and brown young people right, People who are experiencing homelessness. And so, working at an asian american organization we know that this issue disproportionately affects black communities. However, as an immigrant organization and also as communities of color we are not immune to police violence that has been happening in this city as well. This bill is being framed as a way to promote safety, but we know that this is just going to extend the already abusive power of the CPD. For us at Advancing Justice we joined this fight of police accountability when someone from our community was physically and verbally abused 2 years ago her name was Jianqing “Jessica” Klyzek There was video/audio of the 12 police officers were involved in this racially charged abuse. We for the past year and a half we engaged with IPRA, with the mayor's office, and we engaged with the superintendent at the time. There was no accountability there was a few days of suspension right so for us we know that currently there is no path for accountability for law enforcement who commit a hate crime. So this ordinance that is being proposed would deepen the pre-existing protections of their accountability as public servants. So for us we are disgusted with this ordinance which is being used to further criminalize and intimidate so I'm going to end with saying that police do not make us safer gonna say that again...police do not make us safer for a city that is spending 40% on police we have to look at root cause and we need you city officials to look at those root causes. Speaking about mental health, education, youth program so on and so forth. So for the folks on the stage here. If you want to respect and protect the interest of our community that you are elected to serve. We ask that you rescind and condemn Ordinance 4878 support CPAC. Thank you

 

Aisha Truss-Miller

1:09:54

Hello my name is Aisha Truss-Miller, I am a chicago native. I’m from both the north and south side of Chicago. Right now I am representing the 7th ward. Labrarm homes, my home. I am standing in solidarity with Blue lives matter, CPAC, BYP100 and brown people for black power. The phrase Blue lives matter, in itself like the gentleman said is a slap in the face for people of color in our city. Especially for those of us like me who have experienced, witnessed, and fought or fight against the historical and contemporary acts of racists and fatal violence and oppression imposed by crooked ass cops. Sustained by the silence of brothers and sisters in their blue gang and upholded by racist policies like this one introduced by crooked ass politicians who don't give a care about black lives at all. The proposed ordinance, Blue Lives Matter, is our city’s official response to Black organizers and allies mass non-violent demonstrations and righteous anger against police brutality. How racist is that? There ain’t no response from you and folks like you in power when our children and our people are murdered, injured, and traumatized by CPD. Not a whisper. There are no laws in place to protect us, but the laws that’s in place to protect civil servants, are they not already sufficed? I know what ain't sufficed. The harassment I experience because I live in low-income hoods. I’m afraid to walk down the street with my keys and cell phone in hand because they might think “she got a gun, she black”. The 8.5 year stole from my husband due to crooked ass cops and crooked ass public attorneys, that's not sufficed . What ain't sufficed is the assassination of Fred Hampton and other sisters and brother fighting to Change and empower the people. Past and present. Persecutions of activists like Malcolm London and Ja’mel Green. Alright. What ain't sufficed was the death of Rekia Boyd, Laquan McDonald, Quintonio, and many more. That's not sufficed. Where is.. Yes Ma’am! Where is our protection and justice. Where that ordinance at? I’ve witnessed shootings, police altercations, there has been incidents where the violence was driven into my home. I don’t call the cops. They just gon come and escalate the situation. I come out and I talk to the people myself, I don't trust you. So, my tax paying dollars pay for my oppression. I will defend myself by any and every means necessary against whoever. Even a bully in a blue uniform with a gun.  

 

Joe Ted

1:13:16

Alderman, thank you very much for this opportunity to speak. I am here to night to speak on behalf of the Service Employees International Union Local 73 and healthcare Illinois in Indiana. I also want to just begin by saying expressing my personal solidarity in support for the Bluest lie Collaborative. In april of 2015, my local, i'm a member of local 73, we adopted a resolution in support of an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council. It was adopted unanimously by our 100 person executive board. It was adopted unanimously but a membership meeting here in Chicago with almost 200 members present. At that time, there had been, since january of 2009, there had been over 90 people killed by the Chicago Police department over 250 people shot in the same period of time 95% are black and latino. AND what we recognized is that everyday as trade unionist we fight for our members, and yet many of our members go home at night and in their communities their lives are in danger from the very police officers that we pay who are supposed to be providing protection, supposed to be providing safety. So after deliberation on this our union came to the conclusion that the only serious remedy for the problem of police violence and crime is for the people to have the power and the authority as is laid out in the CPAC legislation. To choose the superintendent of the police. To rewrite the rulebook, for example, on when the use of force or to discharge their weapon is allowed,  and to discipline officers who violate the rights of the people. And I want to tell you that this last saturday we had a meeting with about 100 of our members with our new leadership, you may have read about our local now having an administrator from Washington DC. a very famous administrator [???] he was the right hand of Cesar Chavez back in the 1970s and 80s and now he is with our union and we discussed this and over the next 30 days seiu is going to be contacting every member of the city council to make it clear that our 29,000 members in local 73 and the 91,000 members in HCII and [???] swears local 1 will be in on this is weeks as well. We are gonna bring this message to all of yall. That we along with the teachers union and their 30’000 members and thousands and thousands of other unions and members in this city. This is what we stand for. We want an elected Civilian Accountability Council. Thank you.

 

LeCreshia Birts

1:16:45

Hi my name is LeCreshia Birts um, can you hear me now? Is this better? Step back? This is better? So first of all I want to say thank you to whoever brought these meetings about and I also want to thank the alderman who have been coming out to these meetings because I understand that not all of the aldermen have been coming to these meetings so I do thank you all who have been participating. I also thank you John Arena for taking up my proposal for a summary about these hearings, thank you for that. I also want to thank all the people in the alliance and people, members, of the bluest lie collective and the organization who have come out today to speak against the blue lives matter bill. And shout out to the young person who lost his friend, I also lost my uncle to police violence a couple years ago so I speak from experience like many of the other people here. This is not a game for us, we are a=tired of losing our loved ones. We are tired of the police torturing and harassing us and we have been vocal on this issue. We been vocal with Rekia Boyd, with Ronnieman, with Pierre, Bettie Jones, and others. But you haven’t. Like I said I do thank you for this meeting, but we need more than a meeting. We need tangible action steps. The first step after this meeting. I would like for the alderman to go check your emails. We sent out, the bluest lies collective, sent out an email asking for a clear response on where you stand on the Blue Lives Matter Ordinance. We want to know are you in support and solidarity with the people or are you supporting Alderman Ed Burke and his cronies who want to further enable police to torture and harass people. Secondly, We need you to support CPAC, well not up here today, but some aldermen expressed some issues with the ordinance. Come meet with us again come bring suggestions to the table. It is clear that this is what the people are demanding. We are not going to take any other ordinance okay? We want CPAC. So it’s y'all time to work with us. It’s y'all time to come from behind those tables and really take action on this issue because the people, we, have already been vocal and we really need to see what you guys are gonna do next because as the people have been saying we are not playing this next coming election. The people who have been taking those steps we will give praise where praise is due, but for those of you who haven't? Raborez? You know? We need you to step up. We need you to receind this ordinance. Okay? Thank you.

 

Erin Deluchri

1:20:10

Hi, so my name is Erin Deluchri. I want to thank the Aldermen for having this hearing and I want to thank everybody that came out to it. I guess I just want to say, so, I've been reading through this sheet and the policies that you intend to have in the city council and to me it is a sense of deja vu. IPRA was created because there was a problem with police violence and police crime and it was not effective. It is not effective and it never did its job and now you have realized this and you're going to create the public safety inspector general. TO me, it’s like repetition. It seems like in a sense it’s..., with all due respect, and I think you're doing this out of a genuine sense that you want to like fix things but I dont think its going to, i think you're just rearranging deck chairs on the titanic. Why not instead of having the oversight things that don’t really have any power, why not go for CPAC. Give the people the power. The ability to actually make the police accountable. I mean almost everyone who spoke today has asked for CPAC, why not give it a chance? It could actually fix the problem. Thank you.

 

Elvin Grossman

1:22:55  

I’m going to make this short and sweet. I’m representing Veterans for Peace, One of the many organizations, peace organizations, social justice organizations, church organizations, of many many organizations that have endorsed and supported CPAC. There is a reason because it is democratic, and we arent gonna have the mayor. We don't want oversight from above because then you're tinkering into the political structure and everybody is...a lot of it is defending police. A Lot of these structure that have been set up have police in them. CPAC does not want the police policing the police. That's something that we do not want, but the main point that I wanted to make was that we have such broad and deep support that there are so many organizations supporting that we are gonna keep fighting for it until we get it and we know it’s in city council and we are just not going to give up. We are going to fight until we get it. Thank you.

 

Mark Kaplin

1:24:34

Good Evening, my name is Mark Kaplin. I’m with Northside Action for Justice. We are one of the organizations in solidarity with the Blue Lies Collaborative and we also 100% endorse CPAC. Let me just say this. This is the second hearing I’ve been to and I have not heard one person stand up and support this proposal. You’re elected officials. I don't need to give you a civics lesson actually the way the council is structured you have the power, not the mayor. We found that out when Harold Washington was the Mayor. Ed Burke along with his cronie partner Edward Vrdolyak held the people of the city hostage for three years. Until we were able to get majority to council I know you all know this. Right? So you have the power really we are the ones that have the power of the people but you have the power. We have a situation now I m a local school counselor at Uplift community high school. Were facing a 30 million shortfall in our education budget despite the pronouncements of Forrest Claypool appointed by an appointed school board and we know where that gets us. Over the last several years we have paid out us the people of the city including you. About half a billion dollars on these police settlement suits. If we had that money then we would not have the shortfall, one. Two, if we had an elected Civilian Police  accountability council these police that are perpetrating these hate crimes in our community would no longer be on the force and then we wouldn't have to worry about paying out half a billion dollars in settlements. I cannot understand why there would be any support for this proposal on the part of any alderman if these hearings have any meaning or and if the voice of people have any meaning at all. Then one you'll make sure that the blue lives ordinance never sees the light of day and is rescinded. You'll make sure that on September 21st one the schools are fully funded because you support the  TIF ordinance to take that money out of these bogus TIF’s and put it into the schools. Two, youll support CPAC so the people of this city can get about their business of building communities where our young people can live theirs lives in safety and can develop into their full potential and our seniors can go into golden years with the kind of safety and protection and support of communities they need. Thank you!

 

Gregory Lucero

1:27:49

Hi my name Gregory Lucero I just moved to the great city of Chicago last Friday and I'm happy to be here and glad to be able to attend this meeting. I mean no disrespect to the underpaid overworked facilities staff here at the high schools and the teachers but I find this incredibly disappointing. Literally, people's voices could not be heard and I understand that none of you do what I do for a living. Like audio, the fact of the matter is somebody should have made sure that the mics work. And I'm not saying it’s you who was responsible for setting up these events and it's ridiculous that the very fact just by happenstance. I move Friday what would this meeting look like if we literally could not hear anything. I think there's a lot of static going on in this room and it ain't just the audio. And the other thing is, I know about CPAC and I didn't learn about CPAC from the wonderful people handing out flyers at the front of the school. I come from Utah where I helped build Utah Against Police Brutality. We don't call it CPAc we call it community control of the police but this is an idea that is spreading and Chicago is the beating heart of it. So I would encourage all of you to look at your constituencies look at what people want look at what people are saying to you and realize it is not simply the eyes of Chicago that are on you it is the eyes of the country and the eyes of the world. And you gotta keep that in mind. And I just loved hearing people talk. And I've already waxed a little too verbose but let me say this you said at the start and I appreciate the sentiment. That when the timer goes off you wouldn't cut anybodies mic just remember it’s us the people cut your mic not you who cuts our. So I’m gonna go back to work!

 

Garrett Hatcher

1:30:16

My name is Garrett Hatcher I’m here on behalf of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and I’m also in solidarity with all of our colleagues, Bluest Lie Collective, everybody else that came out here, with CPAC and everything else. Woot Woot just want to say that we’ve seen a lot of eye roll from a lot of people in your position when it comes to the advocacy or possibility of CPAC and we have heard that it’s not best practices about a thousand times, but I think we all know what that looks like to us is that when is democracy not a best practice in America? Well it’s only when the system is so rotten that you can’t possibly conceive in handing it to eh people who can do the best job at solving it. So, we are demanding democratic control because radical democracy always will require a serious fight against racism in this country and it will be a difficult process but we aren't going to let up until it comes into effect. We know that this new inspector general all the other propositions are purely designed so that no one gets held accountable because without a democratic popular control there is no impetus for any sort of inspector to actually put these people away. There is no one of them that would ever want that in government except the people below them. So, once again demanding support of CPAC and we are going to keep fighting no matter how many hearings you all have or other phony new review boards or oversights you come up with. We will be back out here when it happens again. Thank you.

 

Edward Ward

1:31:55

My name is Edward Ward and I’m here representing myself as well as my community and I think that it does no justice to first of all say that the blues matter ordinance is one of the dumbest things created. I think that what you have. A police force that comes into our communities constantly brutalizes our people constantly terrorizes our children, constantly kills our brothers and sisters and siblings and then expects for an ordinance to come and say that their lives matter when the black lives matter is brought forward you have all types of excuses to say why black lives don't matter that is a problem. What must happen is this. I think that the community must really understand this, and I think a large majority of this community understands, that when you have elected officials in office these are not people who we have to listen to or people we have to adhere to, these are people that listen and adhere to us. Your power comes from us. What you do must represent what we want and if you're not doing the job we call you to do then we are asking you to be out of office. Plain and simple. You must go. We are sitting here and a bunch of us are sitting here saying we support CPAC and if there is still not anything in place that says CPAC is going to be instituted, guess what? Whatever trash you have other than CPAC must go because what we will continue to do is demand other things and regardless of what you say, you say you want other things, we say we want CPAC and if we don't get CPAC you can take your trash and put it back in the trash bag. We get the elected officials and take their asses back to where they come from and continue to fight for our communities and continue to say you know what this is our city, we are the people and we will continue to stand and rise up regardless of what you have to say. You don't create the laws. We do. And if we don't get the laws that we want in place, you gotta go. Plain and simple. You gotta go. And you're supported by a Mayor who kills our people and covers it up by a police force that lies and says they are afraid of the communities they are set and called to serve. Now if you're in these communities that you are called to serve and you are afraid chances are you need to get your scary asses out of these communities and let somebody who is not afraid of the people and who don't see the people as a threat and as pure human beings. That way we can be able to move forward. That's why we need the community to control the police and not crooked ass elected officials.

 

Jason Tompkins

1:34:48

Good evening, I wanted to let you all know that I don't have anything to say that you all haven't already heard many times over tonight and across this past month. My first recommendation is to withdraw the BLM ordinance, ordinance 4878. I understand that none of you all were sponsors on the O but you know just as well as well do that your colleagues who are on this very joint committee of budget and government operations and the public safety committee are. And yet it is to my knowledge because i've been to all theses hearings all this past month with the exception of Cochran, none of them have had the decency to show their face at these hearings to look their constituents in the eye and explain to them why it is they think that it makes sense for them to spend city council time and energy into passing a hate crimes expansion ordinance. I have not seen any of them here. So you need to go back, you need to talk to them, you need to talk to Ed Burke, you need to talk to Cochran to make this happen. Seriously. Number 2, I understand that there are questions about the CPAc ordinance as it stands now and the language. The way that you can take initiative and take leadership is to working through and finding a solution and to sponsor the CPAC ordinance. With 8 of your colleagues who have already done so. I understand you have questions about police districts and this and that and that is something that we can use as an electoral district and the compliance that. The majority of you all in city council are lawyers or have passed the bar during your career. You know you can make this happen. It is a matter of stepping up and having the political will and the courage to do so. And my last point is around this question of Public Safety IG that sounds real cute but in material terms we know that a lot of you'll just earlier this year voted against the IG having power to audit your own offices as city council. It’s silly at this point it's confusing why you're throwing this idea that an IG office has anything to do with keeping people safe. Your constituents safe. Period. This is the reality and these are the stakes of the moment. As many people have already said before we already told you what we want. It's a question...and we are not going to stop regardless of what happens next month and the city hall meeting or what happens in October or in the next alderman election cycle we are doing what we need to do. We are just reminding you to do what you have sworn to do. That's all.  

 

 

August 16: Westinghouse College Prep Transcript by Maira Khwaja

0:00

Speaker

I'm here to talk about the good cops that service in the communities.  To rebuild the trust with the public, you need to rebuild the CAPS meeting as a community meeting rather than a police meeting.  Also the recommendation I want to make we do need election for these new IPRA boards.  We don't know if this board will be paid or not, but there should be some religious leaders on that board and those who teach criminal justice.  His dad used to be a vicelord, but he changed it around and teaches criminal justice.  We don't teach civics anymore.  Keep doing what you're doing and we'll figure this out.  In my ward we lost a police officers son.  We don't know if he was targeted and followed.  You all need to talk to Eddie Johnson and put more African Americans in the violent crimes unit.  We've got a lot of our detectives tied up.  It's unbelievable how many detectives we've lost.

2:58

Pamela Hunt

Good evening to the panel.  Certainly we are very upset and disgusted by their actions.  The issue is racism racist officers, no matter their race and committing crimes against black people all across this country.  Now I know abuse affects all areas, but I'm coming from it as a black woman. More training misdiagnoses the problem with a band aid.  Once again it's racism and racist officers.  What's training going to address the hatred of black people.  There's this narrative that training, de-escalation training, I don't see what it's going to do to hatred of a community.  We need a system of hiring that deters racist officers from joining the force and a system that identifies racist officers currently on the force.  Does working in a high crime area justify police misconduct and killing?  We need to know the rules of engagement and this speaks to the leadership of this city. Rahm Emanuel has no integrity and should resign as the mayor of Chicago.  In order to get re-elected Rahm Emanuel concealed the video of Laquan MacDonald getting shot by police officers.  If a leader of a major US city feels compelled to cover up a major crime why wouldn't the police department feel emboldened to do the same?  Good leadership establishes integrity in family and especially a police department. I am disturbed that the black community and all communities have kept Rahm in office. Rahm would never do this to his Jewish community.  Why does he do it to the black community?

Unknown Speaker

Let me tell you why so many young men and women not here and instead are on the corner.  They just don't trust the police.  They just don't trust the police.  They're worried about the police.  As soon as they see the police they run, they don't know what they are gonna do.  They say man that is the same police that has been harassing me last month.  What do we need to do aldermen is this.  Take one of these warehouses and have the police do their roll call there.  Now you have the police standing by young men with tattoos on their face.  Now they have community engagement.  Now the police don't have to look at the working man as a victim.  We need to reduce crime and have relationships with these officers.  Regardless racism is going to show.  If we can look for jobs for these young men we can reduce violence on both ends.

9:00

Gordon Waldron, Chicago Council of Lawyers

I want to speak about two topics.  One is IPRA and the other is the collective bargaining agreements.  We demand that the jurisdiction of IPRA or the agency that replaces it should review complaints involving searches and seizures, false arrests and denials of right to counsel.  These are currently investigated by the Bureau of Internal Affairs, but we believe that it is a serious conflict of interest to have police officers investigate serious allegations against other police officers.  IPRa should also have authority to start investigations through any credible source including lawsuits of police misconduct and motions in criminal cases to suppress evidence attained in violation of search and seizure requirements.  The Chicago Munical Code should be expanded to grant IPRA authority.  We believe that several provisions of the collective bargaining agreement interfere with police accountability and should not be renewed.  I only want to mention one of them tonight.  I want to mention section six.  It deals with an officer who gives a sworn statement about an incident and there is a video and audio recording of it.  Section six says an officer cannot be charged with making a false statement unless he is allowed to amend his false statement after reviewing the reporting.  This provision should not be renewed because it may discourage some police officers from telling the truth the first time.  By comparison civilians who testify to police are expected to tell the truth the first time and they are not guarantee the right to amend their statement after watching a video.  Thank you.

11:36

Frank Chapman, CAARPR

I just want to let people know there is an ordinance in the city council.  Only one person has sponsored this bill and I thank you.  Do not be fooled.  If you are fooled then you are not paying attention.  The problem in our community is that we have no power over what police do.  We have no decision making power.  We don't have a say who polices our communities.  If we had a say in this, racist police wouldn't be there.  This bill, CPAC, empowers us to decide who is policing our communities and it is our democratic right given to the American people since the revolution in this country.  Now.  What happened?  Who took it from us?  The police took it from us.  It happened during Jim Crow and since we have been in this country.  We as a people have to decide who polices our communities and how our communities to be policed.  They can't solve the problem.  We the people have to solve the problem.  The mayor started this problem.  He created a task force.  This is his creation.  This is his dog and pony show.  We got to stop this.  The only way we can stop this is if we get this law passed.  CPAC.  

14:37

Sarah Wild

Thank you community members.  I am here for you tonight.  I would like to keep in mind what Frank said.  The system failed us.  The aldermen failed us.  Those aldermen who signed on the FOP contract all these years failed us.  All of the aldermen who approved those civil lawsuits failed us without one raising a question what is happening in our city with all the black and brown people being murdered.  So it's our system is the problem and we know that.  What is the nature of this system that they are asking again to copy with another IPRA with another pretty name.  The issue is the power of the community and community having members having an elected voice.  There's no voice speaking into this microphone.  But a real voice of power.  By voting for CPAC you will get rid of all appointed positions of power.  All of them.  This bill would create a council from all police districts.  We would get rid of IPRA, Internal Affairs and the police board.  It is the most powerful entity of the so called police accountability system.  They are the only ones who have the power to fire cops and ultimately decide which cops get to work in our streets.  This power belongs to the people in these communities.  Yes, CPAC is in the council, I urge you to pressure your alderman.  For your records the number is 020165707. Let's change this system so we can stop police impunity, police torture and police murder.

17:00

Ryan Addawatz

Can I get a show of hands iif you care about the city of Chicago?  Raise your hands?  So I notice a marked difference in the way police acted in Pilsen and in East Garfield Park.  It was actually unbelievable to me.  I just thought people who lived in the West Side were crazy until I lived in East Garfield Park.  The police here really don't care, and if they do care, they're in the line of fire.  I filed numerous complaints with IPRA and it takes three to six months and numerous phone calls to get a response back.  There's no accountability in the process whatsoever.  There's no visibility, there's nothing.  So I want to cite a piece of data here.  From 2010 to 2015 the city of Chicago paid out 210 million dollars in police settlements.  I did the math here.  That's 52.5 million a year.  And I thought you know what that would do? That would create about 1500 jobs at 35000 a year.  And if you think about this, Eddie Johnson said not too long ago that there is about 1400 people the strategic subject list that are responsible for most of the violence in Chicago.  Are you seeing what I'm seeing?  Instead of giving money to families of people whom CPD has murdered, give it to those people on that list so they can become productive members of society.  Don't have police come into these neighborhoods considered high crime where they think all they can do is arrest or shoot.  At the end of the day the us vs. Them mentality has to change or nothing is going to change.  LA had this problem in the 1990s.  They fixed it.  They admit It's not perfect but they did something.  Homeboy industries is one of the largest employers for former gang members.  If you don't know that look it up.  They run a program called Weed and Seed.  They weed out the most hardcore gangmembers who are killing people and the rest of the guys they did't want to be part of the gang life that's the only opportunity they had.   Take some of that money and actually do some good and give it to the communities whose lives could be changed by this.  

20:02

Jerry Parker

I.  I'd like to have the aldermen and women to consider the famous example of accountability that happened 800 years ago between the British barons and the king.  Now we have our king, King Rahm.  You alderpeople can challenge him the sae way the British barons confronted the king.  They did not shed blood.  They persisted.  They were brave.  They were stubborn.  And finally they got him to put his seal on a lit of their demands for power.  They wanted some of his power because his power affected them.  So, the Magna Carta is this famous document.  It lead to the British Parliament, habeas corpus.  That came out of the barons work.  They drew no blood from the king.  They were persistent.  They did say there would be a council like the city council.  I see a real parallel here.  We have a King Rahm.  Five million dollars to the family of Laquan McDonald?  You have the power to change this.  Just be courageous and persistent.

23:22

Walter Grey

If this new agency doesn't have subpoena power or enforcement power, all you're doing is just going through the motions.  

24:11

Carl Brinson, NAACP-West Side

We were not invited to the party to make important decisions about what was going on.  One of the things that concerned us here is the idea of true independence.  True independence means separate and apart.   There's no way you can have a superintendent like we have.  That is not called true independence.  The police superintendent should not weigh on in cases of police misconduct.  

25:52

Bonnie Thomas

Good evening gentlemen and women.  I've been in Chicago all my life.  I am a substance abuse counselor that helps people with drug problems and mental health problems.  Also I volunteer for the board of elections.  I work with working families and communities.  The main thing I see is problems with housing and education.  I did not vote for Rahm.  I voted for Chuy Garcia.  I also believe that every black man who gets shot in the neighborhood is not a gangbanger.  I' from the West Side of Chicago.  I love Chicago.  I've lived in Austin and have people break into my car.  I go into the police station and ask them can't you see the people who are doing this?  They don't do anything.  I said forget it I am just moving out.  I have a person whose disabled right near Malcolm X College.  I have a person who is disabled and I have to take him out.  The police tell me to move out the way.  My god, why are you telling me to move out the way when I am with a senior citizen who has a disability?  This is ridiculous.  Also, where are all these guns coming from?  Black people don't own gun stores in the neighborhood.  It's sad to see people killed whether it's police or a citizen.  We have to come together and tell the aldermen about this.  If they don't we don't vote for them.

29:43

George Blakemore

The games that you play.  The reason they don't respect us in the black community is because black people don't respect each other.  You have black leadership and they supported Rahm.  You don't see police killing Chinese or white people or even Hispanics.  You're still on the plantation and we have not overcome.  We will not overcome if you continue to elect people like this.  Show me that black lives matter.  

33:33

Venus Fortner

We are talking about Rahm Emanuel, and the police.  In a way this man does make sense.  We voted for you alderman as well.  I am sick and tired of this.  I have a son.  AB honor roll.  Let me tell you his daily ritual.  Five o'clock in the morning he is on his way to football practice.  After practice he's at school.  When my mom gets home it's 7 o'clock at night.  You know what means of transportation he has?  Me and his father.  My son is literally afraid to walk the streets he grew up on.  I pay too much taxes to have my son walk the streets and be afraid of the police.  We pay ya'lls salaries.  Me and my husband and my seventeen year old son.  I'm so proud of him.  There is one thing I cannot allow my son to do and it is to be ashamed of his race.  I would not allow my son to come home and say why does this man come up down the street. The minute he walks through the neighborhood the police harass him thinking he's buying drugs.  He's just walking to the store.  It's about disrespect.  I mean true disrespect.  I am tired of paying salaries for those who don’t take their jobs seriously.  I was taught at a young age, if you don't like the heat in the kitchen, get out of the kitchen.  All of ya'll sitting up here looking at us like we're crazy.  We need to hold Anita Alvarez for all of this.

37:36

Ronda Walter, Community Renewal Society

We also have an ordinance in city council called FAIR COPS.  We're asking for a civilian oversight board.  Now I am gonna speak for me now.  I have a son as well and I have a pit in my stomach when I know police are behind him.  Just by his size they're gonna think he's an angry person, but he's not.  A person, no matter if they are a police officer or a civilian, if they commit a crime they should go to jail.  If we commit a crime we don't get to go home and sit with pay.  We don't get to do that.  We lose our family, we lose our pension, we lose our job.  We go to jail.  They shouldn't have an option to be able to retire or resign and say my bad.  We can't slip some money under the table and t's over.  It shouldn't be like that.  IPRA is a joke.  It don't work.  We have to have an agency for us.  An agency of us.  We need an agency that's not controlled by the mayor's office.  We need an agency that doesn't have anything to gain from the mayor's office.  It can't be another agency that's put up by the mayor or that is on the police force or used to be on the police force.  It shouldn't be like that.  It should be people who have invested interested in the community.

40:27

Alex Barba

We do have an ordinance in the city of Chicago that calls for a civilian police accountability council.  I thank you alderwoman for having the courage to sign on.  I know there are other aldermen sitting up there who've had the opportunity to sign on but have not.  I am here to let people know that we do need to implement an all elected civilian police accountability council.  The only way this can happen is if we come together and let our aldermen know that this needs to be put in place. We do have a movement of people who have signed on for this, over 45000.  I just wanted to remind people.  Anita Alvarez is out of office because of this police debacle that's been going on in the city.  Let's remind the aldermen that they're chairs are coming soon and we have the power to get them out.  If you ever want to see a process from beginning to end, there was this young lady named Rekia Boyd, who was murdered right down the street.  If you want to see a process from beginning to end fail look at the Cook County State's Attorney's office participated by tanking the case.  I've never heard of someone being undercharged.  Officer Dante Servin as let loose.  I've never heard of something as ridiculous as that.  I just want to remind the aldermen that Anita Alvarez has already lost her seat.  If you're not careful you will also lose your seat if you don't come through with what people are asking for.

43:52

Joselyn Foy

My son is here and he's sitting in the back.  I want him here because I want him to be safe too.  I fear that he is not white enough to walk around Chicago makes me feel uncomfortable because I live in Hyde Park, where my white counterparts are taking over Woodlawn.  It's very important that you listen and take notes.  I'm concerned about the accountability and transparency of this board.  I'm concerned that anyone on this panel that supports Blue Lives Matter that you recuse yourself from this process because you are biased.  How will the process of investigations take place?  Who will create the by laws to inform the order of operations?  Who is credentialed to make decisions over those who are credentialed to make decisions over this organization?  How will this be funded?  Will it be something we pay for?  We already spend a lot of money on police brutality.  Maybe we can fund community engagement initiatives that can rebuild relationships between the community and the police department.  Also we know transparency has been difficult for you guys but we hope that you can put your feelings and go aside so we can come to some sort of meeting of the minds.  If you tear up these relationships you've bought them.  You've torn up these relationships and we don't want to pay for them anymore.  

47:09

Keith Kelly, Garfield Park Community Council

I' a lifelong resident of this community.  I am from a long line of family members who've dedicated their lives to this community.  I am here to speak about quality of  life.  It speaks to the police's credibility but also to your credibility as leaders.  There are a lot of quality of life issues that go unenforced.  I don't know why we don't legalize marijuana.  You can walk down any main street and smell it.  You have broken glass everywhere.  We follow the letter of the law and lose the spirit of the law.  There's a disconnect with reality.  A lot of people don't trust the police because they sit around from the corner where crimes are committed every day.  I see what's going on.  The drug dealers are smart enough to move.  They sell right under the blue lights.  A friend told me they're idiots.  I asked who the police of the drug dealers.  He said both.   Also you need to address the parties going on on 200 Hamlin.  Residents are concerned and your office has not addressed this.  

50:48

Remel Terry, NAACP-West Side

What is your current plan as it relates to the current FOP contract?  Because as you know this contract is up in 2017.  Really the contract is what is stopping IPRA.  The reality is Rule 14 states that if an officer lies they should lose their job.  However corporate counsel and whoever else is responsible, but for many years, we have Rule 14 that states they must have all the evidence against them before they provide a testimony.  That's in the contract and we really need to understand that this contract is hindering any true progress.  these type of things should not exist.  This union contract should not uphold criminal behavior.  If someone is lying about what occurred they should be held accountable.  We also have to talk about the records.  These are signed into their contract.  That's why the city appears to be in collusion because they approve this bad behavior.  When we say police are above the law the reality is is that they are according to their contract.  They have their own bill of rights.  Why do you need your own bill of rights?

54:57

Alderman Chris Taliaferro  

Are there any other individuals who'd like to speak?  If not the time is now 7:59, we serve a motion to adjourn this hearing.  Before we do that, Alderman Mitts.

Alderman Emma Mitts:  I wanted to thank you for coming up here and sharing your thoughts. Even though after the meeting is over if you want to discuss these matters please contact us.  We need to hear from you as we go forward in the next phase of the police accountability process. This is not over. We must continue to speak up. Thank all of you for being here.  


 

August 11: Little Village Lawndale High School Transcript by Maira Khwaja

0:00

Alderman Ricardo Munoz

So this August the city council will hold five police accountability meetings across the city and want gather and review two critical points on police accountability.  Number one, the new investigative agency to replace IPRA.  Number two, the new public safety inspector general.  The goal is to develop a new agency and see out a new public inspector general before the budget process in October.  After process are established, community organizations will bring together residents to further engage in police reform issues including the design a community safety oversight board.  Once the communities have met with the city, the city will  move to create an oversight board.

Thank you for coming out and contributing to this collaborative process.  If you wish to speak today, please fill out a pink city council slip and turn it in to the table in the back.  You'll have three minutes.  We'll be keeping time here and let you know when you have 30 seconds left.  And when time is up so people can stay on time.  The handout has questions related to the new IPRA and the new public safety inspector general.  We hope you address these issues during your speaking time.  If you would not like to speak, please see the URL on the handout.

Even though we are not at city hall, it is nonetheless a city council hearing.  As in all hearings, a panel of aldermen will not answer questions and comments.  We are hear to listen to the nature of police reforms in Chicago.  With that, I'll turn it over to Lori Lightfoot who will speak on her experience with the public safety task force before we begin public comment.  Lori.

2:48

Lori Lightfoot

Thank you aldermen for providing me with this opportunity, and thank you for hosting these series of events across the city and providing the public the opportunity to receive information and to be heard on these important issues.  Let me begin, my name is Lori Lightfoot.  I  had the pleasure and honor earlier this year to serve as the chair of the Police Accountability Task Force.  I  am not going to talk about all the work the task force did, but I want to give you a few data points specifically on the two issues that are on the table, the replacement entity for IPRA and also for  a brand new entity the public safety IG.

As you may know the task force was convened after the release of the Laquan McDonald shooting video in late November last year.  Over five months time, we brought in members from across the city in five specific areas.  In the course of our work we made a specific effort to engage the community as much as we could.  There were many of you who came to task force public hearings that we also had and provided invaluable feedback.  Through the course of our work we met with over a thousand organizations and individuals.  We had approximately 70 working group members and 750 people who attended hearings.  We met with 95 community groups and had over 100 interviews and 83 religious institutions.  As a result of that as you are all aware on April 15th we issued a comprehensive report and issued findings with recommendations.  Two of the hundred recommendations that we made are to be discussed by the city council tonight, that is a replacement for IPRA and a public safety ig.  it was clear from the comments that we heard from the members of the public and members who had filed complaints and lawyers who had worked with clients who were working with clients, it was clear that IPRA fundamentally lost credibility.  That is why we made a recommendation that a new agency be put in place.  

We also made the recommendation that we simply not change the name of IPRA.  That was what happened with OPS when it was phased out but we had to make specific systemic changes to the organization so that you all believe in that the new organization was independent, had resources needed for investigations and add to legitimacy and accountability to the overall law enforcement infrastructure.

Let me talk to you about some of the recommendations we made to the organization.  Now if you looked at our report, there is a checklist of the key points that we thought were important for the new organization.  One is the selection process of the new head of the organization.  Our recommendations were part of a whole.  You can't simply cherry pick parts of the recommendation.  I personally support a process for creating a new agency now and a public ig, it is critical that the new organization be included in the new upcoming budget.  The time is now.

What is also important is that the work of IPRA, meaning the complaints that are coming in, that doesn't stop.  That means on a daily basis, you all members of the public.  Complaints from the public, and frankly complaints generated within the department.  It's not going to get accomplished if you all don't see the organization as having credibility and it's important that a new organization gets started as quickly as possible.  

We have to think about who chooses the new leader of the organization.  What will be the transition between what we have now and the new organization.  We have got to make sure that the new organization has a dedicated budget.  So it's either as a percent of the police department's budget or whether it's the number of personnel at the new organization versus the number of personnel in the police department.  It has to have more funding, better trained staff.  It has to have a budget that is guaranteed.  So the new organization doesn't succumb to the vagaries of city finance.

The new organization has to clearly articulate what its mission is and it needs to do a consistent and better job to reach out to communities.  

There needs to be a removal of barriers of accountability.  There needs to be a change that requires someone to fill out an affidavit and subjects themselves to potential perjury, investigation or some kind of punitive action simply because they don't want to sign that affidavit.

If there is credible evidence that misconduct has taken place, the new organization has to be empowered to investigate that.  There has been power to do that in IPRA, but they haven't exercised it historically up to this point.  That affidavit requirement, which frankly would require a change in the collective bargaining agreement has to be done so that the new organization can investigate complaints  whether or not there is an affidavit to go along with it.

The new organization has to do a better job of being transparent.  One of the things we heard during the hearings was that people file a complaint and they wouldn't hear anything for years.  A complaint that gets filed, it has to be something that the complaining party knows about and it shouldn't be a secret process that an investigation is taking forward.  Frankly when an outcome has been determined, the complaining party should be notified.  It sounds like a simple thing, but we heard from a lot of people that they wouldn't hear about anything about the complaint and instead would receive a form letter years later and it wouldn't be accurate.  

One of the other things we talked about was mediation.  IPRA currently engages in a mediation process to resolve complaints where officers come in, they get some factual statement of what misconduct they engaged in and the case is resolved.  In those circumstances, the complaining witness is excluded from this process.  We looked at practices across the country, and those who use mediation has brought in the complaining witness from the very beginning and that person is a part of the mediation process.

 

Another thing is if there is a complaint against an officer and it is referred to the criminal authorities, IPRA's standard practice was to stand down and were not obligated to complete investigations while the criminal case is winding its way through the process.  If at the end of the day a prosecutor decided not to bring charges or the case lingered in criminal courts for many years, the disciplinary process came to a screeching halt.  The victim did not get any justice.  

We recommend that unless there is extraordinary circumstances, the disciplinary process must proceed if there is a criminal case.  I can tell you as a lawyer that's complicated.  There's issues of officer statements and appellant testimony, but those are things that can be worked out.  It can't be that the standard protocol is that if there is a criminal case pending or even if there is a criminal referral that the disciplinary case stands down indefinitely.  

I think Sharon Fairley understands that and has worked aggressively over the last eight months as the head of the organization to address that, but that needs to be written into the ordinance itself.

One of the other things that we believe was important, and I'll make this my last comment, there has to be a better job of investigating these cases much more quickly.  We at the police board we see a case that's from 2006.  It didn't come to the police board till 2010 and was not resolved till 2011.  The officers appealed and went to circuit court and the circuit court reversed the police board's decision.  It then went to appeals where it sat for three years, and now we have just gotten a decision this past Monday.  That is a ridiculously long period of time, everyone would agree, but still at the front end you'd have tow wonder what the police board cases are getting cases that are five, six years old.  What has to happen is that investigations must be done much more quickly.  It's hard to put a time limit on when an investigation needs to get done, because every case is different, the facts are different, but even with the vagaries of the facts and these cases, investigations need to get done more quickly so that victims of police can find a timely resolution.  So the officers don’t have things hanging over their heads for years and years.  It's in the best interest for the public.

Now on the public safety IG.  As it stands today there is no entity, not the police board, not IPRA, not the bureau of internal affairs and not the attorney general who has a complete 360 degree view of police accountability in the city of Chicago.  It was very clear that that gap needed to be filled.  The basic concept is to have one someone with broad authority to look at the entities responsible for conducting investigations of police misconduct.  It will also make sure that in terms of what is going on in each investigation that information is available to the public, so that the public can see what's happening.  Another important is to identify patterns whether It's an officer, or a unit in the police department that needs to be fixed.  

We've also heard through the newspapers the number of settlements made each year regarding alleged police misconduct.  Millions of dollars are spent in judgements each year.  We believe, the city council, that the public needs more information about those cases before city council approves those settlements.  We believe that the public safety IG reviews those cases and puts out a report to city council before decisions about settlement cases are made.   The IG needs to do an analysis of what's happening.  If Officer Lightfoot keeps coming up case after case after case, and the city is paying out money because of my misconduct, something needs to be done about that.  But nothing can be done if that information isn't available to the people who can do something about it.  That information is critically important for the public to have access to.  Private tax dollars are being spent.  I'll stop there.

21:24

David Sartour

Ms. Lightfoot mentioned leaders, I thought I'd mention my position that in the last ten or fifteen years there's been five or ten leaders of IPRA if you count the temporary ones and some of the temporary ones have been in as long as the permanent one.  The average leader of IPRA doesn't stay too long.  That's my position on that.  

She also mentioned affidavits.  I think so many people drop their complaints against police officers it's because of the affidavit.  When you go to the IPRA intake, what they do is that they have to take down your explanation of your complaint and put in into a couple hundred characters.

The investigator then comes to your door is not an investigator but a police officer, and I've made dozens, dozens of complaints, it's a police officer acting for IPRA, not even an investigator that comes.  He tells you that you have to sign this affidavit or the case will be closed.  You say that'll be fine but it's under penalty of perjury.  You don't know what the IPRA intake specialsit wrote down about your complaint, and you have to sign a blank piece of paper that says it's accurate or else you're going to jail because she didn't summarize it correctly.  

I want to speak to the actual solution.  The solution is that you need to have your initial complaint made to internal affairs.  They need to have to be the ones to review the complaint and now you have a CRID number.  If you file a complaint with IPRA and they mess up your complaint, you'll have to file a complaint against IPRA themselves.  Internal affairs are tasked to review and document complaints.  If you take IPRA out of the loop, you resolve the problem that we have now.  

25:02

Jeffrey Baker

People are killed by police often because not because they weren't killed by taser or because they didn't collect enough data.  That's not the reason.  The reason is that they can get away with it and can continue to do it.  That's why we have so many killings.  They don't have to think twice about it.

Why is that?  There are elevan  individuals who make decisions about police conduct, police investigations and police discipline.  There are eleven people and let me tell you who they are.  You've got the superintendent, you have one your chief of IPRA who does the investigatio and nine police board members.  

Standard operating procedure, budget, those eleven individuals.  Where did those people come from?  All eleven of these individuals were appointed by your mayor.  All of them.  all of them have to think twice before they make a decision and think, how does this make my boss look?  How will this affect my future in this city and my job?  Before they're making a decision they're not thinking about justice or right and wrong, but how the mayor will look.  Why do we know this is going on?  Because there were four hundred days before we even know Laquan McDonald was shot by police.  Huh?  They seemed surprised. They mayor, state's attorney and the superintendent suppressed that until, the mayor, one by one, threw each of them under the bus.  

We don't have power to affect those decision making process. The only way we can gain power for that is through CPAC.  People have to answer to the community, you or I.  

28:46

Kathy

I'd like to know how many more of our children are going to be murdered by Chicago police?  And when did it become okay for police to shoot people in the back?  Why are they more often people of color who are being murdered by police?  Where is money coming from?  The money that is being paid to families who lost their murdered sons and daughters.  The city is using taxpayer money to hire lawyers to defend police.  Does it make the citizens of Chicago accomplices?  Do we need to change police contracts?  I believe we do. We must stop the police killings.  We need CPAC now.  

30:31

Byron Sigcho, Director of Pilsen Alliance

I want to paraphrase Ms. Lightfoot, and she's right.  I think it is very important that we testify who we think as the residents of Chicago how to select new members of the police board.  I certainly believe in a community controlled board.  We need to take away that power from the mayor.  The fact that the mayor won his reelection bid because of a 5 million dollar settlement should tell us this is a tainted process.  

So let me remind you what mayor control looks like over the past 15 years.  702 killings.  It's not just affecting black families.  The mayor has failed us, our schools.  What we want to tell this panel is to listen to your constituents.  We demand a community controlled board.  We demand CPAC.  

In the thousands of cases we've seen of police misconduct.  Only 4 percent have received discipline.  The racial disparity shows that black and Latino victims are less likely to get justice.  This is outrageous when we see the complaints of these communities basically dismissed.  In the 200 cases that have been reported have been voted for dismissed were recommended for the lesser charger than the serious misconduct charge they were accused of.  

34:14

Sarah Wild

Thank you.  I've lived in the Pilsen Little Village community for twenty years, and one thing I do agree with the task force, the mayor's task force, is that the policing system in this city has been racist, is racist.  WE need to take a brief look at the demographics and those who have been murdered and tortured are not white folk.  In the honor of the communities I've had the privilege to work for and live for, one thing we do know that there is no democratic process.  There is hearing, but no listening.  It's not about listening it's about power.  There is a concrete democratic solution.  It is 020165707 ordinance for CPAC.  CPAC takes apart the system of impunity of this city.  It takes away the police board, IPRA and internal affairs.  The police board is the most powerful entity around.  They have the power to hire and fire police officers.  What CPAC does is that it creates a community council from residents across all districts and this council democratically elected have the power to investigate and hire and fire cops.  This is a serious systemic shift of power to the people.  

36:17

Fanny

I'm going to echo what everyone just said.  I would like to have a committee that works on the accessibility of this topic for Spanish speakers.  Spanish speaking accessibility is needed for this topic as well as other topics.  The police accountability task force is not in Spanish.  How are we expected the Spanish speaking residents to be here and come here tonight if the demographic doesn't even know the content?  That's a huge fact.  The City of Chicago website is powered by Google Translate and the translations are horrible.  What I hope is that the city council consider, and what Byron has already mentioned, is that there is an allocation of resources, so that there are actual people who translate materials.  Otherwise the City of Chicago will continue to leave Spanish speakers out in the dark.

Parker: We got CPAC in Spanish.

39:50

Lucretia

First, I want to say is thank you to Lori Lightfoot.  I went to the first police accountability hearing.  I want you to know that I hear you and I see you and even though I disagree with you I respect you.

I attended the South Shore meeting, and I specifically requested that the alderman release a report or summary to prove that they are actually hearing and listening to what we are saying.  I sit in the back and I wasn't sure if they were taking notes or even paying attention.  

Anyways, I would really like to see a summary that proves you are actually listening and considering what was being said today.

I also want to talk about the city council's cowardice.  When Laquan was killed you could have done something but you didn't.  You could have changed policing then.  Change didn't happen until the people stepped up.  I think it's really disgusting that you're pretending that you're listening and pull the wool over our eyes with these false ordinances, and it's clear the people have spoken and they want a civilian police accountability council.  And the fact that we've been talking about this for years and you've been talking about a civilian oversight board.  That's not the same thing ya'll.  

It doesn't give us power.  It doesn't pay people in the community to look at policing.  It's not the same, and we will not accept anything less.  If you want to change policing in the city, I urge you to abolish ordinance 04878 the Blue Lives Matter ordinance.  You cannot charge protestors for talking against police crime.  That's not fair for us and it's a disrespect for all of our work.  Also this ordinance 4886 it's also been proposed by Burch.  I really think it's a conflict of interest for an ex cop Alderman to be proposing these ordinances.  If you want us to have faith in you you cannot be supporting things that go against our civil rights.  I need for that to happen instead of this dog and pony show or whatever you want to call this.

44:50

Paul Harrington

I'm a North Lawndalian all my life.  In 2012 I retired from the Cook County Sheriff's department.  I will never pretend that my work load was the same as that of a Chicago Police officer.  As a patrolman I talked to community about quality of life issues and engagement.  There are some things common to the department despite size or scope.  As a field training officer, I passed down what my training officer told me.  Whatever you do do something where you work with kids.  Everyday you see kids in a negative light instead of as a teenage boy.  The bridge program makes possible the social bonds between Chicago Police and children.  Everyone sees each other as people, established through mutual respect. Critical changes need to be made.  Social and community engagement needs to be mandated for personnel on a yearly basis.  Perhaps the teenage boy will go to a cop in times of need instead of an evil occupier.  Perhaps the cop won't see teenage black boys as evil monsters who kill at a moment's notice but instead as teenage boys.  

46:31

George Blackmore

The devastation comes from the black community, a weak community.  If they want to stop police brutality, they must become a moral community.  The leadership has failed. Black families have failed.  Demonstrating isn't the answer.  The answer is you.  Only the strong survive.  Don't rely on the white people that brought you here.  Only the strong survive and God is all that you need.  Black lives matter, show them that black lives matter.  

50:32

Alejandro Barba

I am a resident and actually one of your constituents Alderman Cardenas.  I am asking you two gentlemen that you need to support a civilian police accountability council.  We've met and discussed this in the past, so I don't know why you're not supporting it now.  We actually presented this to you Mr. Munoz and we're making sure our community knows the importance of CPAC.

I don't know why you're not on board, and it's a big question for me.  You said you were gonna to support it but you didn't come through.  Here I am asking you what happened.  No response?  You were suppose to sponsor this bill but you didn't do it so.

Alderman Munoz: We had some constitutional questions, and am talking to your leadership about.  Until it is resolved, I can't support it just yet.  I like the concept, but the details need to be worked out.

Barba: What details?

Alderman: Bottom line, bottom line there is a constitutional question whether or not police districts have a one man one vote jurisdiction.  For example all elected districts must have equal weight.  Police districts don't have that.  I'm working with your leadership to figure that out.

Lucretia: It's just like school districts, like local school councils.  It's the same sort of principles.

Alderman: No, no, they're not.  This is a legal issue.  

Barba:  So why don't you just sign?  Last time these types of meetings happened 54 schools got shut down.  I don't know what this is.  54 schools got shut down.  

(Inaudible)

Barba: You need to support this.  

Alderman: If there aren't any other speakers  then meeting is adjourned.

Lucretia: Why don't you stop and answer questions?

Alderman: Because this is a panel.  This is a city council hearing.  

(Inaudible)

August 9: Senn High School Transcript by Maira Khwaja

*Note: The following transcription is semi-verbatim. Check audio above for original sourcing.

0:00

Alderman Joe Moore:  Again, I apologize for the mispronouncement.  Please come up to the microphone.  Make sure you look at Mr. O'Neal to know that your time is running short.  Please proceed.

5:03

Dr. Stephanie Baker

I urge you to look beyond the recommendations of the police accountability task force.  I have a few concerns.  

First the recommendations don't address the police board.  IPRA oversees one to two percent of all complaints received by police.  All of the complaints are cops investigating cops.

Second, the police accountability task force proposes an agency that does not have authority.  I don't know if I trust City Hall to negotiate with the fraternal order of police.  I am a cis, hetero white lady on the north side of Chicago, and I fear the cops.  If you're in the city of Chicago and you spent roughly four million dollars a day on police, while you divest in community.  There's schools, there's mental health services.  What could we be doing with that money? You're using a half a billion dollars over the last decade to pay for police brutality lawsuits.  In 2005 and 2008 and 2011 there have been 65,000 complaints against police.  8500 cops over a decade have received complaints.  55,000 Chicagoans are either getting it wrong or are misinterpreting their relationships with the police.  I don't believe that.  Between 2012 and 2015 CPD shot 702 Chicagoans.  Since 2011 there hasn't been a single fatality of a Chicago police officer.  

What I encourage you to move beyond recommendations made by the task force and rethink what we can do as a society.   We need to rebuild trust.  We need to put power back in the hands of the community.  Thank you.

10:34

Mark Clemens

I hope you hear very loud and hear very clearly.  I am one of those torture victims it is a shame that I think I see six human beings on that stage.  None of you ever suggested that the torture victims of Jon Burge be investigated by the Department of Children and Family Services.  Why in the world.  Alderman Joe Moore, we ain't make this no secret. I've done 28 years inside prison of a natural sentence as a kid.  Condemned, I was told I was the scum of the earth.  You let the real criminals run around in society, while you locked me up and stole my youth.  So many of you and especially alderman, wonder why criminals won't go away.  You took my youth.  You made for people like me, once they've gotten out of prison, to survive.  

You have over one hundred million people locked up in the prison system.  Some of them are juveniles.   It's child abuse.  People say they're going to make changes, but they ain't making changes.  The bottom line is you torture children.  

The new system that replaced OPS is even worse.  

14:53

Kylie Gould

I live in Rogers Park.  There are a couple of things I want to tell you to explain my problem with the police.  I was with somebody who had a bunch of law enforcement friends.  I was bullied, harassed, denied the ability to live a normal life.  I moved around a bunch.  I went to Chicago to hide from his cop relatives and heal a little.  My truck was surged with no warrant, I've done nothing wrong.  I had 6000 stolen.  My vehicle was stolen and ransomed back to me.  The Chicago Police wanted to dig into what was happening to me.  They've made my life a living hell ever since I've been here.

I went to the FBI office to complain because I didn't want to be harassed anymore.  The Chicago Police found out about this and decided to terrorize me further.  

Do they have anything better to do than to terrorize somebody who had three strokes?

18:50

Yvonna, West Ridge resident

I'm a youth from West Ridge.  Personally growing up I had strong relationships with police in the community.  Sometimes they would come to the park and we'd build relationships.  We are all a part of society and it is our duty to contribute to society.  As humans we all make mistakes and there are consequences, but I think we all can learn from them.  The first steps to make change means we have to take responsibility for our actions.  I think we should instill people coming together.

My question to you is, how are you going to bring people together?

20:12

Morgan, Rogers Park resident

I am a resident of Rogers Park.  I want to keep things simple.  I see things in black and white.  I don't have any questions for you.  I have a message for you.  When I see you in uniform, you may as well have a sheet on.  This shit makes no sense.  The things you see.  The things you witness.  How can you stand beside them?  We know there are societies who stand by and look for one another.  You stand by and let someone shoot a seventeen year old sixteen times.  Really?  Sixteen shots.  It's plain and simple.  Why are you shooting a kid that's already gone?  You pieces of shit.  

When I see you I see sheets coming for us.  

22:15

Leroy Michael Elliott

I am here with the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Oppression.  I stand here for Michael Brown, who died on this day a couple of years ago.  Massacred in Ferguson because he was black.

You all have described your idea of how police should be held accountable.  You talked about putting in a new agency and appointing a new monitor. We reject all appointments.  You're appointments are totally rejected by community.  We want total community control of the police.  CPAC is an ordinance is in the public safety committee right now.  We expect you all to co-sponsor it.  

I want to talk about what CPAC will do.   There will be elected representatives from 22 police districts.  They have the power to appoint and reject the police superintendent, rewrite the police rulebooks, including all use of force guidelines, operations and provide transparency for all shootings and statistical analysis of all demographic information of complaints by type and victims.  They will thoroughly investigate all police complaints based on constitutional and human rights law.  They will be the final authority to determining discipline for entire Chicago Police Department.  They will refer all cases to the federal grand jury.  

CPAC will replace the rubberstamp agency IPRA and the police board.

It is the only reasonable solution to police accountability.  It is important to erase any thoughts of appointing anybody because it's not going to work.  Power to the people.  

28:05

Mark Capler, Northside Action for Justice

You have to understand your appointments, your appointed boards and commissions have less than zero credibility with the city of Chicago.  

We understand what appointments mean.  The will of the people, the will of the community is entirely disregarded.  We have an appointed school board, which has bankrupted our city and laid off our teachers.

32:17

Alan Mills, Executive Director of Uptown People's Law Center

What's always been a problem is what is happening behind closed doors.  We have a culture of corruption in the Chicago Police Department.  Worse we have a police force that treats neighborhoods and entire communities as occupied territory.  They're treated as neighborhoods that need to be slaughtered, not ones to be protected.

It's the simple stuff you need to focus on.  The drops.  Those who get arrested for marijuana.  It happens every time at 26th and California and everybody knows it.  Most of those cases get dismissed.  But it's the simple things we need to focus on.  We need to have consequences.  You need to change that culture of corruption at the ground level.

Arrests are not what makes us safe.  There needs to be a network of social support.  That's what makes us safe.  We're arresting so many people from specific neighborhoods that it destroys those social ties in those neighborhoods.  Schools and mental health clinic services are being destroyed, and those are what actually make a community safer. That's what needs to be fixed here, not the name on the door.  

34:56

Bedford West, Community Renewal Society

Good evening.  I'm here to talk about the Fair Cops ordinance.  Fair Cops is here to make sure we have a secured policy in place to make sure that whoever replaces IPRA gives power to the people and has clear transparency.  We talked to the community and listened to the community and what the main obstacles we heard was that there needs to be a measure in place that prevents a new agency from being corrupted by the government that we have.  

The concerns that we have here are that elected bodies could be corrupted by money or influence.  Elections can be bought.  What we want to establish is an independent auditor.  Anybody who comes into this role must be independent and cannot be from the police department or be related to a  police officer.

Political forces in Chicago can shift all the time, and what we propose wants to have staying power.  We want all our reports from this office to be published publicly.  If recommendations from this office are not met, we will make this available to the public.  I encourage to co-sponsor this ordinance.

38:27

Steve Craig, Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Police Oppression

Good evening.  I am here in support of the Chicago Police Accountability Council.  This tisk tisk attitude of some councilman that the mayor will never go for that.  Well, of course not.  We're not gonna go for the mayor.  This is a democracy; people want control.

41:07

Warren Grimsly, Green Party

I am here to stay that the Green Party stands with CPAC.  We want to recruit people to protect the communities that they serve.  

42:21

Barbara Waller, SURGE

I have biracial grand sons, and I am scared for them.  The Chicago Police Department needs to become an anti racist police department.  This goes way beyond diversity training.  The Chicago Police Department must realize the systemic problem in our institution.  This must change.  It's not about individual officers: it's about police officers being held accountable and holding each other accountable to both communities of color and white communities.  They have a lot to overcome, a lot to be embarrassed about.  Now is the time to dismantle the racist insitution that is the Chicago Police Department today.  Any boards appointees or city officials must have a commitment to anti-racism if there is going to be accountability.  What are our priorities?

44:39

Maya, AFIRE

I have one question for all of you.  Will these reforms bring back Rekia Boyd?  Will it bring back Laquan McDonald?  Will it bring back Paul O'Neal?  Will it stop another killing of a black or brown killing in this country?  As a Filipina, I know a little too well what police brutality and militarization look like.  Police shot straight into a crowd, killing hundreds, including elders, women and children.  I can't say that anything is different in Chicago.  In Chicago I've seen black children handcuffed, pressed up against a cop car.  These are children.  Another one of those children could be another Rekia, Laquan or Paul.  

47:22

Jacque Iber

One I think this is a really impressive display of people participating in the democratic process.    Depending on what you all do will indicate whether or not the democratic process still works.  CAPS meetings are a perfect public forum for community to engage with police.  Based on the CAPS meetings I've attended, although they are very well organized by well intentioned people, there is an attitude of any questioning of police about any records, such as how many number of complaints there are in the district, are highly discouraged.   I believe that's wrong.

49:13

Kathleen Ellsworth, Rogers Park resident

All I have to say is that I have a very strong opinion about overtime as a solution for stopping problems.  I work at a first responder type of facility where we work twelve hour shifts. And that's fine. We'd work four days straight and have three days off.  I work long hours but not too many hours.  Research is out there that exhausted people make bad judgment.  That last thing I want is someone to come to my emergency on their sixth day working 12 hours with six hours of sleep.  

50:18

Michael Lippman

There are lot of people here talking about police accountability.  Accountability is an after the fact issue.  What hasn't been addressed but needs to be is the study of police culture and ways to stop, reduce and reverse police crime.  Safety is an extraordinarily strong issue.  For crime to be reduced and the police culture to be reversed.  The culture, the code of blue silence.  There has to be a way to study this culture to prevent crime before the fact.  

53:25

Megan Selvey, Rogers Park resident

I am really upset that we even called this meeting.  We're drowning in the stories and facts of police murders and police violence.  How many stories and facts do you need to actually change?  As an educator, I am required to report all kinds of data about my teaching, performance.  The students and these classrooms are on the line.  There is another system that's hemorrhaging money.  I teach sexual education and relationships, and a lot of what my students talk about is their relationships toward the police.  Why in th world are we throwing money at a system that has a terrible record?  Forty percent of our city budget goes to CPD.  Stop funding them.  There's a whole long list of people protesting everyday for money for actual services that help people.  Fund those instead.  

Alderman:  In response to your question many people wanted to come here to speak.  

Selvey: I want some action.

55:20

Jerry Parker

I'd like to visit a very famous, and I feel crucial case of accountability that happened 800 years ago in Britain.  The king was taxing the barons maddeningly, foot bills for his wars in France.  The barons were incredibly taxed and stressed over his lack of accountability.  They were insistent and persistent that, although that they did not draw blood, if he didn't change there would be consequences.  If the king would not agree to certain accountability, they had a meeting with then.  Those minutes we call the Magna Carta.  It's of my opinion that the aldermen and women of Chicago can be as brave, insistent and persistent as those barons 800 years ago, and to not let the mayor run rampant.  

58:03

Sam Shay, Rogers Park resident

I want to lift up whatever folks said.  I want to lift up the names of Rekia Boyd, Paul O'Neal and Pierre Lowry.  What I also want to lift up too is that Homan Square is still open.  Why is that not closed yet?  I'd say that should be a priority.  7000 cases have been reported of abuse and torture, and it's claimed that there are double of those unreported cases.  So it's historical not just in terms of Burge.  I'm a future teacher of history and I want to make a historical connection that this is a system that has reiterated itself over and over again of violence against black people.  Basically when slavery was abolished, it was abolished except as punishment for a crime.  That's in the amendment.  Keep that in mind.  Systems of criminalization and incarceration are ways creating violence against black people.  The first police were slave catchers.  I also want to make a connection with the Cook County Sheriff.  I walking the other day near my house near Morse avenue, and I saw five officers with one black man who was scared.  There was a blue tent.  What we found out was the Sheriff was running a sting operation essentially bating people, send a young girl to talk to them and solicit them.  The men that girl talked to even if they weren't interested in having sex were either ticketed 500 dollars or had a court appearance in Bridgeview.  My question to you is this: how does this make people safe?  

1:02:12

Melissa West

Hi, I am actually an active military officer and so has my husband.  In the six years that we've lived here my husband has been pulled over at least two times for fitting the description.  If he had not practiced temperance, I could be a widow here standing here today.  I also want to say I endorse CPAC.  You had these framing questions to guide us in this hearing.  They're laughable, but I'll go with it.  

  • What should be the qualifications of investigators who work at the new investigative agency?

-I say CPAC.

  • What should the agency do to build credibility and trust in the community?

I say truly engage.  That requires a dialogue, not this one way dialogue we have today.  Again, have you heard of CPAC?  

After looking at these documents, it's a foregone conclusion.  You say the replacement for IPRA cannot wait, but you say we have to have it by October.  When have we ever had a budget happen that fast?  

Participation implies collaboration.  Design implies creating a new framework.  We need engagement and right now this is laughable and it seems to insult our intelligence.  If you truly want to build credibility and trust, engage the citizens.  

1:08:22

Pastor Marcus Tent, Granville Ave. United Methodist Church

I understand the pain and 400 years of oppression that lead that sister to how up her middle finger in anger.  I want the alderman to take off their aldermen hat for a second and I want the cops to talk off their cop hat for a second and hear my testimony.  

I have three sons, one 17, one 14 and one 19.  I raised my children in the police department.  I raised my children in CAPS.  I raised my children to run to the police instead of away from them.  That was all taken away when sixteen shots killed Laquan.  Nineteen years of hard work were taken away when their young friend who used to play in my backyard Paul O'Neal was gunned down for running away from the police.  I ask you to put yourself in my shoes.  What do I tell my children?  Yeah I could use my theological education to give them all these words of encouragement from the Bible, but I am a parent first.  I am concerned about my children because all of the work that I did, all the times they did singing the police department are now taken away from them.  Whenever we see police they tense up now, even when they are with me.  They say, "Dad, they are out to kill me?"  

My son goes away to college at Jackson State in Jackson Mississippi where they still hang the confederate flag.  He says he feels more comfortable there in a city like Jackson, MS than he does here in Chicago, IL, and that’s a shame.

I need answers for my children.  How do make my black sons feel comfortable in a city that they love when they fear they will be gunned down?  

Lastly, I was looking at my Twitter today, and they are now making, I hope it's a hoax, mandatory for our children to learn about how to deal with police.  Why don't we reverse that and make it mandatory for our police to learn more about our children?  

1:16:51

Andy Jasper, Edgewater resident

Lots of sharp words here folks.  I like it.  I want to tell you guys a quick story.  I rode a bike in this city.  A few years back, I was riding my bike up on the sidewalk in Bryn Mawr to get Starbucks.  I was only on the sidewalk for a short period of time, but needless to say a police officer in a cruiser comes up to the side of me, stops and gets out of his car.  This guy is coming up to me to put my hands up against the car, said if I didn't comply I would be arrested, said a litany of profanities.  I spent five or ten minutes speaking in low tones to de-escalate this gentleman so he wouldn't beat me up or arrest me.  I got out of that encounter with a 50 dollar ticket.  The next day I was getting ready for work.  I stop by the bridge to smoke a cigarette, and this same cop from yesterday walks up to me.  He's a beat cop in Bryn Mawr I see him everyday.  I was scared and nervous that he was going to beat me up.  He starts talking to me a little bit and at a certain point he says, "I'm sorry about yesterday.  I just get really angry sometimes.  I really don't know why I do that"

I remember it occurred to me in that moment, like, "Maybe you should figure  that out."

That's not the first police mistake and it's not the last.  I don't know if you noticed but I'm white.  I have a BFA in Acting.  Pretty much I was raised to be respectful, and I get harassed multiple times.  It's not lost on me that if I was a different skin color or talked to him in a slightly different way it wouldn't have been his baton that got drawn, it would have been a gun.  It would have been an arrest and criminal charges regardless of what I had done.  I would have ruined my life.  

So maybe would should look into the mental health services of not just people in the city, which is woefully underfunded, but of the officers as well.  We need to make sure their health and stress is dealt with.

I mean this sincerely.  I get it.  It's a hard job.  But we task these people with going into neighborhoods and as other people have mentioned here, suppressing violence.

They are trained to treat everyone as if they are the enemy.  And that's bled over to all of us now.  All of us are a part of this now.  

Speaker: As they are killing and stealing our property.

As they are killing and stealing our property, the young woman just said.  It's got to change folks.

1:35:59

Amanda Birchman

These youth are scared and are afraid of officers.  When I think of accountability, it has to be monitored by the citizens.  I support laws that ensure police officers do their jobs legally and training that reduce the fear officers face and try to understand their fear of black youth.  They need to learn about systemic oppression, stereotypes and learn that they can have a repore with these black youths in the community.  

 

August 4: South Shore Cultural Center Transcript by Maira Khwaja

*Note: The following transcription is semi-verbatim. Check audio above for original sourcing.

Rev. Catherine Brown

0:00

So I just received this because nobody told me we need to stick to this. What I thought was, it said testify about something that happened to you which did not receive police accountability. So is that what we are testifying to?

Alderman: No ma’am, that is not what we are testifying to. We are testifying to your input as to how we can create an ordinance that holds police accountable.

Rev. Brown: Ok so in my opinion I think we should take the ordinance that was sent to the city council for CPAC, which is Civilian Police Accountability Council. We, the people of Chicago, a lot of them would prefer that our community have control over our police because in the past, in different situations, like my own, police have not been accountable and we want them to be accountable for their bad actions so that we can regain respect for officers that do want to be good officers and to protect and serve us, not disrespect and threaten us. So as you all are aldermen and we put you all in those seats, we expect you all to listen to us and respect what we are asking for and that is CPAC. CPAC would be an elected board which would – this is a question I have for all of us – have you all heard of the ordinance that was introduced to you all called CPAC?

Alderman: So this is a testimony, this is not question and answer, but I’m sure my colleagues have heard it, have read it. So would you like to continue?

Rev. Brown: So since there is no question and answers but how can people understand what you’re planning to do on our behalf if we do not ask you questions about your public and safety plans because we do not want plans that do not benefit us but that benefit the people that’s just in leadership. So it’s important for us as a community to stand a chance to the police as well as city council that we know that you are fighting for us. So you not going to let us ask questions so I’m going to continue to make statements. Thank you. Also, we would like to have some type of for you to tell us thoughts on different ones that have not become a part of endorsing CPAC that you would endorse CPAC because it’s important. There are quite a few people here that want CPAC. Is there anybody here who want CPAC? [People clap.] I’m gonna do a chant that says: when I say CPAC, you say now. CPAC. Now. CPAC. Now. When I say CPAC, you say now. CPAC. Now. CPAC. Now. Thank you. [More chants from crowd: justice for all. Send those killer cops to jail, the whole damn system is guilty as hell.]

--

6:05

[Alderman?] I would like to continue. In order to give everyone opportunity to testify, I want to remind people we have a three-minute limit on testimony and to refocus on two issues that were outlined before. With that I would like to turn it over to and introduce ___ who will speak briefly on the task force before we continue with the public commentary.

6:36

Maurice Classen

Thank you. I was on the board of the MacArthur Foundation, I served as a member on the police accountability task force. I want to apologize for being late this evening, I was caught in a bit of traffic. I was asked to start off my comments here today by giving a sense of what the task force did and give you a sense of what we recommended with regards to the oversight structure and maybe I should frame some questions we can talk about because the CPAC oversight bodies specifically might be able to inform what we do.

As I indicated, there are eight of us on the official task force who worked with 50 people in the community who were organized into five subject matter working groups: police-community relationships, oversight structures, video policy, early warning system and de-escalation. What we did in our process is actually ask a series of questions for each of the working groups to determine exactly what we wanted to learn and ask nationally what were best practices. Tonight’s topic is the oversight structure. So what we did is we attempted to look at the entirety of the oversight structure that is currently in place at the Chicago Police department, in IPRA – the body that we know, the Chicago Law Department and the Inspector General’s office. We interviewed over 45 national and local experts, including members of the Chicago Police Department, staff at the Bureau of Internal Affairs, as well as members of the Independent Police Review Authority. What we discovered in the course of our research of two months was a system, as many of you know, that demonstrates a striking lack of accountability, which only works for a minority of all citizens and officers. The structure is identified most likely by silence. That is that many parts of the system actually don’t know what other parts of the system are doing. None of the relationships are based on respect and trust. They are most likely based on fear. There is a lack of investment as we knew it. Poor technology, little training and lack of comparison in actual standards. One specific statistic I wanted to provide to this group is that you understand it’s not just the public that thinks it’s been structured like this, it’s also the police department itself. Over 2/3 of members of the public in the city of Chicago believe the code of silence is a significant problem. A strong majority of members of the city, believe police treat people unfairly. Only 25 percent of officers believe if they do a good job they will be promoted. 98% believe promotions are based on connections and not merit. 76% fear making an honest mistake and being punished for it. So we have a structure that functions neither for rank and file officers nor for the public. So we have made a series of recommendations about how to fix that structure.

You can look to our report, which is still available on our website and you can see a series of recommendations linked to a lot of topics. Tonight we recommend three main bodies. First, a new replacement for IPRA. IPRA’s functioning is broken so there needs to be a new system. Second, forming of a public safety inspector general: a body that can actually look at data and understand what’s happening from all parts of the system so it starts to function for both the public and police officers themselves. Third and importantly for tonight’s conversation: community safety oversight board. That board is something that will lead to a larger, longer comment process. We are specifically asking for input on two topics: the new IPRA and the new inspector general. They are topics that we ask the public for their responses. We knew as a task force, regardless of the expertise we ask of national experts, we needed to hear from the public before making the types of recommendations that would reflect what the City of Chicago needs for accountability. Some of those questions you might consider providing testimony tonight are:

  • What should the qualifications for investigators be for the new IPRA-type investigative body?

  • Should former law enforcement be allowed to be in that body?

  • What is the most convenient way to file a public complaint?

  • Once a complaint is filed, how should the organization keep you informed about the progress?

  • For the public safety inspector general, what kinds of data should they look at? What data should be reported to you, the public so you can have a better understanding of what’s going on in the system?

This is in fact your system. You are entitled to most transparent and effective oversight structure. That’s what we tried to do by providing this task force report and we look forward to hearing back from you this evening.

Alderman: Thank you very much for your testimony, we will continue now with witnesses. The next witness would be Frank Chapman.

--

12:0

Frank Chapman

Good evening. I wanted to inform you that we aren’t going to get far in this discussion, talking about reform. We need to talk about police being out of control and how we’re gonna deal with them. What’s missing in this proposal, this police accountability proposal that I’m looking at, is you, is me. The people are not in it. What they’re saying is that, what this is saying is that we gonna repeat the same mistakes but expect different results. If you keep doing the same thing, you get the same result. If you keep doing review and oversight, that’s what you’ll keep getting. We don’t need review and oversight of the police, we need control of them. We need a voice in the policy and voice in the process because we’re the ones who are dying. We are the ones who are dying. We are the ones who have been tortured and put in prison for crimes we did not commit. We are the ones whose children who suffer from autism are being murdered when parents call the police there to help. We are the ones who the police shoot through door and kill the grandmother because she came to the door because there was a ruckus going on in her building. That was the day after Christmas, wasn’t it? All we’re getting here is smoke and mirrors. If you want to change this situation fundamentally and take power out of hands of the mayor and city council and the police because they have failed at their job. Then what you need to do is support CPAC and they need to support it too because it’s about democracy. We have tyranny in our community in the police. The solution to tyranny is democracy. Democracy means means we have an all elected all civilian police accountability council. Thank you.

--

Unidentified woman after Frank Chapman

15:19

I’m with the gentleman. I don’t think it is necessary that it should be just about what’s on that paper because a lot of times we don’t give the opportunity to even see and meet with representatives that we need to discuss. My issue is the police, once they make a mistake, they do need to be accountable and I don’t see that. I think all the uproar now is because it’s on video. But a lot of times it’s on video but they’re still not doing what needs to be done. Now, when they decide still getting their paychecks. My taxes are constantly going up but I can’t even let my nephew play outside his house because I don’t feel safe. I call the police and I have situations where the police don’t show up because the situation is not somebody shooting guns. It shouldn’t have to be that way. You know we talk about overtime and all these guys can’t be on overtime because mentally they are not capable of focusing the way they need to be to help us. If you’re working 20 hours, how can you give and make good decisions. You know what I mean – you’re tired mentally and physically. There needs to be a change but at the end of the day it has to come from our community. Yes, I thank God that personally I haven’t been affected by somebody by someone in my family but I have friends. At the end of the day, we have to stop expecting everybody to come and save us. We don’t want nobody to say nothing to your children. We have to help each other. We have to lift each other up and encourage each other. Thank you.

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17:40

Eric Russell (Tree of Life Justice League of Illinois)

Good evening, my name is Eric Russell and I’m just always amazed. They always want black people to follow protocols and procedures when it comes to framing questions. What we want is respectful engagement from Chicago police department. We have moved well beyond systemic corruption and institutional racism. The problem is that the Chicago police, they have no respect for our humanity, the Chicago police have no reverence for black lives. We don’t give a damn about tasers. How do you train away systemic racism? How can you? Bettie Jones for example, Bettie Jones did not deserve to die. I tell you all on the panel that are being kissed by the sun that Bettie Jones could have been your mother or my mother. These racist killer cops, I just watch the disdain on their faces when some just look at black people. The problem is this. They have no respect for us in life or death. Bettie Jones’ daughter was lying in a pool of blood holding her mother as the white officer shot a hole in Bettie Jones’ chest. Bettie Jones’ daughter cried out to the police officer: why did you do this to my mother and the police officer’s response was: your momma’s dead, get over it. What kind of monster is that? What kind of monster is that? And then on top of that, I get a call from the mayor. The mayor comes up with a ridiculous narrative about the accident. In a blood spattered apartment on their hands and knees, scrubbing up their mother’s blood only to be resaturated by their tears but the mayor did not bother to send anyone to clean up his accident of these officers because they have no respect for black people. Most black folks won’t tell you. Here’s the problem we have with superintendent Eddie Johnson. We don’t need a lot of (audio unclear). We just use common sensibilities: and our common sensibilities tell us this -  if you are handpicked by the devil on the fifth floor, it’s just a matter of time before the devil requires your soul. He will then further the devil’s evil agenda before he (audio unclear). That’s the problem we have with Eddie Johnson. We don’t trust him. He handpicked Eddie Johnson. We know what the devil does. The devil rapes, pillages, steals. And they’re stealing the life from my children. We will not let the Chicago police kill our children. We defend the right of our children.  We will not let police kill our children. If our children choose Lil Wayne and Drake over (audio unclear). Stop killing our children.  We will not let them kill our children. Stop killing our children.

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21:39

Adeline Gracie

I am Adeline Gracie. I hail from the Englewood slash (audio unclear) community. I have been with the Chicago Police Department in the past as a 911 operator so I worked with them but I now stand here as grandmother and I am really appalled at what’s going on in this city. People here are hurting because of things happening to us. The relationship between the police and community need to improve. It desperately needs to improve because I’ll give you a case in point. My grandson was running from my home on cold December night in a denim jacket, running to a neighborhood gas station for snacks. A police officer grabbed him and said he had burglarized someone’s home. The child, a college student, now he needs to be medicated, he’s lost about 17 pounds. We’ve gone to court 10 times. The perpetrator who actually committed the crime saw my grandson in the police car and said to the officer, I don’t know that dude, he wasn’t with me. Yet the police still held my grandson up, held him in the county jail for one and a half days. This child, he has what we call Asperger’s, not autism, Asperger’s. He doesn’t process information the way a lot of us do. Right now, when it first happened to him, he never leaves the house after dark. He’s afraid to go to the garbage because the police arrested him in the past. Now he’s telling me he has to go back to court and (audio unclear), the Judge says I’m looking at 15 years for something I didn’t do, grandma. And as a grandmother I’m broken and torn. My whole family’s hurting because of the action of that police officer who grabbed him and falsely accused him, then listened to the perpetrator who said he wasn’t with him and then again there can’t be misconduct. The misconduct should involve both, police leadership and community members. When something goes wrong, invite the community to give input into it. We human beings. We live, we breathe. Don’t dictate our lives for us. Listen to us and like the person before me had said, we hired you all because you do get paid. So you are acting on behalf of other people. Whether it be IPRA or an independent auditor or a community board, this city has bad cops. We must have support of the people in our neighborhoods. I will repeat that and I will repeat that many times here tonight that decisions about bad police officers must have the support of people and the neighborhoods. We hope that mayor – [they cut the mic off]

Alderman responds: I’m making notes here.

Adeline: Can you turn my mic on please?

Alderman continues: “decisions about bad police officers, I’ve got that and you want to improve the relationship between police and the community.” Too many families have been hurt by police misconduct and violence and it is long overdue for a change. We must be involved. We must be involved. The community must be involved.

Audience member: “This is a public meeting, why are the mics turned off?”

Another audience member: “Can we get somebody to hold up a sign and say you have 30 seconds? Can we get that courtesy? Some kind of time notifier?”

Alderman responds: “yes”

Audience member: “You know, they’re treating us like children.”

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26:20

Rev. Robert Biekman (United Methodist Church)

My name is Reverend Robert Biekman. Live in south shore community, I serve the church in west Pullman community. I also serve as a leader with an organization called community renewal society that represents more than 1500 faith based organizations across city. I do want to respond to a couple of the questions you identified here. First question: let me begin with this by simply saying I think we agree the bridge of trust has been broken between elected officials, between the police, and also the mayor’s office. For there to be a truly independent auditor, that independent auditor should be identified and appointed by a panel of people from the community. It also should be vetted through a process, through an organization that is used to doing this kind of work such as the police assessment resource center, also known as PARC. Everything I am sharing with you has already been introduced via the fair cops ordinance. It was introduced into the city council on April 13th. In fact the language you have here is exactly the language from the fair cops ordinance. For it to really work we’re talking about procedures, we’re talking about building trust. And the bridge of trust has been broken. To be able to rebuild that bridge of trust, the concern I have and I believe I share that concern with others that are here is that the very people who broke the bridge in first place are saying we want to rebuild it. We don’t trust those folks. We don’t trust the mayor and quite frankly with all due respect, we don’t trust our elected officials. But there is a way to get back to be able to build that trust amongst the citizens and residents of the people and residents of the city of Chicago. Acquiesce and let go of some of the power that you have by engaging the community, not just in hearings but in the process of identifying who the independent auditor will be. I surely hope you recorded my comments and one last thing I want to share with you: it is very important we continue to have open dialogue and conversation such as this and the agenda be not established just by the elected officials and the mayor’s office but establish the agenda with the community concerns as well so they can say the things that are on their heart. Thank you.

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29:40

*Action Now (group) walks out

“We’re leaving. We don’t do disrespect.”

Alderman: “Thank you all for coming here, we appreciate it.”

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30:11

Dr. Harrison

Good evening. My name is Dr. Harrison.  I would like to say very happy to be here tonight. I was born and raised here in Chicago. I’m an educator. I’ve taught school for over 36 years. I’m in ministry. I wear many hats. I want to say that I was very happy to get this agenda and the questions you have posed here because this is my first time being involved with this. Being an educator I would like to ask in terms of qualifications of investigator, what would be the qualifications and how could we get that information in terms of the educational qualifications? Would we be able to have that kind of information and also something else I wanted to ask – would there be guidelines we can look at in advance so we can study what proposals would be or look like. There would be those of us who would be willing to work as an ad hoc committee. We could share our input and our experiences and backgrounds with you. I did like the idea of what the pastor who preceded me stated when he said it would be nice if we could as a community be involved in the planning of the agenda itself, which would make it more inclusive for all of us coming together. Also I wanted to add that I think in terms of building trust, as a minister, my perspective might be different from others. Of course, we are here to express our beliefs and what we believe. I feel trust becomes with self and the person and what we believe in. I know there are some bad apples in every basket but there are good apples in the basket too. So it depends upon your personal relationships and your experiences you’ve had that we speak. So I would like to say on my part that I have taught many years about the friendly cop and for children to have positive attitude about our police. I still stand on that. I still believe there are those who would stand for that – that we have some police who are good and those who really are dedicated and want to bring safety to our communities. As a senior I just want to say that is very important to me and I speak for many seniors who feel the very same way. I commend you for the fact that you are here tonight. I think that over the years we did not even have these kinds of forums. I would like to say we are gradually moving forward, doing things in a more positive way so I just want to say thank you for having this beautiful place to dialogue with you. My prayer is that I hope we as a people will unite together for unity and the oneness of which we want to stand for.  

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34:45: chants of “CPAC now,” discussion about 3-minute time limit between alderman and crowd

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36:00

Michael Elliot

From the very beginning we opened this meeting you suggested to us there would be no democratic process here. You made it very clear and that you were only gonna read and explain what the mayor’s choice is for police accountability. Everything you’re talking about is what he’s going to introduce in September. We find that to be quite ironic when you’re here talking about community input. Just like the task force went to various communities, you didn’t add anything about CPAC. You act like you didn’t hear it at all. You totally ignored it but now it’s here in your face. It’s an ordinance for city council. And this ordinance calls for community control of police through an elected civilian police accountability council that will be the first semblance of democratic process to hold police accountable in Chicago that has ever occurred before in the whole country. It is the most aggressive ordinance to hold the police accountable in the entire country and the entire country is watching how Chicago city council is going to handle this. Will they let the mayor dictate to you all how this all will happen or are you going to institute the people and use some sensible reasoning for supporting the involvement of community. Some of the things CPAC will do will have the power to appoint and fire the police superintendent and police officers who have committed crimes in our community. CPAC will rewrite the rules of conduct, the rules of the guideline for police behavior in our communities. CPAC will provide much more transparency, including police shootings and statistical analysis of demographic information of complaints and types. What we’re calling for is community control of the police. We are totally rejecting anything that involves appointments. No more appointments. We want CPAC. When I say CPAC, you say fight back. It’s the only solution.

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39:35

Ronald Jackson

Today I’m going to prove these alderman are not for people of city of Chicago. As I said, I will say this again, we have some good cops and we have some bad cops. There are a couple of cops who have worked federal to expose a drug ring within the police department. Yet none of these aldermen came to the defense of none of those officers. So this goes to show, they up here saying we were not gonna answer your questions because they were told by Rahm not to answer questions. This is no more than a dog and pony show. If you want have a discussion with someone, you answer questions. Also, these aldermen also have an ordinance that says it’s a hate crime (audio unclear). Ed Burke is one of 29 alderman who knows but yet we have these aldermen saying they are for people. Where were these aldermen when our schools were closed. They say we hear you but we don’t hear you. Look at their faces, they know who they are. I’m not scared of none of these alderman. They sit here saying we hear you. When election comes around, they gonna ask for your vote. Even the white are getting fed up with the aldermen who are not serving their people. The alderman don’t want to help people get jobs. They say they do but they don’t. Look at their background. Look how many times they voted for Rahm. All you have to do is go online and you will see the same aldermen who say they have your back but when it comes down to it, when crime is going on in the neighborhood, (audio unclear) they sit there and wait on some $100,000 check we pay for. They not gonna answer. These aldermen have authority to redo this police contract but none of them will stand up to do it. None of them. So what are we talking for? None of this is going to do it. It’s a waste of time. Next 30 days you will see.

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Sister Truth

Does any one of you on the panel feel police officers should be above the law? Your answer should be no. And so someone could you please make us understand why the city council approved the FOP contract with things on it like allowing 30 days before a police officer has to answer questions or police officer decides he wants to take a nap after he is asked those questions. This is not the first time the public has had a problem with a police investigation. Police cannot police themselves. Then it came up with OPS. Then they were police officers. Then they came up with the independent review board. There is nothing independent about them. They are police officers or former police officers. A police officer is a police officer whether he currently working or not. If the mayor chooses him, he is their boss and whatever the boss tells you to do on the job, that’s what you do. The bottom line is three things. We don’t want anyone affiliated in any way with the Chicago Police Department investigating or former police officers. We don’t want the mayor to have anything to do with or have any say about the people who will be conducting the investigation. In the FOP contract, there should be language in there that says if they break law like falsifying or lying on an official legal document, they will be treated like any other citizen because if there’s anybody that should take the fall it should be law enforcement officers. 

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Shanita Jones Howard

Good evening everyone. Thank you so much. I’m here, I am probably not as cynical about the democratic process as some of my fellow citizens here and maybe because I’m still young and naïve enough to believe how it works. I’m a professional currently living and working in Woodlawn, near the South Shore. Hello Aldermen. With that being said, qualifications. I think sister truth spoke to it: I think it’s important you understand that what we’re saying is we want a system and we want people investigating and then holding them accountable. Because investigation and auditing and data collection and collecting information is not necessarily going to ensure those officers who are acting with misconduct and disrespecting the community and committing crimes are going to be accountable. We can collect a lot of information as was the case with Laquan McDonald. There was information available but then there wasn’t any accountability. We’re not confident. We don’t have faith there will be accountability, especially when there are appointed board members. We do need elected council and I would ask you do consider the Civilian Police Accountability Council as an option. With that some of the things that are key and important to me that are in that has to do with community members being able to elect and identify other community members. We need people who are not in it for the politics but who are in it for the mission and the mission is protecting the community and making sure there is a balanced relationship between those officers who have the power and the citizens who also have the power. Alderman Leslie Hairston asks: how many board members per district? Shanita responds: I’m not sure about that dynamic but my thought process about it is for each police beat, there should be a community member represented. Man from crowd: in the ordinance from city council, there is one per district. Shanita continues: Also about the chief administrator of the agency, I want to make sure we are also considering they should also be elected. As far as the public safety inspector general and how they should communicate, there should be open communication. Anything that is reported, is audited should be immediately available for the public. There shouldn’t have a situation where these things are collected and stored somewhere until someone sees it.  

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Romero Mills

How you doing? A bunch of you all know me as Chicago OG Bro making videos up on 71st street of your police harassing our community. We are tired. We are tired. You all saw what happened with Laquan McDonald and now you all in our face. We know you all saw the video before it got let out. We know you all saw the video before you got elected. We know. You saw the video of __ being shot in back and did nothing. Right down the street from you, your house. Bullet shot in the back. You did nothing. You didn’t even do nothing to say to the police about it. But you want to get elected as our state representative. How Leslie? How? Now, I have been working my whole life. I have medical conditions and I’m retired. I started standing up for my community. I have a record. Now the police hate me. They hate me because I’m standing up to them. You actually sent people at me. Why? Why do you send people at me? You get a call from Walgreens saying I’m over there making a disturbance and you call Walgreens and tell them, but that’s my community though. I live there.Where else am I supposed to go? I’m gonna stand up for my community until y’all kill me. You understand me? I will stand up for black people until you all kill me. Because you keep sending me to jail and I don’t care. You gonna send me to jail, I’m gonna stand up. You gonna make up lies on me and send me to jail until you kill me. Truth hurts. Truth hurts. You know who I am. You’ve seen all of my videos. You all know exactly how I feel. You know this is wrong. You all know this is wrong because you got cousins and nephews and stuff like that. No matter what you say, they subject to it. They subject to it. You can pretend like you’re not black if you want to. You can pretend like you’re not black if you want to. Understand? All your relatives is black. Understand? They all subject to this. Man from crowd chants: black target on your back.

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51:29

Jocelyn Floyd

Good evening Aldermen, more importantly friends, family, community. I see so many great faces committed to social justice. This is my son Elijah who I want safe (he is standing next to her). My boy should be safe in Woodlawn when he’s riding his bike, when he goes to see our family in Chatham or in the south shore having good time, when we’re close to the school, he should be able to run around and play and not be concerned if he doesn’t look a certain way. Keep them coming. So first, reform should start with relationships but relationships need to be determined to be valid. Considering a lot of you here are former criminal defense attorneys, your verticals and your relationships have already been established in law enforcement and sometimes work against you, eventually supporting hostile or aggressive actions towards citizens, really for decades. It’s an obstruction of justice. So I would want you to consider that as we move this conversation forward. Currently, a police department has been offered an opportunity to present or legalize (audio unclear). It would add a sense of urgency, it would validate our concerns. There should also be a sense of urgency like the young woman stated before. There should be a fully funded initiative. I’ve heard several times from the police department that there’s no money. There’s plenty of money. There’s plenty of money we can use for keeping our communities safe. We have money from the Department of Justice to hire police officers to further engage the community. We’ve had millions of dollars used in lawsuits for those who have been victimized. We could reinvest that money in the community relations and research. We should examine qualifications related to hiring practices. I’m very concerned about that because these relationships and verticals still breach. We want a transparent process that is fully inclusive. They need to be qualified. I’ve talked to a lot of police folk that were former police officers, that are now in data collection and retrieval which just seems ridiculous to me. There are also those that really consider investing in community and sometimes we just don’t see that. So as you’re considering these things please just remember my final words and I say this to my son at home: when you kill the mule, you gotta plough the field yourself. Thank you.

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Maurice Brown

Good evening. I recognize, alderman harris, munoz. Former Chicago police officer. 33 years. In my 32 years I have never seen any police officer shoot someone in back. Been to three accountability meetings, one on South Shore, also north side. Hear pains and frustration of people in Chicago. All Chicagoans want to make our city a great city to live in. we got things happening, not in our control. I testified before. Also met with Lauren Lightfoot on police community matters. We had CAPS program. It broke down. If it broke down it means there was no trust with community. This last thing that happened – chasing a car – it’s uncalled for. Dispatchers should be trained to say officers we got a hot chase coming on. Remember it’s only property. Do not use deadly force. I have something from Virginia Beach. They can look at it. It’s called StarChase. This is something we need to deploy. I want to help out police department and city of Chicago.

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58:45

Matt Boris

Hello, my name is Matt Boris – I live in fifth ward. A lot of folks have said stuff more eloquently than I probably will here. What I see – I’ve run some meetings, I’ve done some policy stuff – what I see with questions is a way to frame matters very small. To look at this as a matter of – Isee these questions that look at getting rid of IPRA but creating a new IPRA, no real discussion about what that’s going to be. But the problem with IPRA is not a brand problem and it’s not even a personality problem. There are some questions posed here about who should be on it. In the case of Lorenzo Davis can remind us, who is on IPRA is not the main problem. The question is who this accountability board is accountable to and it’s structure? Right now, we have a board that is accountable to people who appoint it and they are up on the fifth floor and if we keep doing that, whether we call it IPRA or GIPRA or something else, it’s gonna be the same kind of problem. We need something like CPAC. I’m gonna make one other point, which is it seems very difficult to talk about wanting accountability and wanting to hear from the people of Chicago about the problems and distrust of police while at the same time saying, criticizing police can be considered a hate crime. There are some who on city council who have supported Ald. Burke’s proposal to make the police, unlike any other occupational group, covered under Chicago’s hate crime law. I know some Aldermen here haven’t declared their positions on that and I hope you will forcefully and strongly oppose and get rid of this absurd proposal from Ed Burke. We want to hear about problems of police while also protecting people from being charged with hate crime. It doesn’t make sense.

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Robin Kaufman

First got interested in this issue in 2003 when young man was shot around corner from me by off duty policeman. I saw what you are now seeing on youtube. I saw people tell me kid was running away and cop ran after him and went bang, bang, bang. We have to do something about it because it’s wrong and out of control. It’s not what you call it. We’ve had OPS, we’ve had IPRA. We can make new rules. First rule we have to make: when something happens, there has to be independent investigator immediately. Whole lot of things have to change, some may be in this ordinance. But what’s not in this ordinance is who is going to be in control. Encourage you to support citizen control. Doesn’t do good to change rules, people. As far as other thing about hate crimes, the police are already protected. You do something to officer, it’s a felony. They don’t need hate crime act so they can go after people for anything they say.

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Eddie Meeks

I have for last six or seven years been community organizer in sixth ward, working with police and never in my life have I been so embarrassed on behalf of Chicago police department. Primarily because it was our job to improve jobs of resident. Now we’re afraid of Officer Van Dyke’s and officers committing racist actions against people of color. I don’t even blame people of color. I blame you. You keep electing same individuals who whisper all these sweet nothings in your ear. When election time comes around you are gonna elect same people who have done nothing. I wanna address an issue with regards to how do you file a complaint. When a person is arrested they are read Miranda rights. When you get to a police station you should have someone who asks them have you been abused or mistreated. Go to home of individual and ask has their been infraction with police department? I’m listening to my landlord, the neighbors. Level of frustration in this city is ridiculous. We will show you how frustrated we are on election day.

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Clarence Davidson

Good evening. I think much of what people are saying here, many of us have a fear this hearing process is not dissimilar to former hearings around issue of school closings where we all came forward and expressed our hearts and opinions and frustrations and then council still voted to approve it. (correction) what we’re asking is can we be assured this will not be a repeat, that you will demonstrate courage to stand up to mayor and say hell no we are not going to continue in this frame. I think we all know as many times as we have heard people make reference to the training issue that this is not a matter of training, this is a mindset. We’ve had plenty a warning from FBI telling us the KKK has infiltrated the police across America. The grand dragon more than 30 years ago said while at that point KKK was suffering defeat and had been bankrupt and they would return, not just in white robes, but in black robes and in blue as a uniform. They gave us plenty of warning. Other issue here is even though I agree with what Eric Holder said when he first became attorney general – America is a nation of cowards – but reality is most of those powers are those people who pretended to be representing our interests. Had they done that we wouldn’t be here today. What we’re asking is for you to stand up and not follow that pattern.

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Marcello Sigurs, 7th Ward

1:12:50

Good evening everybody. I’m actually social media director (audio unclear). I’m coming to hear tonight to speak to you as a resident born and raised in Englewood and an educated black man. So I hear everybody tonight. Honestly it has not been a lot of solutions. I’ve been going to these things for about six months now. One thing I will say and I’m not going to direct this to you guys – whatever legislation they are going to come up with, it’s gonna take months to implement. In the mean time we need to educate our young brothers on what’s expected of them. When you are on the traffic stop, that’s a case opened, you are constitutionally obligated to comply with whatever the officer tells you to do. All this sovereignty citizen stuff and delegation of authority is not existent. I’m out here in the streets every night and when I see a police car pull over, who do I see? I see young black men looking like me and I can’t get mad, why, because they breaking the law and killing each other. Can’t no one tell me this is not what’s going on in our neighborhoods. I’m not gonna blame the police. I understand there are 10 percent of racist cops. There are 10 percent of racist people in the fire department. I know that for a fact because I worked with fire department. I understand there is racism everywhere, in every facet of this nation. But how long are we gonna point the finger at them and start pointing the finger at what we are not doing to make sure our children understand their children understand their constitutional rights and what’s expected of them. (Member from crowd interrupts). Marcello continues: Excuse me, I’m talking. Excuse me, I’m talking. I’m not talking about what police are doing, I’m talking about what we are doing. I carry in my car a copy of the constitution and what’s expected of me. My kids won’t become victims. I want to know what else can we do to make sure our children are safe. We should protect our kids, not wait for the police to protect our kids.

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1:16:28

Nicole Johnson

Hi aldermen. It’s nice to see you all. My name is Nicole Johnson. I taught for Chicago schools for a few years before going back to school. I’m a longtime resident of Englewood. I’m Here today. My mom told me she said, she went to the DOJ hearings last month, and they were the same as these are where we pretty much are pouring out our hearts and sharing how we feel about these concerns, not just here in Chicago but all over the place. I’m really tired of having to log on to social media and hear about another incident. I came here and wanted to see what it’s gonna be like. Honestly I’m very offended by this limited range of framing questions. I just moved back a week or two ago. I’ve been in a cloud and didn’t even know this was happening. I told my mom. I was talking to someone else and they said these hearings weren’t even going to happen unless, because it was public unrest. So I was reading up on it and I was really concerned because one thing that’s not here is how evidence will be collected, which is a serious concern as there is too much reliance on Chicago Police Department. I won’t reiterate what’s been said previously about evidence collection and also the qualifications. I’m not able to give a good answer to these questions without seeing what this ordinance looks like. Whenever an actual bill goes through the house, it’s online and you can see it transferred from committee to committee, from house to senate and I can see a piece of what the bill looks like. I’m not sure why that’s not available for me to look at at any other point. Alderman replies: it will be once it’s created. Nicole continues: I understand that but I think if these are going to neglect that, I should be able to come and spend my time more efficiently and know exactly what to talk about and what’s going to be said. So the total reliance on Chicago Police Department is the thing that really concerns me the most. I like to see exactly how that would be teased out. About qualifications, I think investigators should have as much authority to go in and do some of the collection of data or evidence or whatever they do on a crime scene. I just really wish this was a little bit more open for us to actually say something and give an actual opinion.

Alderman says: to the young woman’s point, any ordinance that is introduced to the city council, and some of these are introduced in one form or another, they may be an iterated verison but you can go to the Chicago city clerk’s website and click on the bottom, it says legislation, and search through a keyword search for CPAC or police reform to find the ordinance or contact your alderman or one of us and we will get a copy. 

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1:23:07

Dr. Donovan Price

Good evening. When I listened to everything everybody said so far, I heard words like hurt, I hear words like loss of hope, I hear hurt words like racism, I hear systematic. I hear they were paid to protect us. I feel the pain. I cry when this happens but see I didn’t 100% put my faith in anybody I voted for. I didn’t 100% put my faith in anything I learned in school upto doctrine level because I represent God. I know that even though right now there is killing going on and hatred going on and there’s sick sick people out there wearing uniforms and getting paid by the little tax money I can afford to pay. I’m not gonna act like I don’t have hope. I’m not gonna act like even though there’s a storm right now the sun won’t come out tomorrow. See, today I put a window in a six-year-old’s family’s house because there were still gunshots from where she was shot two weeks ago. So my alderman is not here I don’t think but there are aldermen here so I believe in you all. Maybe until today you may not have done something that people want to hear or want to be a part of but I know you can because god can. I know every tear we had here can be dried. I know that every bullet that is going to fly, that has flown so far, can be justified, if not on this earth, then on some other place. I’m here because of the word I heard tonight a few times and that is healing. We can heal together. We need to be on the board. We need to be on the writing, on the planning. We need to understand and we need to step up and make sure we are there. I went to the first round of the department of justice hearings and there were four people there. We need to step up because we can. We need to move forward because we can. Sit down with them one on one. They will sit down with you. Sit down with superintendent Johnson one on one. He will sit down with you. We can. We must. Our kids are dying. Our brothers and sisters are dying but I still believe and I know that you still believe too because that’s why you are here. I’m tired of crying and I’m not gonna stand here and say who put the tears in my eyes. All I’m going to do is work from sun up to sun down to dry the tears in my eyes, in my heart and everybody here because we can, we will, we must.

Aldermen: I have three written comments I want to pass on for the record.

1:27:00

Melissa Joe Kelly:

Hello august body. You don’t have name plates so I don’t know to whom I am speaking. But I assume at least three or four of you are aldermen and you’re part of the city council. Well, this is an old sign for a different city council but isn’t it amazing how when you’re fighting for justice, if you keep the old signs, they become relevant in another context. It’s saying: do better city council. Do better than another iteration of a mayor controlled fake review board. Unless you have people in the community with the power to control Chicago’s totally and completely out of control corrupt bad bad police department, this police department. I lived here for the first time in the early 70s. Everyone was scared of the Chicago pigs back in the day just like now. I’m 65, I’m white, I have the privileges of my skin color, which helped me get the privileges of post secondary education. People like me get caught on the most ridiculous reasons. I once was arrested for disorderly conduct. I said to my lawyer: geez, can’t you get my charge reduced and he said I’m sorry that’s the lowest level of criminal charge there is. Any time a cop wants to he can arrest you or anybody and beat them and kill them and get away with it and I’m sick of it. For the love of god. Paul O Neal. God damn. Excuse my language. But for the love of god almighty shoot an 18-year- child because he was joyriding? He didn’t steal that car. He took that sports car, he drove it around town and just like one of the people interviewed in the newspaper said: you didn’t have to kill him, it wasn’t like he was leaving town. I don’t care if the pigs stop by him and ticket him, give him something other than a free paid vacation. This town, ever since the 70s has needed community control of the police and it’s rather funny because hate crimes were invented for protected classes of people in danger of being hated for their sex, their race, their religion, their nationality, their country of origin – not because they act so bad that everybody hates them for their behavior.

--

Unknown Speaker

Good evening. I’m tired of the bull crap. Rahm Emanuel is arrogant. He is very disrespectful to the black community. You all know this. (Audio unclear) I think I’m qualified to be on that board. I want you to get behind it and push it too. Tell Rahm Emanuel, Brother Kumba told him … so my brothers in street can have some hope, so people in my community have some hope. Supposedly good police, stop doing the silence. They don’t snitch. Then we get a lot more done. I represent a lot of young brothers out here on the street who got X’s on their back. They want to change their life. But we can’t help them young brothers’ life when police riding up on them. You all know my background. I told the mayor about my background. (audio unclear) I got the paperwork, I got the credentials. Bring some professional people in on gang problem. I’ve got 50 years of experience. I got credentials. Only thing I haven’t achieved is my phd from street. Suggesting to you all, you know my work. I’m suggesting to you all, you know my work.

--

Laquisha Bircs

Regards to fellow who wanted to be on police board, with Chicago Alliance I want to say if you want to be on their board. Difference between their system and CPAC is we vote you in. you don’t have to beg for a position. Also here because I want to talk about blue lives matter ordinance. Louis. That has bang together to fight this blue lives matter ordinance that charge people with hate crime for speaking out against police. Cochran? Conflict of interest for you to put your name on there because you are both former cops and get money from the FOP. We’re tracking your dollars. We’re watching everything just like you’re watching us too. I’m almost at loss for words. We know this is false. You all are not doing anything. Someone asked question about CPAC, it seemed you didn’t even read the CPAC ordinance. Your people are crying out. Why have you not put out public comment about it. You have been silent on CPAC. You are sitting up here being cronies for mayor. Who elected you? Who do you serve? We’re doing our homework. Watching you closely and this election season we not playing. You can find our petition. We’ve been gathering signatures. We want Ald. Burke to halt. National legislation. The bluest lie.

where they are trying to push blue lives matter crap all over. That is repression. That is repression. Please support us.

(Let her speak)

Have been asking questions, when are we going to get answer for questions. When will they comment on things we have to say. They trying to push this through next month.

 

July 21: Malcolm X College Transcript by Maira Khwaja

*Note: The following transcription is semi-verbatim. Check audio above for original sourcing.

00:15

So without further ado we're going to get started and I would like to welcome the Aldermen to introduce themselves at this point in time.

00:30

[All Aldermen introduce themselves]: I’m Alderman Scott Waguespack (32nd Ward), Alderman Roderick Sawyer (6th Ward), Alderman John Arena (45th Ward), Alderman Rick Munoz (22nd Ward), Alderman Toni Foulkes (16th Ward), Alderman David Moore (17th Ward), Alderman Ariel Reboyras (30th ward)—and we’ll go ahead and kick it off with a legislative overview by Alderman John Arena and Alderman Roderick Sawyer they’re going to talk about what’s been proposed, what they're expecting for the mayor and they want to hear from you as far as what you like to see as they drive this legislation

Alderman Sawyer

1:25

Thank you, I really appreciate appreciate your assisting us in this task.  As we discuss the potential legislative agenda. The aim of the Public Engagement ensures that as we develop legislation around police reform It must be observant of best practices developed in major cities like Los Angeles, New York City as well as community informed so that it speaks to the problems that are specific to Chicago. We want to speak to the problems and culture that exist in law enforcement and part of that process is trying to help the community be part of the process of changing the role of our police officers in the communities and build trust between people and the police.

2:08

Real reform will take the cooperation of all affected parties, real reform should bring relief to the people of Chicago and it should also make better law enforcement agents. Meaningful changes will have to address long term systemic deficiencies that have resulted in division and tragedy we see on the streets today.

(Someone trying to interrupt: we’re gonna – not right now – we’re going to have an opportunity for everyone to speak, we just want to set the tone and the pace for what we're trying to do and then we will allow you to ask questions. The major legislative efforts we’re focusing on are a fully independent and effective body of oversight and investigation.)  

(Lady from crowd asks: Excuse me one second is this different from the police accountability report that was put out by the mayor, is this different from that. Alderman replies: yes. Lady asks: is this also different from what the department of justice is doing. Alderman says: yes it is. This is an initiative of the Progressive Caucus of the City Council. Lady: when you say progressive caucus, is that the same as the Black Caucus. Alderman: Some people, I mean Roderick Sawyer from the sixth ward is the chair of the Black Caucus, some members of the Progressive Caucus are members of the other caucus. Lady: is this centered around dismantling IPRA? Alderman: ok this whole agenda ma'am that you are right now taking over, can you let me finish my statements and many of your questions will be answered, thank you.)

3:50

I’ll just start over on this. The major legislative efforts we are focusing on are a fully independent and effective body of oversight in this investigation, the establishment of an inspector general of the Chicago police department to ensure and enforce the highest standards of professional ethics and observation of the law and codes of conduct. In the community oversight body made up of Chicago citizens that will help direct the future of the Chicago Police Department.

04:22

Meaningful reform to correcting and training of law enforcement especially as it relates to police interaction with the public. In particular efforts we have pushed for as a caucus on crisis intervention training for every officer and eventually every city employee. Clear and succinct codes of conduct and process for grievances against law enforcement agents as well as clear directives for addressing and disciplining officer misconduct. This is an ongoing process.  We want to be as fully informed of all community concerns and experiences in order to properly address them through legislation.  

5:10

We invite you to make us aware of any information you feel is necessary to the process, that is the reason we're here tonight. I want to take a second I understand [Alderman]  Willie Cochran is here. You’re welcome to join us on the panel, thank you for joining us.

5:39

Buenas Tardes. Let me be clear, this is the beginning of a process, the P.A.T.F—the Police Accountability Task Force—set forth a series of recommendations. They were hoping to hear from you on what your opinion is on some of those recommendations and even beyond those recommendations, what should happen. We, the city council members that are here can take that back to the city council. We are not going to engage in a give and take of 'alderman are you for this.'  

6:23

No, we want to hear from you first. This is the first of a series of five other meetings.  I've given it has been noted.  OK.  I've got a translator in the back and just in case, double checking. But this is the beginning of a process so we'd like to hear from as many of you as possible and therefore we’ll move forward with our agenda.  

Lady: Are you going to include the FOP contract, the FOP contract [cut off by moderator]: We got you, when we are going to get to the question and answer portion I promise I got you. Lady: are you going to include the FOP contract in these proceedings? Alderman: if you have an opinion. Lady: that’s not an opinion, that’s a question. Lady: Are you going to. Alderman: Everything is on the table. Yes. Everything is on the table. The answer is yes. Lady: Let’s talk about the FOP contract. Man shouts: talk about it.

7:58

Up next I want to bring up police accountability task force chair: Lori Lightfoot. The first time I had a chance to meet her was at the police board meeting where we talked about what attributes that people want to see in a superintendent. [Man shouts: they should get fired.] I was like you. I was I was skeptical and I didn't know what the intentions of that meeting were and what the outcomes would be right. Not too long after that police accountability task force released a report that was about two hundred pages long.  And for the first time ever I saw in The Chicago Tribune the word racism and Chicago police in the same sentence.

8:32

A lot of your questions hopefully we can answer this evening. So just know we’ll let you know. [People interrupting. One second. Shouting. Settle down.] Without further ado, police task force chair, Lori Lightfoot.

Lori Lightfoot

9:32

I want to thank the progressive caucus for organizing this town hall meeting and I wan to thank all of you, so many people coming from across the city for coming out tonight. Obviously these issues of policing, the relationship between the police and the community and how we are going to conduct ourselves as a city are issues of great importance and clearly raise a lot of passion. I'm here to provide an overview of the work of the police accountability task force. I want to thank two other members of the task force who are here tonight, Sybil Madison Boyd and Victor Dixon and I also want to thank those of you who are in the audience who joined with us - a lot of you with skepticism but joined join with us on adventure that took us about five months, tremendous amount of hours, hundreds of interviews reviewing reams and reams of data from the police department, from the city and from across the country to get at what was happening in our city with the police department to separate fact from fiction and to understand best practices and the path forward. The lady here has talked already about the task force report.

10:44

Our objective was to hear from you to reflect what we heard from people all across the city and if you would have seen many of you had since the report was issued in mid April have come up to us and told us that the work that we did in fact reflected the experience of people across the city and I want to talk about that for a moment. There has been been a lot of discussion about race and policing and my own personal view is you can't talk about policing in a large urban environment without dealing with issues of race and ethnicity those questions of those issues and challenges really go back decades and we really worked hard to try to document that reality and that experience of people in this city because it's an important issue and one that if we don't face it head on, we will not be able to solve any of the other issues, the challenges related to policing.  So I urge the members of the Progressive Caucus and other council members to when you're thinking about these issues in the in the ordinance you have to think about it in the in the context of race and policing because really that's an underpinning of a lot of what I think people have concerns about.

12:02

Now we've got a lot of criticism which I also want to address because people in the press and obviously the FOP has said the police accountability taskforce said the police officers are racist.  I think that I want to take this opportunity to correct the record, that is not what we said, what we said it is that many people across the city particularly African-Americans in their experiences with the police believe that the police are fundamentally racist in the way that they deal with them. What we also said is looking at statistics from the police department, whether it's shootings, whether it’s tasers, whether it’s stops, whether it is a collection of contact cards that there is a significant disparity in the way in which African-Americans are treated by the police department and that is borne out by data, that is data that can't be disputed or run from. All of that has to be put into a context but the truth is is that no matter where you are as an African-Americans in this city you're going to have a different experience with the police than our white brothers and sisters, our Latino, Asian or other brothers and sisters and that is reality that also has to be recognized and dealth with as we think about moving forward in a progressive way.  

13:24

What I also say though I think it's important for us in this moment, which is truly historic in our civic history, that we come together even if we have differences of opinion, differences of perspective, differences of approach, that we come together with the assumption of goodwill on the part of other people who are concerned about this issue so that we can come together for solutions that help move us forward. Again this is an issue that raises a lot of passion and I get that and there are a lot of people who rightfully are angry and frustrated with the way they have been treated by the police..  Treat it with the way that they've been treated by the police but we need to be mindful of the way in which we approach this issue.  We need to be mindful of the way which we articulate our concerns because I hope and I think that all of you are here tonight because you care about solutions and that's what we should be about.  

14:19

Now let me talk to you a little bit about the nuts and bolts of the task force. We organize ourselves in five working groups: they were community and police relations, legal oversight and accountability, early intervention and personnel concerns, deescalation and a video release policy. We made 126 individual recommendations and I want to put that number out there because there’s been a lower number, 76, that was floated. The number of recommendations, 176, we specifically came together multiple times as working groups to put together a list of recommendations that were intended to be a mosaic, they were not intended to be cherry picked and taken one at a time. Each of them is a building block on something else important and we think that's important for the council and and those who are going to be crafting the legislation to recognize. Now that doesn't mean that everything has to move forward at the same time. Those things, some things can be sequenced. But the the plan of the task force was for these recommendations to be taken as a whole. We tried to put together again things that reflected the realities, things that were drawing upon best practices from other cities because a lot of other cities and many come to mind, have gone through this process itself but it's important to take these together and not trying to isolate and cherry pick them.

15:48

So let me give you a couple data points about what our process was. We heard from more than one thousand organizations and individuals over the life of our task force with 46 working group members. 750 different people attended the four public forums that we held, we conducted more than one hundred interviews we reached 95 community groups, 63 elected officials and 83 religious organizations.  We talked a little about what we've heard about from the community and if you've seen the report and I urge all of you, it’s still up on our website chicagopatf.org. Take a look at the report, take a look at the executive summary, look at the recommendations. A couple of overarching findings.  

16:32

One of the things that was I think most concerning to us and many of you have said this for decades, for years and know it firsthand was we felt that there was an absence of cultural accountability within the police department. That stemmed from the leadership, the collective bargaining agreements - that there was no effective of systematic management tool to address accountability within the department. The disciplinary systems were problematic and that there was no meaningful community involvement in any of these issues. We believe that one of the things that's really, the things that are important moving forward to be thinking about is recruitment, training and policing priorities. Let me talk about each of those.

17:15

Sadly, we still remain one of the most segregated cities in America but we have to deal with that reality when we think about policing and because we recruit from segregated neighborhoods where people, regardless of what their color is, may not have dealt with somebody who is different from them as peer before they get into the police department.  We have to recognize that path and be smarter about the way that we think about recruiting and clearly we have to be smarter about the way we think about training. One of the things that Sybil and Victor’s group along with [?] Stone were really focused on was a concept of cultural literacy - the notion that we want to make sure that regardless of where our recruits hail from in the city, that they have the cultural literacy to go into any neighborhood and police and a lot of what that means is two things in particular - what it means even if you're going into a high crime neighborhood, not to treat everybody in that neighborhood like you're a criminal. [Claps.]

18:22

It means affirmatively reaching out to the people of goodwill in those neighborhoods to identify them, to work with them, to support them and lift them up and making sure that the policing policies and practices actually are responsive to the needs of the people in those neighborhoods and not some policy or practice that is composed external to the people and enforced upon them. On training, additionally we believe and recommend to the community members they be part of the training of the police department. Other cities across the country to do this. Again it's not rocket science but in order to learn about the community, you need to engage the people who live in those communities. Community involvement should be an intrinsic part of the training of every police officer, not just the new recruits that come in but also continuing education if you will of training and these principles have to be part of the overarching policing priorities for the police department and we’ve given very specific recommendations on that and these are important because these issues impact the entire Chicago community in significant ways and clearly fundamental reforms are needed.

19:42

The key findings regarding police-community relations, a lack of acknowledging of racist history in the CPD history, lack of acknowledgement about entrenched biases that exist today. Many of you who work for companies know that long ago companies got smart about the fact that it was important to have a diverse workforce but diversity doesn't happen overnight and diversity means that we also have to educate ourselves about each other's differences and respect those differences. I talked before about cultural literacy but implicit in that, no pun intended, is the notion of unconscious bias, which we all have and it's not different in the police department and it's critically important if we're really going to rebuild the trust between the police and the community that we start employing some of these very well tested techniques that the private sector uses except within the police department and I think that's also very important.  

20:45

I would be remiss if I didn't talk at least briefly about the interaction of the police department with our youth. We've heard from young people, particularly young men of color, all across the city about the challenges that they have faced just walking down the street, being outside of school, assumptions that they believe have been made about them because they dress in a certain way, they wear their clothing their hair or they listen to music or they're associated with other people we have to break down those barriers, we have to listen to our young people and a part of the progress that has to be made is understanding that youth are valuable and valued, they perceive policing in a very different way and we've got to educate police officers about things like trauma and the respect for our young people. If we lose a generation of young people who grow up having ZERO respect for the police, we're going to be a sadder country as a city for it  and we will be poor for it. We've got to rebuild the trust and where that starts in my view with raising our young people as folks who can contribute something of value and not simply dangerous thugs.  

22:12

Let me talk also briefly about the legal oversight of accountability. I think we've concluded already that the oversight structure is fundamentally ineffective and broken. We recommended and I know the mayor has now embraced this – that IPRA be replaced. There was a comment earlier about the collective bargaining agreements.  That is one of the areas that has to be addressed and the sergeants, the supervisors agreements expired June 30th this year, the FOP contract expires June 30th of next year and we have to address the many provisions in the collective bargaining agreements that are an impediment accountability. We have a long list of those you in our records but they clearly are a problem and have to be addressed as part of any kind of comprehensive reform.  

23:06

I'm going to speak to what she said earlier mentioned personal concerns.  We talked about the general culture of accountability and I'll be brief on this point, we have to address the fact that there are too many officers who are not doing their job the right way. The are a number of officers who are doing their job the right way but those people need to be supported by addressing the fact that there are too many officers who are collecting CRs, who are abusing their privilege to be police officers, who are making arrests and not showing up for court, the list goes on and on. These people are well known, this city has already taken steps to engage the Chicago Crime Lab to design a early intervention software program, a management tool, but that’s years away and millions of dollars that haven’t been sourced yet. What needs to be done in the interim is we need to deal with these folks. It's not enough to talk about it, we need to deal with them, we know who they are. They need to be put through a process to determine whether they’re fit for duty or not [man shouts from crowd: guilty as charged]. We need to talk about supervisors, that is another issue. There's not enough of them, there have been a number of classes that have been stood up recently but there need to be more supervisors and those supervisors need to be given an actual job description that includes their responsibility for the accountability and conduct of their officers. They need to be supported but that needs to be an issue that needs to be addressed. One of the other areas that we worked on is de-escalation. I think it was Alderman Erina who talked about the CIT training but I also want to focus your attention on something somewhat different, which is every encounter between the community, a citizen and the police has the potential to escalate and the officers need to be trained in ways to address these issues. [Man shouts from crowd: they don’t need proper training, we need to send them to jail.]

25:22

So that they will then take the contract with the way to see this and turn it into something more. I also want to urge – and this is one of the things we talked about in our report. There's a stigma attached to mental health and too many people when they have a person they’re taking care of or they’re responsible for who has mental health challenges [Man shouts from crowd: are you talking about a policeman] they call into 911. Excuse me sir. [Crowd trying to interrupt]. I’m winding down. De-escalation is important and we have to deal with the mental health issues. A couple of final points: I encourage the caucus and the department and the city council to go beyond the three issues that are included in the in the proposed ordinance. We really need to take ownership of this process as a as a city. Other cities have gone through a similar process that we're going through now. The problem is, is that if we don't take the steps now and we wait on the Department of Justice, we're going to be in this for longer than we need to be.
 

26:48

It’s gonna cost millions of dollars no matter what but if we make the changes now, we're going to shorten the period of oversight. For example, Los Angeles, I believe has been under a consent decree or some form of it for 13 years. Detroit a similar story. New Orleans as well. We need to take advantage of the opportunity we have now to make the changes that are necessary so that we can move forward but it's got to be comprehensive. It's got to be a citizen led and citizen involved. It has to be transparent and I commend you for taking this initial step and opening up this process to the community. Thank you. [Claps].

27:42

At this point yes this is now an opportunity to speak. Before we get to that I want to acknowledge a few folks in the building. Von Hui, fellow Asian Americans Advancing Justice, Dr. Lance Williams, head of the inner city studies at Northeastern University of Illinois, Brother Cam Howard with Africans Charge Genocide, Attorney Todd Belkhorn, Attorny Paul Strauss, Tracey Sipka, Head and founder of The Chicago Justice Project so these are our individuals who have been fighting to make sure these things are come to pass.  We’ll open the floor at this point to the testimony now. I wanna go ahead and give the community an opportunity to speak out. Two to three minutes please because so many of you have so many important things to say. I have a list of folks who filled out the cards, I want to give an opportunity to speak. First up I’m gonna call Frank Chapman, field organizers at FIA.

Frank Chapman, Field Organizer for Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression

28:55

You know I was really getting upset because you know we been listening to a lot of bullshit today. [Woman in crowd: I swear]. We need to have a serious discussion. You guys listen. Can you all hear me? Ok. You all need to listen and see what’s going on here is what’s been going on in this city for too long and I’m not smiling about it either. What’s going on here is people are being murdered. We know who the murderers are, you know who they are. We’re making excuses for them and covering up for them and I’m not talking about just one person. I’m talking about the mayor, I’m talking about the city council. For 400 days you knew that Lacquan McDonald had been murdered. You knew that the mayor was covering it up. You knew that. You called us in here and talk about police reform like this stuff never happened. You also know several of those police officers, three or four of them, they all gave false reports. They all gave false reports. Jason Van Dyke is under inditement. How come the others are not under inditement? They all gave false reports.

30:44

You need to start prosecuting these killer cops and sending them to jails. Don’t talk about police reform if you got serial killers on the police force walking around and killing people. If you live in this city, what we need in this city. [Moderator interrupts. He says, in response: you let that lady talk for a long time and she wasn’t talking about nothing. If we really wanna do something about what’s going on in the city, the people gotta do it, we gotta do it, not the politicians – y’all gonna do what you been doing. Politicking. This ain’t about no politicking. We are talking about empowering the people in this city, especially black people. Holding police accountable for crimes they commit. I want you to know this. We just introduced that bill into the city council yesterday. Now you got some real options now that you never had before. You ain’t gotta go for this peacemeal reform stuff. You ain’t gotta go for rearranging the chairs on the titanic. We need to take part. It ain’t about their trust. It ain’t about us trusting you and you trusting me and all that. This is about power. We don’t have power over the police. We need to have power to determine who broke our communities. [Chants of CPAC, fight back break out momentarily].

[Lori Lightfoot’s speech ends]

32:57

Let’s call up Reverend Brown from CPAC next.

33:15

Good afternoon everyone. My name is Reverend Katherine Brown. I am a victim. Me and my eight-year-old and one-year-old child [?] of police brutality. Lady you see all over the news being beat by the police. Well I heard Ms. Lightfoot when I said she wants solutions. So here I am, a woman. Before that even happened to me was a liaison between the community and the police, who served the police. Helped them to bring unity and support between the community and the police since 2006 working in the 21st ward. Now, I have true experience about these police being liars. They are not scared, they are not educated on how to act. They are total liars. Officer Murphy and Officer Lopez made up a lie on me. They made it up and said that I dragged them with my car and under oath, they claim, I dragged them with my hand. I never had contact with her. She never had contact with me and till my back got caught out of there and got in the front of my neighbor so they could see what was going on and she beat the mess out of me and sprayed me with mace and lied on my 8-year-old child who is a diabetic and asthmatic and said my daughter, 8 years old, beat her up, in second grade. So if Ms. Lightfoot and the rest of them want solutions, here’s the solution. Like Mr. Chapman said and everyone else in here is thinking, lock ‘em up. [Crowd cheers.] They don’t need no more training, they’ve been trained. They’re pretending and playing games with you and we don’t want that no more. What we want is CPAC. What do we want? CPAC. When do we want it? Now. What do we want? CPAC. When do we want it? Now. When I say CPAC you say now. CPAC. Now. CPAC. Now […] When I say justice you say now. Justice. Now. So those that are in charge and I know the bell has rung, you heard this is for our aldermans. I love my aldermans. I see some I’ve worked with sitting on this panel. They know my character. I ain’t gonna point you out, you know who I am. I worked with a lot of them but I’m gonna say this to the aldermans: not one of your co-workers who sit on the council with you was able to vote you in. It’s the people in your ward that are sitting out here today. So when we come to you about giving us CPAC, and you know you’re gonna have to get out there again with your little flyers and saying vote for me, coming around real soon, you let your people know and the mayor, because the mayor couldn’t put you in your seat, that I’m going with the people and the constituents and I promise if something go wrong I’m in your corner by voting the right thing with that ordinance because if you don’t do that, you all better think about who you vote for the next time, Instead of turning all our schools around we better turn city council around. You gotta recognize who say they gonna help you and make sure they do it. Y’all be blessed.

Theodore Aphin with CPAC

37:50

Hi. My name is Theodore Aphin, I grew up on the South Side. I was studying technology and trying to be the best person I could be. I became a business owner since 22 and I work for myself. I paid for everything I ever had since I was fourteen.  I never did anything to nobody.  A while ago I was being harassed by cops.  Very much a while ago, over twenty years.  And since then my house had been broken into, I used to have a business that I used to sell roses and teddy bears all over the city, had about thirty clubs I used to do. And I used to do Argon, The Riv, Soldier’s Field. I used to travel the country selling sportswear and novelty. I was a number one salesperson. Cops were extorting money from me and they used to follow me around. Some chiefs of police would follow me around. Another chief of police stopped another chief of police from beating me up in an alley. I was beat up sometimes in my house and some other people that I know, they used my friends and some people I know to attack me. They slandered my name, told people I was a criminal, destroyed all of my relationships with business and relationships with women. I’m a business guy. I probably showed 150 people how to work for themselves and make jobs. I’m a technology commercialization specialist, self taught, they were selling my products and trying to make me look like a bad guy. I was taking medical help for more than 20 years. I’m injected with about 45 pounds of stuff. I can’t go to the doctor. The cops would go to the hospital and say don’t wait on me. They would stay stuff like this is my imagination. They were going around saying – they were addressing me as a woman. They break into my house, beat me up. I had lab reports. I had to go to other countries? Put my name on Facebook. The media tried to shut me down. I never did nothing to nobody. They tried to financially break me. What they did is they cost me over $100,000 a year business, they tried to financially break me. They were telling people don’t do business with me. They stole money from my bank account. I can’t work, I got damage to my body. I got fractured bones, they hit you in such a way that your bone is not broken, it’s fractured but if you lift something they break your bone. I can give evidence of it but the IPRA and stuff is a joke. They never did nothing. They knew it. They were following me all around the city. Then they would escalate the problem and I would be like I never did nothing. What did I do to you? They weren’t talking about it or nothing like that but I hope we can talk about it and stop them right now. There should be instant stop for police brutality. Somebody should be able to go to somebody and tell them you should have a council meeting that you can instantly stop someone from harassing and you should have a crime victims thing – a lot of these people lost money. I lost a business. It cost me over $100,000 a year and I didn’t get nothing. I want you guys to have liability insurance for the cops too.

Milton Johnson, Bobby E Right Comprehensive Behavioral Health Center

42:50

I did have some comments but I don’t know if I want to make those comments right now based on what I'm hearing from my brothers which are things that are very powerful and true. Ms. Lightfoot made mention of it and one of the things I would like to see the council do is to concentrate on the recruitment of African-American police officers for African-American communities and stop saying minorities. We need a minority recruitment – no, we need African-American police officers to police African-American communities. I know that’s going to take some time but I believe it's something that we need to do and during that recruitment process I noticed the recruitment was always at places like this. Maybe Harold Washington Library or College. Recruitment needs to take place in places the African-American community is comfortable with. First of all when you talk about the police department to our community, you really talking for them. They don’t want to hear it. They don't like police. They really don't like police officers when you talk about becoming a police officer.  And so you have to talk about the importance of our community being policed by people of the same color. You have to talk about the importance of itand the need. Now I heard Ms Lightfoot make mention of of training and I was kind of shocked. I hear a lot of talk about C.I.T. training, which is crisis intervention training and I’m approximately 2000 police officers right now have that training and they’re not really forcing – they can’t force any of the officers to take it. It’s strictly voluntary. Any efforts are good. However, when you talk about the African American community again and you talk about mental health, you talk about a community that does not embrace mental health services like they should so that’s an ongoing process to educate the community on what mental health is. Now, when you say that, when a person needs to do when it comes to a CIT officer is to say I have a problem here and this person has been diagnosed with a mental illness so I need a CIT officer to respond.  That's just right.  That's a few people.  The bottom line is our community is jam packed with people that are of diagnosed, that are suffering from trauma, in crisis situations. In addition, when you have an officer come out for CIT, mind you they’re coming to respond to an African-American. An African-American mental illness is not the same as our experiences that created the illnesses are not the same. To get to the point I want to make, cultural sensitivity training, cultural sensitivity training. I heard cultural literacy but they need to understand and I’ve run into resistance like when I ran into resistance when I first talked about mental illness to the community. I’m running into the same issue when I talk about cultural sensitivity training so that’s something that needs to be done my brothers.

47:30

Hontes Farmer (City College)

I teach science here at the city colleges. I teach math. I live in suburbs. I do know what it’s like to have run ins with the police. I’ve had them on campuses I teach at. For example at another college I had someone act like I stole something when I was carrying a telescope out of the door. You know they don’t work inside because you gotta be able to see the sky. I had a police officer go for their gun in a manner as if they were drawing down on somebody when I swiped to get into a certain faculty lounge. I know what it’s like to deal with police and security officers in places where I work, where I should have authority. There was a senator who talked about having that happen to him as he was serving in senate. The basic problem is we can have clear video of police officers shooting somebody and they don’t even get put on trial, much less locked up. The basic problem is that there’s two legal systems. If you’re well connected, like say you were secretary of state for a while – you can do some things and get away with them. If you’re a police officer and you do certain things that would get somebody else put in jail, you get away with it and that’s the problem. That’s the fundamental problem and until we address that, there’s not gonna be change. And how do we do that? It should be automatic. A police officer was caught shooting somebody who was not armed and was for example laying on their back with their hands up like we saw in Miami. If we see something like that, they should be put on trial period. They should be indicted and put on trial automatically. We have to hold police to a higher standard.

Alex Wuhf

50:05

I have two questions and two stories. I’m gonna start with the first story. It just happened to my husband and I yesterday. We were out playing pokemon go in the alleys in our neighborhood and we live on the north side, it’s an LGBT community and it’s a mostly white community. And we were walking through alleys looking for Pokemon and we were going behind dumpsters and places with lots of graffiti. We were going under bridges and doing all that kind of stuff. Two police officers in a car pulled up to us, really slowly and they passed us and looked at us and I thought we were in trouble for something and they said – are you guys ok? I said yeah. And they said, what are you doing and I said we’re playing Pokemon and they laughed and they left. This was about 11.30 p.m. so I wondered to myself what would happen if that was a black couple at 11.30 p.m. walking through alleys. They didn’t know who we were when they came out from behind but when they saw our faces they just asked us if we were ok. The second story I have is a lot of people I know, most of the people I know are white because of the segregation in this city and I’m from Detroit, the segregation in Detroit is insane.  I grew up in a white neighborhood in one of the white schools.  White people don’t know what the experiences of black people are so I just started a group with my husband.  It's called white people for black lives Chicago and I would love you guys to join if you’re white, black or whatever. We're mostly on the northside and it’s very white as someone said earlier, I think it was Ms. Lightfoot and I’m not sure where she is. I think she left when we started. When we started asking questions she didn’t really wanna hear them I guess. But it’s a big problem and the first thing we're going to do is we're going to read a book called The New Jim Crow. All races are welcome. The only question I have in addition to my two stories is that two of the current proposals suggest the inspector general should appoint a civilian board instead of a mayor appointing the board but the mayor appoints the inspector general. Why can’t civilians elect the inspector general.

Michelle T Page – mother and CRS leader. Winetta Harvey.

53:18

Let us first remember that the police was always set up to do injustice. It was set up to catch runaway slaves so we must never forget that and we must never forget that justice has never came to us as black people in this country so we must unite and control our own communities and that’s the only solution. What we don’t understand is that we’re already segregated whether we want to accept it or not. We’re segregated so we have to deal with that like it is and accept it for what it is because we ‘re gonna continue to die in the streets if we don’t. We are already, this is happening all over the world and we need to stop turning a blind eye to it and understand that this is a problem. It’s a problem and we will not get justice if we don’t understand the problem. The problem is that white people don’t respect our lives. Most of them don’t and some of them do but for the most part, this is a system built on white supremacy and if we don’t understand that we will never live in this country in peace. All of this talking about training the police over and all of that, that is not the answer. You cannot control and train a white racist mind. This is a system that controls and kills us. This is nothing new in this country. This is nothing new. If we want to correct the system we need to understand that we are the original people of planet earth and we need to understand we are the divine people and that’s why we forgive everyone for every damn thing they do to us but we don’t forgive ourselves and we can hate each other all day long but if we don’t unite, if we don’t unite and understand the only way we can get through this is us uniting with each other and let everybody else unite with each other like they been doing. They haven’t been concerned about us until white folks start getting killed in the street so we never need to forget that. That’s all I want to say and I want to leave like  this. Also we should never, we need to understand there’s a war on black people in this country and until we get justice in this country god is going to continue to whoop America’s behind so never forget that.

Michelle Page

55.30

My name is Michelle Page. I’m a mother and member of community renewal society. I’ve been fighting this issue for over two years now. We’ve been fighting for this for over two years. We’ve met with the mayor several times. My concern is – like I said – I’m a mother with a 23-year-old male son who just made 23 on July 12. I sent him away. He’s been gone from me two years because I’m not safe with him living in Chicago. He took a job out of state. Until the police are held accountable for their actions, none of this is going to stop. When they enforce the laws you have to put a seatbelt on, everybody knows seatbelts save lives. I myself wear my seatbelt but when we start saying there are consequences for not wearing your seatbelt you probably don’t. Until we say police are held accountable for their actions, nothing is going to stop. Everybody’s saying oh there’s black on black crime. One of the reasons we have black on black crime is because the black community does not respect the police to do the job they have been trained to do. I’m a law abiding citizen. If you do something to me, I’m gonna call my brothers first because I know my brothers are gonna take care of me. If I call the police, first of all they may not come. When they do come they won’t respect me. They’re not gonna care. My brothers take care of whoever done what. That’s part of the reason we have a lot of black on black crime. For my son, I’m afraid of the gangs and the police. The gang is a legal gang. The police is an illegal gang.

Mark Clements, CPAC

58:51

I want the aldermen to listen to me and to listen to me carefully. Each of you took time to design child abuse laws. You allow and the reason I say you is because you only took over for someone else within your particular district or ward. Children taken down to police stations and literally tortured, having their genitals grabbed and squeezed. Well, the child was told to send a complaint through the office of professional standards. I wonder why. Because the appropriate agency never got an opportunity to investigate those 32 African-Americans that were sent through that type of system. What the city did, it paid out money. That’s what happened. And they said remain quiet, don't tell nobody, we will give you this just keep it quiet.  We're going to make it into a settlement so now we don't have to take no blame for this but 13-year-old Marcus Wiggins, taken to a police station, who had his genitals grabbed and squeezed. Here it is, Mark Clements, you’re looking at him. Taken to a police station in 1981. I looked at black faces infront of a courtroom and I told him eh, the detectives grabbed my wee wee. The system felt more comfortable in giving Mark Clements four natural life terms. That’s where I was. 28 years of my life and there’s no accountability, not even today. The city can dish its dollars out but where is the protection for the kids. Where is the protection for those men who are still languishing inside of those prisons and let me tell you – I could care less about the city. Let me tell you as I approach the aldermen today – clean your communities up. These young children need jobs. When I was a child, an alderman gave me a job. It was Jesse White who gave me a job. Now you don’t wanna give them jobs. In closing, if you’ve got a heart contact the children and family services and ask them to open up these cases. Ask them to look into these cases where men and women had electrical objects stuck in their rectums and placed up to their genitals and let me tell you in closing – the city of Chicago – you all sitting here ought to be ashamed of yourselves. Let me tell you, we fought to give you all an opportunity and let me tell you we had to fight these people to put you where you at and your father – I knew him personally, knew him personally. I swept to make odd dollars. We need to get it back together. Thank you.

Dr. Lance Williams – head of inner city studies at Northeastern Illinois University

01:02:01

Peace and blessings everyone. How y’all doing? For those that don’t know me my name is Lance Williams. I’m a professor for inner city studies on the south side at Northeastern Illinois University where we pay particular attention to our community and preparing our students to go out there and serve the community. I was invited, I was somewhat reluctant because I didn’t typically know these types of things turn into. I mean I know what they turn into and I was concerned at the beginning but I’m glad we have organized ourselves in a way we can express our opinion. I do respect many of these aldermen who don’t have to be here. I know there’s a lot of aldermen who would never come into a place like this so I wanna give them applause for that. Let me just say this, my area of expertise, as a son of a former vicelord, my father was one of the founding members of the vicelord nation and he raised me as a young brother to serve my community. He kept me out of them streets and said you go to school boy and you learn so you can do the kind of research that can help our community so I will say this. Although my research primarily involves so called street gangs and youth in violence. We are doing some research at the center now that deals with police involved shootings. I’ll say this just preliminarily, that it appears that the real problem with police involved shootings – because there are a lot of different types – but the big problem in early investigations is that we have a particular group of police officers. In the hood we call them dick boys, jump out boys. These tend to be younger white officers within the ages of 26-32 who are no more than 5 or 6 years on the force and they get these assignments to come into the hood and police but our perception of them in this study is that they the police the black and brown communities as if they are an occupying force – that they are the military. I would suggest to our aldermen at some point the policy within the police department is going to have to be that these particular types of officers should not be able to come into the communities this early in their tenure to police. That’s one of the early recommendations but let me just say another two things I think you might wanna focus on as it relates to what's going on in our community. The violence that is happening, we can trace back to two specific public policies that have been in place for the last ten years. One is the Chicago Public Schools Renaissance 2010.  This is very important as legislators, as lawmakers to go back and look at that policy and see what negative impact it has had on all of our communities.  I'll say that one of these priority areas is to look at how our schools have been privatized, those who are now profiting off of public education.  So as a result of renaissance 2010 for over 10 years, too many black and brown youths have been displaced from their traditional community schools and they've been tracked into schools outside of their neighborhoods.  So to correct these problems.  We need to bring back to the community quality education that offers college prep, that offers professional training and also vocational training. This would reduce the fear that many of our young people have to leave their communities and go to school, particularly young black and brown males who now feel that going to school is too dangerous and risky so they don't go. When they don't go, of course, now they're not eligible to what – to work so now they out on the streets and they become vulnerable to that population on a police force that look at them as they are animals, wild animals to be hunted and so to fix the schools I think would solve a lot of these problems.  I’m glad my brother mentioned the mental health issues because these young brothers for the last ten to fifteen years have been out of school and they're looking around and they see they don’t have chances so now they have a sense of what if we if we really look at it from a clinical perspective.  They are clinically depressed right.  They're hopeless, they’re angry because they are uneducated and unemployable. So when you combine that with substance abuse then you've got a powder keg waiting to explode or be exploded on.  So this widepread depression among these young men of color, plus easy access to guns.  Now we have high rates of interpersonal shootings that leads to homicide but you can all trace it back to the schools not functioning right.  And in another part of the problem to look at is we have to look and see who is dumping all of these weapons into our community and make sure we come up with some policies to make sure we have some harsh punishments for those dumping weapons in our community? So let me stress while providing immediate mental health services to this population is a much needed short term solution but it's not going to permanently fix our problems. We've got to fix this aparteid school system that we have, a school system that serves whites and very few students of color, black or brown students of color.  And we've got to start with number one, we've got to have a school board that’s responsive to the community more than it is responsive to the mayor’s office. That’s just plain and simple. Listen. We learned from the United Nations 2013 global study on homicide that violence is specifically related to the lack of development and desperation. By far the highest homicide rates in the United States of America are to be found in sub Saharan Africa and guess where else - in Chicago. In some of our south side, not all of them, but some of our south and west side neighborhoods. So we've got a problem on our hands and a lot of things that we can do.  I'm going to stop because I know how we are but I really appreciate your all coming here. You all ain’t got to be here tonight.  I'm glad I'm speaking on behalf of myself and my family, let me just say I have my wife and I, we live in a hood. We live on 53rd and Wabash in a warzone where we raising our kids. We raising our seven children. We gone through home schooling them but then at a certain point you send them to schools.  And I could tell you this I'm there right down the street from black kids where they popping things all day every day and I'm going to be honest with y’all I got more fear.  Them dick boys, when they rolling down the block they coming down. They vicious and they looking at us like we some wild animals and if you say some people have a problem with that element on the police force.  We've got to deal with it and it's important that we deal with them from a legal perspective before the hood really is inspired to deal with them from a perspective that we’ve seen before. I thank you all for listening and continue to respect each other as we are making our comments tonight.

Joseph Miller, 25th Ward IPO

1:12:05

Hello everyone thanks for coming out tonight. Thanks for organizing this. I’m from the 25th Ward. I’m introducing or just familiarizing people with a person that Mayor Emmanuel turned down for the CPD superintendent. Former Marine, former Baltimore police officer, he’s retired, he was showing signs of police brutality, misconduct, way before the tragic death of Freddie Gray. I have his full application here and I will send it to you, the police board, his articles. He’s gonna be in town April 4th or August 4th-7th receiving his pHd. He has great insight. This is someone you guys should definitely meet with and talk to.

Von Huen and Carmen Yang, Asian Americans Advancing Justice

1:13:20

My name is Von Huen. I am with Asian Americans Advancing Justice Chicago. Asian Americans Advancing Justice is part of a larger Chicago immigration policy working group made up of immigrant rights organizations that serve and represent communities across the Chicago area. Advancing Justice Chicago, along with many of our community partners, including the Coalition for a better Chinese American Community who also sent representatives here tonight began advocating for these issues in 2014 following the horrific verbal and physical abuse experienced by Jessica Klyzek a Chinese American who was brutally beaten by Chicago police officers. Seen on surveillance footage. Two officers threatened to put Ms. Klyzek quote in a UPS box and had her back to wherever the FP came from. While striking her in the head as she was handcuffed and kneeling on the floor. In response we are working to pass an amendment to the welcoming city ordinance to bar city employees from threatening deportation or questioning an individual’s immigration status. The amendment would also remove the exceptions that currently allow collaboration between police and immigrant enforcement making clear the separation between local law enforecement and federal enforcement of immigration policies. One of the measures we initially proposed we hope to carry into the police accountability reform process is public reporting of violations under the city ordinance and of police misconduct against immigrants. For immigrant communities many of these incidents go unreported and subsequent investigations fail to address police misconduct, especially as it relates to a lack of language assistance and cultural competency with the police department. Police accountability reform is necessary to address the shortcomings in the department and more importantly provide a community based response process to better resolve these issues. In the larger context of police reform, immigrant rights organizations believe it is also important to follow the lead of folks who have been working on this issue, particularly black-led organizing groups, recognizing our communities interact with the police in different ways. After the Klyzek incident, Asian American community members came forward to let us know what happened to Ms. Klyzek was not a one off occurrence. Incidents such as this reinforced false stereotypes that we are perpetual foreigners in this country and increases the level of mistrust between the Asian American community and law enforcement. We hear of these stories often and so I would like to invite Carmen Yang, a youth from the Coalition of a better Chinese American Community to speak more about her community’s experience interacting with police.

Carmen Yang

1:15:55

Good evening, my name is Carmen Yang. I immigrated to Chicago when I was 12 years old. Growing up in Bridgeport with many Chinese speaking residents, language barrier is a huge problem. I’ve been actively involved with voter registration and had many conversations with Chinese speaking residents about the issues that affect them. I have heard over and over again from community members about public safety concerns and the fear of interacting with police officers because of language limitations. This problem is worsened when there are medical related emergencies. When I was younger there was an incident involving a Chinese mandarin speaking lady next to my house when she was having a panic attack. There was a crowd of people around her and the thing is none of them spoke English. At the time I was maybe a freshman in highschool. When they saw me they quickly asked me if I speak English so I could call for help. When the ambulance arrived they would not take her to the hospital until the lady who was having a panic attack gave them all her personal information. There was not a single translator that came with them so I had to be there the whole time trying to translate back and forth while she was shaking uncontrollably and I could barely make out her words. They got frustrated when I did not know how to say certain words because I don’t speak Mandarin fluently. My native dialect is Taiwanese. The process was just very long and really frustrating for everyone who was involved. Scenarios like this goes to show how much we need language support in our police and emergency deparments in Chicago. Often times the police are not equipped to handle cases in the community due to the lack of cultural competency. For a tight knit community like the one in Bridgeport we often see police officers as outsiders and not people who are part of the community. Police accountability reform is important. Our experiences need to be part of the larger conversation. Thank you.

Karen Winters, 401 Movement

1:18:17

Aldermen, I don’t see nobody taking notes, writing nothing down. I wanna say I heard several things and I totally agree with my little sister here – cultural diversity or literacy training is not gonna eradicate racism. My 16-year-old nephew was shot and killed by officer Sean Hitts on April 11 so the family immediately organized because especially after Lacquan McDonald, I read the task force report. I saw how a lot of that thing was played out. So our family gathered together and we are going to fight for justice for my nephew. We gonna do it legally first but at the end of the day we really want to send that man to jail because I’m gonna tell you something – like the brother said – I got them young brothers over there, they got love for my nephew. And they coming to me like aunty what you want us to do? Right now, I want you all to wait, we’re gonna play this paper game but I’m gonna tell you all something family – when they killing us they have become too aggressive and too comfortable and we are too passive. So right now ain’t nobody going to jail, they slapping everybody on the wrist so yeah hopefully they gonna change some paper but somethings gonna change and I don’t know, maybe our family will be the one to do it. You all gonna know about it, You all gonna know it’s us that did it. We loved him. The city of Chicago don’t have to waste no ink or no paper trying to offer our family no money. We don’t want it. We want to take it to trial. We want to see that man in trial. So the recommendation I have for the police department is one, they have 24 or more hours to report the incident and when they did that to Lacquan McDonald everybody lied. Every officer lied. Every officer that gave an account lied until the video tape came out. If we commit a crime and they catch us up we don’t have no 24 hours to wait to tell our story, they want our story immediately and I think the same thing should happen for them when they commit a murder, especially a murder. They don’t get no 24 hour window to report because you all know what happens. They get to whispering to each other, changing them stories and switching those things around and then document it. Not only do they document it, they get an audio recording, they get a video recording, they got a written quote. If they gonna tell the truth why they need all that information. Then they get to go back and recant their stories, change their stories. That’s wrong, that’s called perjury. If they so transparent and want to tell the truth – in my nephew’s case they lying – they lying. It’s been so inconsistent. Now it’s been 90 days. My family is still waiting on our police report. Why? Why are we still waiting on an official police report after 90 days? That’s another thing y’all need to work on. The timing. How long it takes for us to get those reports. We want it also. Those are the things we prepared to do. Like I said plan A is play the paper game with them but we have plan B and plan C and it’s gonna happen.

Oscar Ortiz from Humboldt Park

1:21:25

Let me tell you about 1977 at Leemore school yard. Poor Freddie. He found out what it means when they say cops will beat the piss out of you literally. In Humboldt Park let me tell you there are Puerto Ricans being found hung in the jails inside the lockup and every time it was just suicide. Every time. I don’t know too many Puerto Ricans that have killed themselves. One time she got into a car accident, the police report was all lies. I want to thank this gentleman right here, the professor. Because he hit it right on the head when he said black and brown, until that unity is solidified, this will keep going on and on and on. I wanna tell you why. Because here’s another good one. Black policemen in black neighborhoods. What’s wrong with that? You understand, that goes hand in hand with what the professor was saying. These dicks whatever you wanna call them. The reason why I say there will be peace throughout the city is now you have your black police officers patrolling black neighborhoods, you have peace in the white neighborhoods, there’s peace in the black neighborhoods, no fear of death or violence coming down or spewing over. This could be done. CPAC I forgot about why we’re here. I really thought we were here to discuss about electing representatives from the neighborhoods to the police board. Because now you have police saying we’re going into fetal position, we’re going into fetal position. Try telling that to a police board that’s composed of community members. You going into a fetal position? Well, you’re suspended or you’re fired. You think all the other police will say hmm we can’t go into the fetal position anymore we gotta go out there and work. I mean I don’t know how plain and clear […] Aldermen thank you for making time to be out here but let me tell you life will be easier if you guys if you go through this electing the CPAC. Disappointed by appointing anything is not gonna work like Chapman’s been saying. There’s too many bosses involved. Somebody has to promise somebody else. I didn’t read this 176 mosaic of recommendations but I wonder if some of those are in there.

Ivan Mack

1:24:59

I wasn’t gonna speak because since so much has been said that reflects the pain we all feel. When our cousins, brothers, fathers are shot down, like my brother was but then I said no, he deserves my saying something on his behalf. So my brother was shot and killed by a police officer who said I thought he was going for a gun in his pocket but what my brother had in his pocket was a hole puncher because at that time they were punching cards as part of his job – to punch cards that had some kind of a problem. They had to do that. Shot him. His excuse: I thought he was hiding something so my brother’s dead. That’s it. I thought and I’ve heard since then – things like – well I was scared, I was afraid. How did I know? What did I know? We can all get up here and kill each other on that excuse. Look funny. How’d I know? Dress. But I tell my kids oh my Uncle Rodney he would have just loved that. Oh look what you done, he’d be so proud of you. Oh you look just like him. Look how you growing up. Oh your uncle Rodney. That’s how they know their uncle Rodney. And in a composition my daughter and I don’t even know about it – she wrote a story about what happened with her uncle Rodney, this beautiful man she never got to know. He was in college last year. I mean the lives, the contributions, we’ve lost through people who knew what they were doing. They told me he killed my brother because he was afraid he had a gun. I think he killed my brother because he knew he could and he didn’t have to worry about it. He didn’t like his swag. He didn’t like his look. He didn’t like his educated talking. So he killed him cause he could. Thank you for letting me have this moment but I do want to say this – what I hear over and over again is legislation – we need legislation that says if police kill our unarmed women and men out here they will be arrested, they will be indicted, they will go to trial.

Sister Erica Tries (here for Justice Or Else Local Organizing Committee)

1:28:28

I wanted to address you all and make you understand that I’m tired of Chicago politicians playing jedi mind game tricks with the people of Chicago. We’re tired of all of you standing before us with so called solutions when in fact it’s the same agenda with new handpicked faces and new titles and names, namely Mr. Rahm Emmanuel. I said it to you. That as of today there will be no more business as usual when it comes to securing black and Hispanic communities. We cannot and will not keep allowing people to murder and invade our communities with so much hatred in their hearts and call it justice or the law. The day is over for that. It’s time for justice or else. Everyone has to be held accountable for this. Also I’m challenging everyone in this room to get up, get involved and most of all get ative. It’s time for real change. Not just a bandaid to make us feel better for a minute or until this happens again. I also would like to say we have a solution. Located on 74th and Stony Island and that is the FOI. They are willing to go into the communities. They are respected by black men and black youth in the community. They’re coming with love and respect for our people so why not give them the opportunity to go into our neighborhoods and make that change. I don’t understand what’s the resistance when it comes to us policing ourselves. I don’t understand that. If we have the solution give us the opportunity. They have proven results with projects all over the country. They made change, progressive change and the people wanted change. These young men, they do not want to be out here murdering, they don’t wanna be out here killing but poverty breeds crime. Bring jobs in. Bring retraining in. Bring re-entry programs for offenders that have x’s on their backs, that go to jail, serve time and when they come out – you still throwing it in their faces that they are offenders. You can’t vote, you can’t get a job, Mr. Obama just led a whole bunch of them out of jail but where are the programs they need to re-enter society and be successful. There is a revolving door and they are gonna go back to the things they know which is selling drugs and crime. If you not offering me a way out. What are you offering? A way back in? I mean seriously let’s really be honest and attack the problems.

Reverend Katherine Paisley, 45th Ward

1:32:13

The systems are broken. We know they’re broken. Our schools are broken. Our children don’t get the same education in different neighborhoods. We have too many of our citizens with skin that’s black or brown in our criminal injustice system and we know that we have a lack of accountability with our police force. It’s imperative that you all who have the capacity to change the systems do so. We’re counting on you. My son who is 18 and has long hair and dresses a little scruffy can walk safely the five blocks from our condo to this job. His friend who has darker skin cannot do so at 4 a.m. it’s not fair.

Jackson from West Side (24)

1:33:20

There’s been multiple incidents with police. My main one is situation we talking about now. I was in Illinois Rivers downstate. We going to breakfast and one of the younger officers was being real rude. Saying Getcho all ass in line, oh I’ll see y’all back on deck, one of the older cops, another white person, pulled him to the side and I heard what he was saying to him at the back of the line: he checked him and said don’t talk to these people like that. They human just like you. Just because of whatever situation they in, that don’t take away from nothing. They human just like you. It is true. A lot of these officers, they bitches bro. they use their power, they abuse their power. They 24 just like me and think because they got a badge on, a nigger won’t shoot them. I’m telling you right now bro, I’ll do what Malcolm X did bro. Yeah uh oh because I was speaking real shit. Malcolm X in real life was about that bro. He ain’t say all this political stuff. He said pick up these guns and fight back for what we believe in. A lot of people ain’t doing shit for your community yo. Real talk bro. Half of the community don’t even go to West and Howard. Lot of people, Chinese people, don’t interrupt me, Chinese people, White people who don’t even stay in our community. There’s a lot of stuff y’all need to do. A lot of y’all bitch ass niggers yo. Excuse my language bro. You have to do shit for y’all community not for the money bro. Stop thinking about the money. Y’all doing it for image bro because when it’s election time that’s when y’all gonna start doing shit. There’s been a lot of situations where officer they grabbed me and I told them to get out. Yeah I’m in a feeder bro at the same time bro when you better yourself you way better bro because I’m a traveler bro because what traveler mean to me is love, peace, truth and justice bro and that’s what we need to stick on bro. We need to govern these police yo because a lot of these