CHICAGO POLICE FACE RACISM CHARGE
‘Some people do not feel safe’ to walk the streets
The city’s police department is beset by racism and needs sweeping reforms to help it win back trust in the community, according to a report released Wednesday by a panel tasked by Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
The Chicago Police Accountability Task Force called on the department to “acknowledge its racist history and overhaul its handling of excessive force allegations.”
The report contains over 100 recommendations for change and is replete with statistics that suggest African Americans in the city are disproportionately targeted by Chicago officers.
The task force found 74% of people killed or injured by Chi- cago police officers over the past eight years were African-American. In 2014, 72% of people stopped by Chicago police were black and 17% were Hispanic, according to the report.
About 76% of the time that a taser was deployed between 2012 and 2015, it was used on a black suspect, the task force found. About 33% of the city’s population is black.
The data, the task force asserts, “gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.”
“Some people do not feel safe in any encounter with the police,” the report said. “Some do not feel like they have the ability to walk in their neighborhoods or drive in their cars without being aggressively confronted by the police.
The consistent theme of these deeply held beliefs came from a significant cross-section of people: men and women, young, middle-aged and older, doctors, lawyers, teachers and other professionals, students, and everyday workers.”
Emanuel created the task force in the aftermath of the court-ordered release of police video in November that showed a white police officer pumping 16 shots into 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, a black youth killed on a city street.
The McDonald video triggered the firing of police superintendent Garry McCarthy, contributed to last month’s primary defeat of Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez, and diminished the mayor’s standing with the city’s voters.