Black Lives Matter, ACLU
stay lawsuits, promote Chicago police “reform”
By Jessica Goldstein and George
Marlowe
25 April 2018
On March 21, Black Lives Matter (BLM), the American Civil
Liberties Union (ACLU) and other community groups accepted a seat at the table
in a court-enforced consent decree to promote illusions in police reform in
Chicago.
As part of an ongoing exercise in damage control, the City of
Chicago under Democratic Mayor Rahm Emanuel and the Illinois State Attorney
General Lisa Madigan and various community groups including BLM entered into a
10-page Memorandum of Agreement to work out a framework of “reform” for the
Chicago Police Department (CPD).
A draft of the consent decree will be released after the city of
Chicago hears grievances and proposals from various community and activist
groups over the next several weeks. Groups such as BLM, the ACLU, and the
National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) will be
putatively involved in an advisory role in the formulation of the decree.
The involvement of groups such as BLM and the ACLU—deemed
“Coalition Founders” in the agreement—in such an agreement is intended to
provide further cover for the political establishment while giving middle class
activists a “piece of the action.” This latest arrangement will do nothing to
ease the decades-long reign of police violence overseen by the Democratic Party
in the third largest city in the United States.
BLM and other pro-Democratic Party activist groups have framed the
issue of police violence in purely racial terms without any regard for the fact
that whites make up the largest number killed by police nationwide and that
victims of police violence are overwhelmingly working class.
In April 2017, BLM reaped the benefits of misdirecting social
opposition to police violence when it was awarded a $100 million grant from the
Ford Foundation, one of the most powerful philanthropic organizations in the
world, which also has intimate links to the Central Intelligence Agency.
In return for their participation in this agreement, BLM and the
various community groups as well as Madigan have agreed to stay all lawsuits they
have brought against the city for police violence.
The coalition of community groups have 60 days from the signing of
the agreement to provide their input into the framework of a court-enforced
consent decree. If a consent decree is enacted this year, the coalition of
community groups which entered into this framework will be able to have
quarterly meetings with a court-appointed independent monitor that will oversee
the “reform” process. However, if a consent decree is not filed with the court
by September 1, they can potentially resume their lawsuits.
Lawsuits were brought by Madigan and other groups in late 2017
against the Emanuel administration as part of an effort to stem a political
crisis in the wake of the 2015 release of video footage of the police murder of
Laquan McDonald, an African-American teenager, by police officer Jason Van
Dyke. Since the release of the video, the city’s political establishment has
been confronted by growing public anger over police violence and brutality in
Chicago and across the country.
Various sections of the Democratic Party and the community
organizations in their orbit have attempted to misdirect and defuse public
outrage over the coverup of the murder of McDonald by the Emanuel
administration.
In January 2017, the US Department of
Justice (DoJ) under the Obama administration—which funneled military weaponry
to police departments and whitewashed the nationwide reign of police
murders—released a scathing repor t that detailed systemic abuses and a
pattern of constitutional violations throughout the CPD.
Then Attorney General Loretta Lynch recommended that the city of
Chicago enter into a consent decree as part of the recommendations of the DoJ
report. In reality, the proposal for a consent decree and proposals for reforms
was yet another exercise in damage control. Emanuel even feigned support for
such limited oversight over the police.
The incoming Trump administration, however, provided further cover
for the Emanuel administration to sidestep the pretense of a court-enforced
oversight of the CPD. Once the Trump administration took office, US Attorney
General Jeff Sessions immediately opposed any plans that required a federal
judge to monitor departments across the country, which the previous Justice
report claimed was necessary to enact reforms which would supposedly reduce
police violence.
With the backing of the Trump administration, Emanuel initially
sought a toothless Memorandum of Agreement with federal authorities which did
not require any court enforcement or independent oversight. Emanuel claimed
that the CPD was carrying out reform measures on its own with its own police
accountability task force and its newly formed organization of police
oversight, the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).
In fact, all previous reform measures and internal oversight
bodies established over the last two decades—such as the Office of Professional
Standards (OPS) and its replacement, the Independent Police Review Authority
(IPRA)—functioned as adjuncts of the CPD in covering up police crimes and acts of
brutality. Since the release of the McDonald video the police have continued to
function as the armed bodies of the state, meting out violence and brutality on
a regular basis.
A report from 2016 showed that Chicago
police shoot someone every five days. Emanuel has presided over the escalation
of police violence and murders in Chicago along with the arming of the police
force with new heavy weaponry. Last year, Emanuel vowed to hire 1,000 new cops,
mainly from minority neighborhoods in the city.
Emanuel’s decision to backtrack in mid-2017 on the working out of
a consent decree was met with nervousness within sections of the Democratic
Party as well as opposition from groups like BLM. That Emanuel would so
flagrantly oppose even the appearance of reform signaled to Madigan that the
only way to defuse public anger was to sue the city of Chicago in order to
force the negotiation of court-ordered initiatives.
Madigan and other groups filed the lawsuit against the city of
Chicago on August 29, 2017. It cited the findings of the Department of Justice
report against the CPD, including “the unconstitutional use of deadly and
excessive force by officers; inadequate training on appropriate tactics, lack
of supervision; a failure to adequately investigate officer misconduct and
discipline officers and inadequate wellness and counseling programs to support
officers.” Responding to the lawsuit, Emanuel and CPD Superintendent Eddie
Johnson both tepidly voiced their willingness to work with Madigan on a consent
decree.
Emanuel is seeking reelection for mayor in 2019 and no doubt
calculates that the inclusion of groups such as BLM in such a fraudulent
framework of police “reform” will give him a certain political cover to
embellish his deeply unpopular public image.
Court-enforced consent decrees have been implemented in cities
like Baltimore and Cleveland, which have had high-profile police shootings in
the news since 2015. These measures, among other “reform” efforts by individual
police departments, have done nothing to stop police in the US from murdering
with impunity. According to killedbypolice.net, a website that tracks police
killings in the US, police have killed more people during the first four months
of 2018 (394) than in 2017 (365).
Ultimately the purpose of the consent decree in Chicago is to give
legal and political cover to the CPD and the Democratic Party as plans are
carried out to further militarize and deploy the police against the working
class in the coming struggles against the state.
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