Mayor Lightfoot, Get Out of the Way!
On February 21, 2019, Chicago police burst into the apartment of an innocent black woman, Anjanette Young, based on a faulty tip, handcuffing her while she was naked, forcing her to stand in full view of male officers as they searched her home. It took 22 months for the video to surface and Ms. Young’s voice to be heard.
Now Mayor Lightfoot, who promised passage of an ordinance creating a Citizen Oversight Commission for Police Accountability within her first 100 days, who sat on it, fought it, then, prompted by pressure after the Anjanette Young atrocity, resurrected it, is delaying passage with another tactic. Disregarding countless hours of planning, disregarding extensive community input from meetings held across the city, disregarding the stories of countless people directly affected by the abuses of individual police shored up by the code of silence in CPD, disregarding 2 viable alternatives before the Council, she has now submitted her own ordinance.
The Mayor’s allegiances are clear: her wealthy supporters, CPD… and then the rest of us. It’s time for the Mayor to step up for the people she promised to represent – all of them! Every day ordinary law-abiding residents like Anjanette Young are being stripped of their dignity by individuals who abuse their power, part of a system that all too often turns a blind eye to individual and systemic abuses.
The people of Chicago deserve a significant role in checking these abuses and changing a police system which has always kept black lives in their ‘proper’ place in society. Now is the time for Independent Citizen Oversight of CPD. We know where the Mayor’s allegiances lie and we know the campaign lie of her allegiances. It is time for Citizen Oversight of CPD, for GAPA/CPAC. Alderman Taliaferro, call the question! Mayor Lightfoot, let it pass!
By Fr. Larry Dowling
St. Agatha, North Lawndale
CRS Member