By Jim Vail
Special to Mychinews.com
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| Ald. Thomas Tunney was seen snoozing off during a tense public forum on police accountability in Rogers Park. |
The City Council held a Police Accountability Hearing in
Rogers Park Tuesday, Aug. 9, at Senn High School to get public feedback on a
community safety oversight board and a public safety auditor to replace the
current rubber stamp Independent Police Review Authority or IPRA.
What they got was a barrage of complaints and outbursts
that the police are harassing people in Rogers Park.
One black woman stuck up her middle finger at the two
police officers who were sitting near the front and another white woman said
her teenager is afraid of the police because many of his friends have been shot
by them.
Many demanded that the City Council support the
resolution to create a Civilian Police Accountability Council or CPAC.
Not one of the four aldermen – Ald. Rick Munoz, Ald.
Harry Osterman, Ald. James Cappleman and Ald. Thomas Tunney – monitoring the
hearing responded to supporting the proposed ordinance that would make the
police accountable to elected civilians, which would be a first in this
country.
“I don’t know if I trust City Hall to negotiate police
contracts and hold them accountable when we look at how long it took to
prosecute Jon Burge,” one woman said.
Burge was a Chicago police detective convicted of
torturing more than 200 criminals between 1972 and 1991 in order to force
confessions.
One of the first speakers was Mark Clements, an [outspoken]
activist against police brutality, who was one of those tortured by Burge.
He said he came to the hearing because he grew up in
Rogers Park.
Clements said the city police should be investigated for
torturing children while being interrogated.
Clements told Chicago News he would tell his story in
which he served 28 years in prison for a crime he never committed in an
upcoming issue.
Several women spoke about police harassment, and one man
said the anger that explodes from certain officers is mindboggling. He said he
had to temporarily ride his bike on the sidewalk because the street was blocked
off when a police officer ran over to him swinging a baton, screaming
obscenities and threatening to arrest him.
“A mayor-appointed
commission lessens the credibility with Chicago,” another elderly male speaker
said. “We need an elected police accountability board. We don’t need any more
shams. Power to the People!”
A woman who lives in Rogers Park said the mayor, the
aldermen and the police lost all credibility when the city secretly paid the
family of Laquan McDonald $5 million before Mayor Emanuel’s re-election to
cover-up a white cop shooting a black teenager 16 times as he was walking away.
“That is the machine,” she said. “What you’re hearing
tonight is passion and rage against this system.”
Another speaker said he was surprised to find so much of
this outrage on the North Side.
“We have a culture of corruption in our police force,”
another speaker said. “We are viewed as an armed enemy to be slaughtered.”
Mark Shelby, a homeless man, spoke about police
harassment against the homeless. He said he lives in a tent under the viaduct
under Lake Shore Drive, and gang members come to disrupt law-abiding people
with partying and drugs, but the police do nothing to help.
“There is a policy of collective punishment of the
homeless,” Shelby said.
A Loyola graduate student in history said he saw the
police set up a sting where they sent a girl out to lure men to solicit sex and
then arrest them. What was the point of this, he asked.
One Roger’s Park woman said she could not believe seeing
the police strip search a youth in freezing temperature in the middle of
winter. She said she couldn’t leave after the police asked her to [leave]
because she was so shocked.
“I don’t feel safe when the police are around,” she said.
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