ROGERS PARK — More than 100 church members sang, chanted and prayed outside the Rogers Park District police station Sunday in a call for greater police accountability.
The event was one of three major protests coordinated by the Community Renewal Society Sunday beckoning city officials to adopt the FAIR COPS ordinance, which would install an "independent auditor" to check the mayor's authority on police matters.
The ordinance "would create an independent Police Auditor's Office" which would "investigate patterns of misconduct by abusive officers and the department as a whole," Community Renewal Society leaders wrote in a Sunday news release. Similar offices have been created, the release said, in New York, Los Angeles, Seattle and Denver.
Protest leaders said the timing of Sunday's citywide campaign, billed as the Palm Sunday Takeover, was not coincidental.
"Palm Sunday is the day we recognize Jesus returned to Jerusalem outraged at all the sin and greed he was seeing, calling for it to be changed," said Bret Lortie, a senior minister from the Unitarian Church in Evanston. "We hope we're doing the same thing on this Palm Sunday. This isn't just a political issue for us — it's a moral issue as well."
Despite the optics of protesting outside a police station, Lortie said, "we think of our actions as being in support of the police, so we can help them rebuild the trust of the community."
"We know most of the police are good, but we need to be focused on rooting out the bad apples to keep them from mixing in with the good ones," Lortie added.
Meanwhile, Ald. Anthony Napolitano (41st) posted a picture on his Facebook page of himself standing alongside Ald. Nicholas Sposato (38th) and Jefferson Park District Cmdr. Bill Looney, holding a sign saying "41st Ward Supports The Chicago Police Department."
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