KENWOOD — The Rainbow PUSH Coalition started organizing people Wednesday night to make sure there is pressure locally to push through reforms of the Chicago Police Department if the U.S. Justice Department loses interest under President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.
The group held an open forum at its Kenwood headquarters, 930 E. 50th St., in a rush to educate people about the Justice Department report released last week and prepare for the possibility that the department will not enforce reforms under Trump.
The Rev. Janette Wilson, a senior adviser to the Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr., said the group is worried that under Trump there won’t be pressure at the federal level to clean up the Police Department and the onus will fall on the community and local politicians.
The Justice Department report found that police frequently used excessive force, failed to investigate wrongdoing by officers and did little to root out problem officers. It suggested fixes, but left many to be negotiated in an agreement with the city.
“Some of the suggestions are good, but we have to make sure they are followed,” Wilson said.
Rainbow PUSH invited experts to come and educate the community on what could be a long fight to get fixes in place in the Police Department.
After explaining the report to the some 100 people at the forum, Lori Lightfoot, president of the Chicago Police Board, said she’s worried a consent decree will never get signed if current U.S. Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) is confirmed as the next U.S. attorney general.
“I think it’s very unlikely,” Lightfoot said.
Sessions has strongly opposed consent decrees in the past and in 2008 called them a dangerous exercise of raw power by the government that “constitute an end run around the democratic process.”
Chicago is the largest police force ever investigated by the Department of Justice, and organizers at Wednesday’s meeting worried that halting the investigation would prove a tempting signal for Sessions, who has criticized the Civil Rights Division for going too far in its investigations of police.
Lightfoot said it would then fall to voters to pressure elected officials in the city and state to get needed reforms done.
“If people are down in the streets demanding it, it will happen,” Lightfoot said.
Incoming president of the National Bar Association Juan Thomas said people should not rely on reform to be enforced at the federal level.
“We need to deal with this at the local and state level because we will not have any friends in Washington,” Thomas said.
To prepare, Rainbow Push has started forming a community advisory board, which will identify changes that need to be made to the Police Department and rally groups to provide political support.
Rainbow Push has started talking to law enforcement experts and city, county and state lawmakers about helping the board and is looking for more community representatives and people willing to do community organizing down the road.
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