Chicago Justice Podcast

In a first-of-its-kind independent analysis of the effectiveness of ShotSpotter, the science says the technology does not lead to more arrests and convictions for gun crimes and does not reduce these crimes in the areas where it is deployed. The study examined the impact of ShotSpotter in Chicago and Kansas City. To understand the science more deeply, we sat down with the study's first author, Dr. Eric Piza, who is a Professor of Criminology and Criminal Justice, Director of Crime Analysis Initiatives, and Co-Director of the Crime Prevention Lab at Northeastern University. The study does uncover that ShotSpotter positively impacted response times, the location of victims, and the recovery of evidence from crime scenes. While this all sounds great, it is not even remotely reflective of the criminological gains promised by SoundThinking, the company that owns the technology. The original sales pitch promised more arrests for gun crimes and convictions and, thus, a reduction in gun violence. None of these promises have come to fruition. This scholarly peer-reviewed analysis mostly mirrors previous analyses conducted by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office, the MacArthur Justice Center, and the Chicago Office of Inspector General. Pro-police politicians & journalists in Chicago have dismissed all three of these previous analyses as biased, including the one from the City's Inspector General. The alt-right refuses to hear any criticism of the police department, no matter how fact-based those criticisms might be. This shuts down any possibility of a public discussion on the merits of anything the police are in favor of. This most recent study is just being ignored by the media and politicians in Chicago. This is probably because they cannot label it biased. Instead, many alderpersons in Chicago are calling on the mayor to keep the ShotSpotter contract in place despite the technology failing to deliver on any of its promises.

We open season four with a discussion of Karina's bill, which hopes to formalize a process for the courts & police departments throughout Illinois to seize guns from individuals who have an order of protection entered against them. Our guest today is Danielle Parisi Ruffatto, Managing Director of the Family Law and Protective Orders Division at Ascend Justice. We discuss the horrific murder of Karina Gonzales & her daughter Daniela Alvarez at the hands of Karina's husband, Jose Alvarez, who had been ordered to stay away from the home. The protector order Karina received from the court revokes a person's FOID card, but the court and police do not have a formal process for ensuring that officers remove the gun when they are serving the order of protection. Karina's bill will formalize this process while empowering judges to approve search warrants when entering the protective order to allow officers to search homes & retrieve weapons if necessary. Support CJP via Patreon Get involved in our work - Join CJP Nation!

On today's show, we discuss the connection between racialized policing in the US and the efforts by the right-wing to erase slavery from America's history. We discuss this with Joseph Flynn, the Executive Director for Equity and Inclusion in the Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Northern Illinois University. The efforts to rewrite American history are an attempt to prevent Americans from realizing the connection between slavery, Jim Crow laws, the civil rights struggle in the mid-20th century, and policing in communities of color today. Absent this context, it could seem ridiculous for anyone to conclude that the justice system is and has been systemically racist. The right-wing wants everyone to think that the murders of George Floyd and Laquan McDonald are unrelated events. That the acquittal of Kyle Rittenhouse for his crimes had nothing to do with the fact that America has, since its founding, feared black men and justified just about any action taken by white men against the bodies and lives of black men if the white man was “scared.” The verdict can easily be accepted if you view it from the lens of white supremacy that dictates that black men are nothing more than urban predators who cannot control their most primal urges. We also discuss the epidemic of fear surrounding ethnic studies programs at universities across the country. This fear has been driven by America's growing underbelly of unsophisticated and fearful residents seeking someone to blame for the struggles in their lives. This makes them ripe for manipulation by the right-wing media machine and politicians who seek to benefit themselves at the expense of their supporters. This wedge serves to empower right-wing elites while simultaneously not only hurting communities of color but also putting the lives and bodies of people of color on the line. Dr. Joseph Flynn's Perspectives on WNIU - Northern Public Radio can be found here.

On today's episode, we feature an interview with Alexandra Block from the ACLU of Illinois about their lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department's highly questionable traffic stop practices. The ACLU alleges that the CPD pulls people over exclusively to search them and their care for drugs and guns. According to their statistics, the CPD's rate of finding guns, drugs, or cause to arrest the person they have pulled over is about 1%. In 2020 the Cook County State's Attorney's Office documented a significant switch in tactics by the CPD from pursuing gun offenders, those who have committed a violent crime with a weapon, to seek those who possess an unregistered gun. In the ACLU lawsuit, they allege that in 2016 the CPD made another switch in tactics from doing large numbers of stops of pedestrians in communities of color to making car stops in never before seen numbers in those same communities. The ACLU calls this just another version of stop and frisk. When combining these two critical data points, it is evident that CPD officials made a concerted effort to change how they fight gun violence and where and how they search for unregistered guns. We also discussed with Alexandra that within a lawsuit filed by a former officer, internal emails were exposed showing high-ranking officers within the department pushing middle management to increase their traffic stop numbers. The emails reveal the pushing of unconstitutional CPD quotas designed to get officers on the street to increase significantly the number of pretextual stops they make. As the ACLU data shows, about 1 in 100 stops results in gun, drugs, or cause for arrest being found. Oddly enough, they also don't result in a ticket being written. Significant proof that traffic safety is not a purpose for the stops.

Today's episode discusses the long history of abuse and mismanagement at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) with Injustice Watch reporters Kelly Garcia and Carlos Ballesteros. The JTDC has long been a dumping ground for clouted workers in Cook County government who were too incompetent for any other job in the county. This, combined with a seeming refusal of half of those running the facility to see their role as anything less than jailers, has led to a point where over the last decade, report after report has come out on the facility and their treatment of the youth in the facility. Despite these multiple reports of the horrible conditions within the facility, those in charge of running the facility seem unwilling and incapable of making the required changes. The JTDC is under the authority of Cook County Court Chief Judge Timothy Evans. One of the reports trashing the facility came from a committee he put together, and still, no significant change has come to the JTDC. We will discuss these issues and discuss Injustice Watch's reporting on the JTDC with Kelly and Carlos.

Despite promises to the contrary by the Chicago Police Department and the agencies that make up the police accountability system in Chicago, lying while undertaking your official duties as an officer isn't taken all that seriously. The CPD's rule 14 bars any officer from knowingly submitting a written or oral false report. In other words, they are not supposed to lie. A recent report issued by the Chicago Inspector General's office details how the CPD and the police accountability system are utterly inconsistent in how they respond to officers lying in their official duties. While all the agencies talk publicly about the importance of integrity and truthfulness, they are not taking violations of rule 14 anywhere as seriously as they want people to believe they are. The integrity of the CPD and the police accountability system is vital to building trust between communities and the CPD. Despite this reality, the Office of Inspector General's Public Safety section continues to churn out report after report demonstrating how little attention the agencies pay toward accountability. Today's episode discusses these issues with Chicago's Inspector General Deborah Witzburg.

On today's show we attempt to bring facts and science to the discuss around the Pre-Trail Fairness Act (PTFA) and the state of electronic monitoring (EM) in the Cook County criminal justice system. We were honored to sit down with Kareem Butler, a pretrial justice fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, to discuss these vital issues. The hyperbolic response to bail reform in Cook County and the subsequent passage of the PTFA by the Illinois General Assembly having nothing to do with the reality of what the efforts mean for communities throughout the state but are all about an ideology that cannot come to terms with the need for the justice system to treat every equitably. The response is also often based in deep hatred and fundamental distrust of the poor. This is why those bothered by both efforts are so upset that the poor can spend their pre-trial time out on the street just like those with the same charges but with the money to bond themselves out of jail. Butler demonstrates a deep understanding of the issue and is able to highlight the hypocrisy in the responses to these efforts. Also, Butler is very good at bringing the data to back up his perspective. This is a fundamentally opposite position of the alt right in Chicago whose don't need any evidence to support their beliefs. It is clear what Butler and his organization is advocating for is evidence based decision making in pre-trial assessment of the risk a potential defendant poses and for a system where there is not two different pre-trial detention policies for the rich and the poor. Butler also provides insight in to just how in true Cook County disorganized fashion the EM systems have two masters. One being the Cook County Sheriff's Office headed by political animal Tom Dart and the other being Cook County Chief Judge Timothy Evans. Neither office has a reputation being a really well run office free from political influence in their decisions. This should scare anyone that is concerned about the appropriateness of how these two EM systems are administered.

On the show today we sit down with Raina Lipsitz to discuss America's problem with justice reform and how cities like Chicago are caught in endless cycle of failure when it comes to passing meaningful justice reform. A meaningful conversation to engage in now as Mayor Lightfoot's time in office has ended with a pretty dismal record on justice reform including endlessly scapegoating judges as being to lenient despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary. Lipsitz in an article published last summer in The Crime Report discusses a couple national level examples including Philadelphia's progressive District Attorney Larry Krasner & New York City Mayor Eric Adams. Adams has proven to be pretty retrograde on his policing and justice policies according to Lipsitz including moving to reopen Riker's jail despite the unprecedented evidence of the harm the jail is causing inmates. Krasner for his part has stayed pretty true to his politics and even won reelection despite the alt right's complaints about his policies. This discussion is very timely as Brandon Johnson starts his first days in office his spokesman already started to flip flop on whether Johnson would be reopening the mental health clinics that he promised so thoroughly during his campaign. Johnson is not alone just about every mayor for at least the last three decades has in one form or another campaigned on doing something about the abuse of the Chicago police and then never really do anything about that abuse once they get in to office. Lipsitz in her piece so perfectly explains how Chicago liberals want to think they are for true justice reform but when in power they always bail on those plans. They don't want what happened to Kim Foxx to happen to them. Raina Lipsitz is the author of The Rise of a New Left: How Young Radicals Are Shaping the Future of American Politics, published from Verso. Her work has appeared in Al Jazeera America, The Appeal, The Atlantic, The Nation, and The New Republic, among other publications. We are talking to her today about a piece she wrote last July in The Crime Report: Breaking the ‘Toxic Cycle' of Fear Over Justice Reform.

The Adam Toledo shooting while a massive tragedy was not out of line with Chicago Police Department guidelines and so the firing of Eric Stillman smells like politics. Despite how the video of this shooting has been exploiting repeatedly for political purposes the reality is that tragic police shootings can occur and those shootings can also be inline with CPD guidelines. The fervor over the shooting of Toledo makes sense as nobody really wants to see children die at the hands of anyone, especially law enforcement. This fact however does not allow people to say the shooting of Toledo is unjustified just because of Adam's age without considering the facts involved in the shooting. This also goes for the fact that the gun shot identifying technology ShotSpotter that did properly identify the shooting and altered officers to respond does not make the shooting unjustified. The technology is unproven and while we remain critical of the use of such technologies in this case it seems to have worked. The reality is that it seems like Interim Superintendent Eric Carter is moving to fire Stillman for political reasons and not because of misconduct. If this is the case then this is going to support the conspiracy theories the CPD rank and file have about the CPD's leadership and the police accountability system as a whole. It also means that one more time Toledo's death is being exploited for personal gain. It is a Chicago tradition unfortunately. 23PB3025ChargesDownload

Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx has announced that after two terms in office she will not be running for re-election in the fall of 2024. On today's show we will provide our quick response to Foxx deciding to end her political career and provide some insight on what brought us to this point. It is very hard for progressive politicians to bring in the changes they campaign on because of the vitriolic response from centrists and conservatives. In the post 2016 presidential election that gave air to the alt right this has become much harder. The bar is raised to such a degree that the slightest mistake or transgression is seized upon and can be career ending. In the case of Foxx her mistake was so big that it probably would have caused even the most conservative prosecutor their next election. Of course I am talking about the deal that Foxx executed in one of Chicago's stupidest scandals ever, the Jussie Smollett case. The fact that the case was charged in the manner it was originally shows you just how dysfunctional it has been but that does not absolve Foxx of her responsibility of totally bumbling probably the highest profile (yet stupidest) case her office would handle in her two terms. The reality is that the reaction to the progressive reforms that Foxx put forward like bail reform and her changes to not charging people for retail theft unless in access of a $1,000 was stolen were completely baseless. The criticisms were put forward from the alt right in Chicago, a mayor who has a PhD in pointing finger at other, and a police superintendent with a history of lying during an internal misconduct investigation. Not a credible bunch at all.

On today's show we discuss the new process for how a new superintendent (supt) for the Chicago Police Department gets selected. With the creation of the new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability the process is slightly different from the last time a new supt was selected. In years past the Chicago Police Board would select 3 candidates for the job of supt and send that list to the mayor. Legally it seemed the mayor was forced to either selected his/her pick from that list or return the entire list to the Board for the to select a new slate of candidates. Historically mayors have just ignored the Board's selections and hired their own choice for supt. It seems like Mayor Lightfoot did choose from the list provided but it has been reported that the Board knew that the Mayor had a person in mind so they made sure to put that candidate on their short list. Now the selection process for a new supt is run by the Commission. There certainly seems like there Is potential for real change. However, some recent comments by the Commission's interim President Anthony Driver Jr have me a little worried about the potential for real change. Driver Jr was recently quoted talking about how rank and file officers didn't feel that former Superintendent David Brown had their backs. Driver Jr serving as a megaphone for alt right rhetoric that comes straight from the alt right leadership of the Fraternal Order of Police is very concerning. Driver Jr seems to think that they are going to find some one for the position of supt that cannot unite the alt right of the department, with the residents of Chicago concerned about police misconduct, and policymakers in to a united front to fight crime and violence in Chicago. Obviously this is folly. The fact that his is coming from the person leading the organization that is selecting the candidates to be the next supt is very, very concerning.

On today's episode I am going to give you my very initial thoughts on the Brandon Johnson victory in the Chicago mayoral runoff election as it pertains to police reform issues. The majority of the mayoral field ran primarily on the issue of crime and violence being out of control in Chicago. If you are thinking that black "progressive" alderpeople who jumped in the race wouldn't do that you would be wrong. Instead it was a chorus signing the tride but true 1980s ear rhetoric about the need for more police officers and that each individual candidate was the only person who could bring crime under control. While these tactics seemed to be affective against Mayor Lightfoot those same types of critiques against a far more progressive in rhetoric candidate Johnson didn't seem to work as well. There is little doubt in my mind that Paul Vallas tried the Bob Fioretti plan where he was going to try to be a candidate for every possible constituency in the city, and many that couldn't even vote in this election. Over the last several years he has certainly grown publicly closer to the MAGA and alt right both in Chicago and throughout Illinois. As Illinois grows more and more democratic this strategy has always seemed odd to me. Attempting a mayoral run in Chicago after doing this is puzzling for sure. Unfortunately for Vallas he continued to do this during the campaign. There is no doubt given the margin of about 17,000 votes his move right probably played a more important role then we will ever understand in his loss. As for what we should expect from Johnson I am think reformers should not expect major changes in the first budget. There just isn't enough time. When Johnson starts to make changes I am hoping he roles our a crisis response system that removes officers from responding to 911 calls that don't require them to be there. This would allow the city to staff a response with mental health professionals, medical personnel, and social workers. This among all the reforms Johnson could bring in would probably do the most to help repair the relationship between the community and the police department.

On today's pod we discuss the alleged reasoning behind Chicago CRED's founder & leader Arne Duncan's endorsement of Paul Vallas for mayor. Later we also discuss the Chicago Tribune's editorial comparing Donald Trump & Jussie Smollett. We know about Duncan's endorsement because Duncan authored an OpEd in the Chicago Tribune announcing it. While we are not going to judge the endorsement itself other than to say we believe nonprofit leaders are and should be barred from engaging in any type of political involvement including endorsements. This is why we find what Duncan has done and the method he has done it to be completely distasteful but inline with his Chicago machine roots. The outrageous and completely unbelievable reasoning behind this endorsement is that Duncan says because Paul Vallas has a wife who is former police officer and that his son is a current officer makes him the perfect person to make the Fraternal Order of Police, the main police union in Chicago, swallow reforms. If you are thinking this is totally bat shit crazy you are not alone. This would require Duncan to be so naive that the alt right extremist FOP leadership did not have a conversation with Vallas about reversing reforms already put in to place and limiting whatever he might bring forward during his administration. The FOP leadership is awful & full of hatred but they are not that dumb. That conversation definitely took place. Duncan knows this but used this bull shit reasoning anyways. The weird thing is Chicago CRED's reforms that they support as an organization are very aligned with Brandon Johnson's stated reform goals. They are also very far from the unleash the police rhetoric of Vallas. Also on the show today we discuss a really bad OpEd by the Tribune's Editorial Board comparing Donald Trump to Jussie Smollett. While they are aligned in that they are both proven liars there is nothing else that connects them. However, in the OpEd itself the Tribune reveals the real reason they have pushed so hard for Smollett to be put in prison and it is pretty ridiculous for the small government hypocrites.

The coverage of the runoff in the race for mayor and the intense focus on crime and criminal justice matters exposes bias in the Chicago Tribune and the reporters. In the article we discuss today there are massive assumptions embedded in the article that are presented as facts by the two authors. Also embedded in the article if you look closely are topics for which Chicago journalists continue to fail the public by not making the candidates for mayor provide specific answers to pointed follow up questions regarding their policies. The rhetoric coming from the Vallas campaign about proactive policing and removing restrictions on police foot and car pursuits so they can get the criminals sounds good in a commercial but journalists should be forcing both candidates to provide specifics about their policies so experts can weigh in on what science tells us about the potential impact of their policies. All people of color should be scared of a Chicago Police Department unchained by the accountability system and free to do whatever is needed to get the job done. If anyone remembers what the Special Operations Section (SOS) street unit was doing under Phil Cline imagine that but department wide. It will be like dropping a nuclear bomb in police community relations building efforts. For his part Brandon Johnson is providing more specifics about his plans than Vallas. He is for building up a citywide crisis response to 911 calls involving mental health and drugs that do not require an armed officer to respond. He has also said he will not commit to hiring additional officers to the department and instead wants to invest that money into programs that will have longer-term success. He has backed off of to some degree his support for defunding the police. I think with Johnson he has strategically decided to talk in more nuance about the programs he would fund by diverting police budgets rather that the general defund concepts.

This week we take the first of what will be many looks at soon to be former Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown and his time in Chicago. Unfortunately for Chicago despite the Mayor's glowing endorsement and hiring of Brown the reality is that the Lightfoot administration was engaged in a conspiracy with Brown to hide his misconduct while a member of the Dallas Police Department. Their lack of transparency and integrity about this issue was emblematic of Brown's time with the CPD. Brown is skilled at co-opting the language of reformers and accountability advocates for his own ends. He probably said the words of transparency & accountability more than any former superintendent but in reality nothing changed on the ground. Brown came in to the CPD while the department was in the early stages of a federal consent decree that mandates specific reforms. He also took over the department immediately after the Mayor herself brought in former Los Angeles Police Department Chief Charlie Beck to kick-start transforming the CPD in to a 21st century police department. Instead of continuing the reforms Beck had implemented Brown reversed them. The Mayor voiced support for Brown's reversals despite making reforming the CPD a key part of her campaign. No evaluation of Brown or Lighfoot's time in power in Chicago can be done absent the context of the COVID-19 pandemic and the murder of George Floyd. Both played a major part in shaping the circumstances of their time in power. Unfortunately for both of them Brown completely misread the intelligence regarding the protests sweeping the country in response to Floyd's murder. This was the same intelligence both the Cook County Sheriff and Illinois State Police read and knew protests were coming to Chicago. The pandemic alone may have doomed them but the failure of the CPD to have a professional response to the protests was probably the nail in the coffin for both Brown & Lightfoot. Become a CJP Patron: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=13274454 Get Involved: https://www.cjpnation.org Find out more about our work: https://chicagojustice.org/

Mayor Lightfoot just lost re-election and now stands as the first mayor in forty years to fail to lose re-election after their first term in office. Her is our quick reaction to her loss. There is little doubt that the reaction to to Mayor Lightfoot from the beginning was based partially on her race, gender, and sexuality. There is also little doubt that her style of governance and lack of relationship building skills contributed significantly to her downfall. Mayor Lightfoot has a propensity to always think she is the smartest person in the room and make important decisions without taking time to think things through. Her reaction to the protests to George Floyd's murder and their demands to defund the police are a prime example. Instead of coming up with a strategy to show compassion and engage the protestors she immediately came out and denounced the protests and dismissed their calls. She should have engaged protestors in discussions around what it would look like to create a new public safety agency and build alternative responses to 911 calls that don't involve the police. This was the easy and smart move. But the Mayor chose to be dismissive in her patented style which only through gas on the flames instead of working to douse them. For some reason the Mayor picked David Brown to be her Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department despite his track record of lying during internal investigations and police policies from the strong age. This hurt her politically as Brown's tenure basically turned in to one big disgrace as he is as good at building and maintaining relationships as she is. We are now left with a run off election for the mayor's office between Paul Vallas, who is alt right when it comes to policing, and Brandon Johnson, who sounds progressive on police reform but has little real record to show voters. These candidates are starkly different on police reform like Chicago probably never really has had before. Time will tell who wins.

An interesting piece of research documenting in their own words how some practitioners in Illinois' justice system use jail. While the research on the uses of jail throughout Illinois vary there seems to be a thread that the use is regularly extrajudicial and goes well beyond the legal purposes of jail and bail. The goal of the report was to seek out how practitioners use jail and why they seem to be against the Pretrial Fairness Act (PFTA). While the report does shed light on how sheriffs and prosecutors, mostly rural, use jail they don't really ask any followup questions that I believe would have shed immeasurable more light on the injustices in their practices. The article quotes officials talking about how they jail people to address countless social problems that are way out of the purview of their offices and the justice system as a whole. This ranges from using jail to address homelessness in the short term and a person in crisis, however the type of crisis that is being addressed is not defined. Now they practitioners also admitted they use jail as a way to pressure defendants to work out a plea bargain. The authors detail how outside of Cook County the percentage of felony cases that result in a plea bargain is 97% while in Cook County that rate is nearly 87%. These are disturbing figures especially when you consider just how broken and incompetent the justice system in large cities with official oversight is not to mention how bad rural justice systems must be with no meaningful accountability mechanisms built in to their systems. It is pretty clear that practitioners from around Illinois are using the mechanisms of the justice system to inflict massive violations of constitutional and human rights. Their arguement against the PTFA is actually just an argument in favor of letting them continue their illicit practices that by the benefits them politically also.

The police accountability system in Chicago just provided all of us more examples of just how broken the system really is. It is a system I have spent over 25 years trying to reform but unfortunately the system cannot seem to provide the Chicago Police Department the oversight and accountability that has been so desperately needed in Chicago. On today's show we take a look at a recent example where the failures of this system has provided an avenue for an officer to continue his career as a police officer despite demonstrating horrendously bad judgment while off duty drunk and armed. Instead of firing the officer they instead sought a mediated settlement of a 180 suspension. This allowed the officer to get a job with a suburban department after serving his suspension instead of being removed from the profession completely. For some reason being drunk off duty, armed, getting in to a fight, and losing control of your gun in the fight is not something the system deems serious enough to remove the officer from the profession. In last week's show we talked with Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg and the failure of the system to fire two officers affiliated with the white supremacist organizations of the Proud Boys and Oath Keepers. Unfortunately this pattern of incompetence and lack of aggressiveness is not new to this version of the system but instead endemic of how it has operated since it was created. Also on today's show we discuss an oddly framed article about CPD Superintendent David Brown aging out at the department this spring which was instead framed with intrigue as to whether or not he will stay on despite the fact that all the mayoral contenders say they will not keep him on. We also discuss the need for listeners to vote for their district council seats in the upcoming elections as the alt right in Chicago is organizing and running the exact people you would expect them to run. Get Involved: www.cjpnation.org Become a patron: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=13274454

On today's show we feature a interview with Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg discussing the case of Chicago's Proud Boys cop. As it has been reported in Chicago the Bureau of Internal Affairs had two chances to fire a Chicago Police officer who was associating both in person and online with the white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys. Officer Robert Bakker failed to report to the CPD that he had been questions by the FBI about his involvement with an organization known as the Proud Boys. When questioned by BIA Bakker gave "contradictory" and "misleading" statements about his involvement with the organization and the fact that he was questioned by the FBI. In their original set of findings BIA only suspended Bakker 5 days for his statements and his failure to report his being questioned by the FBI. After the Office of Inspector General reviewed the closed investigation as they are required to do by law they referred the case back to BIA because in their opinion the investigation was not thorough. BIA then sustained charges against Bakker for new allegations but not for his involvement in the organization or for submitting a false report which would have been enough to move to fire Bakker. As Witzburg details the CPD also had an opportunity to fire an officer who admitted to being a member of the Oath Keepers. They also declined to fire this officer. Not the best time for police accountability in Chicago. When being involved with the Proud Boys and the Oath Keepers brings you a slap on the wrist in Chicago's police accountability system it certainly seems that there needs to be accountability for accountability system. This comes at time when Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent David Brown are trying to tell the public that the CPD is making progress on the reforms mandated by the consent decree. Not sure what reform would be more fundamental than firing cops for associations with white supremacist organizations.

On today's show we sit down with 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez to discuss her efforts to get Chicago to implement true crisis response that doesn't involve the Chicago Police Department. While focusing mainly on her ordinance we also get a little politics in given it is the season as Chicago's elections will be held in just a few weeks. In response to protests stemming from the murder of George Floyd cities around the country started to test out and implement a form of crisis response to 911 calls that doesn't involve sending uniformed officers with guns to the scene. The idea is that the mere presence of the badge and gun escalates the situation. It also takes in to account that officers are not trained nor equipped to properly deal with people in mental health crisis or who are under the influence of drugs or alcohol but haven't yet become violence. Chicago under Mayor Lightfoot did indeed create a few pilot programs in a couple of districts Mayor Lightfoot demanded that those pilots include an officer among the responders. This is something our guest and the three decades of evidence in Eugene, OR shows that is not the way to do it. Crisis response is not something new to the US. The CAHOOTS crisis response program has been active since 1988. CAHOOTS has demonstrated that crisis response can be successful over three decades it is just that Mayor Lightfoot either decided to ignore the evidence or just thought she knew better than everyone else. This is a common issue with people who always think they are the smartest person in the room. Alderwoman Rodriguez Sanchez has introduced an ordinance called Treatment not Trauma that focuses on crisis response. We will be talking in-depth about the ordinance and Mayor Lightfoot's response.

On today's episode we sit down with Susan Lee who is currently Chief of Strategy and Policy at Chicago CRED but was previously Deputy Mayor for Public Safety under the Lightfoot administration. Lee is known as an expert on violence prevention and was doing this same work in Los Angeles before coming to Chicago. Lee was brought in to city government to try to help build a more robust and coordinated anti-violence effort from a position within the Mayor's office. Leaked emails have demonstrated that anti-violence partners that Lee had helped organize were complaining about the rhetoric being used by Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown regarding their criticism of bail reform. Rhetoric both continue to use despite the facts. It is believed that this very rhetoric lead Lee to leave the Mayor's office and return to her work with Chicago CRED. Our conversation today goes deep in to the work of the organizations working everyday in Chicago to prevent violence from occurring. Chicago CRED is just one of many organizations working on violence prevention. They are routinely underfunded and left to deal with the repercussions of failed city policies. For decades the city has continued to remove resources from the most under served communities and left organizations trying to do this work to pick up the pieces. Lee's work is very important because to some degree these organizations are the only ones trying to make a difference in these communities. We also discuss Lee's recent OpEd in the Chicago Tribune on how reform of the Chicago Police Department hangs by a thread. This OpEd was in response to Superintendent David Brown's firing of Robert Boik who was head of the office that was directing reform efforts. A move not inline with the rhetoric on reform coming from Mayor Lightfoot or Superintendent Brown.

On today's episode we feature a discussion about the real cost of the Chicago Police Department and how the City of Chicago uses corrupt budget practices to hide some of the cost from taxpayers and the media. These practices are not new to the city but Mayor Lightfoot's administration has done nothing to correct them. Thus, like other corrupt mayors before her she hides the true cost from taxpayers. Trying to figure out exactly how much the city spends on the Chicago Police Department is almost impossible unless you have significant experience deciphering budgets for a living. Thankfully, Jonathan Silverstein took the time to comb through the city's budget and parse out the hidden costs associated with operating the CPD. Jonathan is a Management Analyst with the City of Evanston, IL during the day. Jonathan has experience with Chicago budgets as he worked both in an alderperson's office and at the City Council Office of Financial Analysis. The politics around how much policing in the city costs taxpayers has always be fraught. On one side you have the Fraternal Order of Police always demanding the city spend more and more on police while leftists in Chicago question the spending and would rather put those costs towards addressing root causes. In his research Jonathan details how the city uses a dumping ground within the budget to hide items like pension costs maintenance for CPD facilities and cars. These practices allow the city to hide well over $1 billion in costs related to the CPD annually. If you are thinking this reflects really bad on the media in Chicago that it took a budget nerd to spend his free time to uncover these costs when the Chicago media couldn't be bothered over a couple decades to do it you would be correct!

On today's pod we focus on the problem of the absence of news and how humans fill that hole with their beliefs rather than facts. We dive deep in to these issues with Professor Sandy Goldberg from Northwestern University's Department of Philosophy. Goldberg recently authored an opinion editorial in the Chicago Tribune focused on the dangers posed when people fill the whole left by a lack of news on a topic with their beliefs about an issue that of course fit their political beliefs. Goldberg's research focuses on Epistemology which is the investigation of what distinguishes justified belief from opinion. While this topic is incredibly meaningful given the how divisive the political rhetoric is in America it is especially important given the state of the discourse around justice reform in Chicago. Chicagoans are convinced that crime and violence are out of control and that these issues are unique to Chicago in a manner that it can only be dealt with by changing local responses. This of course flies in the face of the reality that crime and violence is up in cities around the country and that local responses seem not to impact whether a city is experiencing increased levels. Also important to note is that the public's lack of trust in the news and the news media certainly plays in to exacerbating this issue. Many in the alt right in Chicago are convinced that local justice reform is responsible for the increases in crime and violence despite media reporting on data that proves this just isn't the case. When confronted by these facts the alt right just ignores them and relies on their political beliefs as enough to reinforce their beliefs despite being challenged by the news media with the facts. There is also the case that the fact that the news media is not reporting on individual aspects of the social circumstances in Chicago means they cannot be contributing to the underlying causes of crime and violence.

On today's pod we sit down with former Inspector General for the City of Chicago, Joe Ferguson. We discuss a wide range of topics from the city's failure to release investigative reports generated by his former office to city council corruption to why there is not a single Inspector General Office with oversight over all of the city departments. Ferguson left office last year after a 12 year run. His tenure covered the last 2 years of the Daley administration, Rahm Emanuel's two terms, and about 60% of Mayor Lightfoot's first term. Ferguson aggressiveness in his pursuit to expose graft that is endemic to Chicago has always presented political problems for the politicians within the City Council and the Mayor's Office. About 6 years ago the City Council passed legislation creating the Deputy Public Safety Inspector General within his office that empowered the office to reach in to the Chicago Police Department & the police accountability system in Chicago and audit their activities. This has resulted in Ferguson's office publishing several groundbreaking reports about the failures of the CPD and the police accountability system. Many of which have been discussed on previous episodes featuring interview with Deputy Public Safety Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. Ferguson has been involved in Chicago politics and corruption long enough that his insight in to Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent David Browns actions are certainly informed. The Mayor could not hid her contempt for Ferguson or the office during her short time in office. It was so bad that when she announced his permanent replacement she just couldn't help herself and had to blurt out about the need for Witzburg and the office to stay in their lane. A clear threat to not mess with the big boss. You can support our work as well as access podcast extra out our Patreon: https://www.patreon.com/user?u=13274454

On today's pod we take a look at recent reporting by the Better Government Association that focuses on the city's Anti-violence efforts and the inability of leadership to detail specific steps they have taken to reduce gun violence. This inability to detail their anti-violence efforts hasn't stopped leadership from claiming those mysterious efforts have had an immediate impact on reducing gun violence this summer in Chicago. In the long tradition of Chicago politicians Mayor Lightfoot and Tamara Mahal, the Mayor's point person leading the city's anti-violence efforts, have been spreading misinformation about the impact of the city's anti-violence efforts in every forum they can. According to the BGA this is not the first time Mahal has spread information that is clearly untrue to bolster her resume or the forcefulness of a program she is running. Mahal led the city's effort to distribute COVID 19 vaccines and was caught by the BGA bragging about how Chicago's efforts to distribute vaccines was the most equitable of any large city. Unfortunately an academic study rated the city's efforts at best 10th best out of the 16 largest cities in the country. Mahal was also caught spreading misinformation about her role in disaster relief including being a point person for a university as they worked through a drought. The only problem is city officials remember that their recommendation to the university consisted of water their grass less. It is this kind of puffery and dishonesty that gets you promoted within city government to lead citywide anti-violence efforts. Also on today's show we discuss Robert Boik's firing from the Chicago Police Department's Office of Constitutional Policing and Reform for having a disagreement with Superintendent Brown. Boik is widely respected within the CPD as a straight shooter. The disagreement seems to stem from him request for 23 additional officers to be assigned to the police academy to help the CPD meet their obligations related to training officers throughout the department that has a deadline specified in the consent decree for March of 2023. Brown not only didn't approve the 23 officers he request over 40 officers from the academy be transferred to the Bureau of Patrol for street duty. Thus assuring the CPD would not meet their obligations for in-service training for all their officers. To end today we examine an column by some local religious leaders claiming to know that the was to reduce gun violence in Chicago is to improve the CPD's clearance rates for violent crime. Clearly from the piece you know for sure the authors don't know anything about clearance rates or what impact putting pressure on officers to clear homicides might have in communities of color. Thankfully we do.

As crime & violence increased in many cities in America as the pandemic took hold in 2020 the media coalesced around a narrative that the increase was driven mostly by an increase in youth offending. This narrative about youth offending seemed to fit the circumstances as the pandemic got worse schools shut down and there was a a belief that there would be a huge increase in unsupervised youth roaming the streets free to reek havoc on the streets. The question posed by our guest this week is whether or not the data backs up this narrative or challenges it. Today we speak with Richard Mendel who is a Senior Research Fellow for Youth Justice at the Sentencing Project and author of the study we focus on today. The study is titled "Data Reveals Violence Among Youth Under 18 Has Not Spiked in the Pandemic". Mendel's research directly challenged the narrative about the youth being the main driver of increases in crime and violence in 2020. The research focuses on violent crime including homicides, robberies, carjackings, rape. robbery.and  aggravated assault. Mendel clearly lays out: the share of crime committed by youth continued to decline in 2020 Serious violence offenses committed by youth decreased in 2020. There is not national data collected on carjackings as they fall into the robbery category. In 2020 the data shows that robberies by youth declined in 2020. Mendel's findings are provocative and certainly challenge the narrative that has been pushed by the media, especially in Chicago. Mendel does specifically highlight Chicago when addressing carjackings specifically as this issue has been in the media significantly. Mendel points to the fact that arrests have only been made in 5% of carjacking cases so it is impossible to determine from that small sample who is responsible for the majority of carjacking offenses. You can support our work at our Patreon.

Today we feature a discussion with newly appointed Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg. Witzburg previously held a variety of positions within the office including most recently being the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety. It is in this role she was able to drive the activities of the office and have the office start actually making an impact on the administration of justice within the Chicago Police Department and the polcie accountability system in Chicago. In our discussion with her we take a closer look at a recent report issued by the DPSIG on the lack of policies and procedures within the police accountability system in Chicago to administer accountability in a fair and consistent matter across all the cases they investigate. We then turn with Witzburg to a wish list of research the office published late last year and highlight several possible research topics and get her to comment on why each of these topics is leading the agenda for the DPSIG. There is no doubt that policing in Chicago and well as the system that tries to hold officers accountable provides a target rich environment for Witzburg's office. The research topics we highlight would make a significant positive impact on how our communities are policed and how Chicago's incredibly complicated police accountability system does their work. We then end the interview getting Witzburg to respond to Mayor Lightfoot's comments about how she/the office need to stay in their lane. An obvious comment meant to intimidate Witzburg and the office to not interfere with decisions that the Mayor has made. So typical Chicago. Here are links to our previous interview with Witzburg on various topics while she was the DPSIG: Deborah Witzburg Extended Interview Deborah Witzburg Interview on ShotSpotter Exploring CPD’s Response to George Floyd Protests COPA Compliance with Video Release Policy

Today we focus on the  work of the Final 5 Campaign as they push to force the closure of Illinois' juvenile youth centers. According to the Campaign's website 10 years ago the centers across the state used to house as many as 1,200 youths in their 10 facilities. The reductions in the number of youths incarcerated is due mostly to changes in Illinois law have put a stop to housing those who were convicted of misdemeanor offenses. Also contributing to the reduction in the number of those incarcerated is that the Illinois Department of Juvenile Justice created their own parole oversight mechanism which has reduced the number of youth that are incarcerated for technical violations of their release. We are very excited to have Nicole Negrete from the Campaign on our podcast today to discuss their work. The Campaign is driven by formerly incarcerated youth or youth impacted by a family member, friend, or community member.  This reality adds to the urgency and dedication to those behind the campaign. America more broadly and Illinois specifically has for a very long time been a carceral state that is convinced that locking youth up for even the most minor offenses will in the long term bring about safer communities. Unfortunately for the youth in Illinois it has taken policymakers far too long to learn what criminologists have known for a long time, deterrence is not as successful as ideologues believe it is. This has led the state to incarcerate too many youth for far too long regardless of what best practices and social science research shows works. This has had incalculable impact on communities and youth throughout Illinois.

A recent investigation by Pro Publica and the Chicago Tribune revealed that many schools within Illinois are ticketing students for rather common misbehavior in schools. Much of the ticketing either skirts state law or outright breaks it as schools are not allowed to ticket students and in 2019 the state outlawed completely the practice of ticketing students for truancy. The change in state law did not slow the practice of ticketing students for truancy regardless of the practice being outlawed. It seems as if many schools in Illinois viewed the law as optional or not applying to them. Today with speak with the two authors of this amazing piece of investigative reporting Jodi Cohen from Pro Publica Illinois and Jennifer Smith Richards from the Chicago Tribune. Their story is a deep dive into a practice that is used by countless schools districts around the state. Years ago the state outlawed schools themselves from directly ticketing students. So, many school districts did not want to give the practice up so they instead hand the kids over to police to do the ticketing. Many schools have school resource officers stationed in the schools so it is a quick walk over to that office where they hand the child off to the officer and pretend that the schools are not involved in ticketing the students. If this sounds highly corrupt and very typical for Illinois you would be correct. Of the many problems involved in this practice is that many times the ticketing of students is hitting students from the most under-served communities with the least resources possible to pay the fines and fees. Then their is the quasi legal process where students who want to fight the legitimacy of the ticket have to appear in front of hearing officers in mock courtroom settings or in front of judges in courtrooms but are not provided counsel at any point. As Cohen and Smith Richards discuss today the entire process regardless of the setting is set up as an assembly line to process kids through an unjust mockery of due process.

The Chicago Park District sex scandal should have been an opportunity for leadership in Chicago to rise to the occasion to protect victims from being re-victimized and from others from not being victimized at all. Instead, Chicago got exactly what most Chicagoans would expect. Political leadership at the Park District and at city hall chose instead to go in to coverup mode or outright deny their power to impact the response to allegations of widespread sexual harassment, abuse, and assault at the city's pools and beaches. Dan's reporting clearly detailed that Michael Kelly, the CEO and superintendent, received materials that detailed an allegation of sexual misconduct involving  employees and he say on it rather than the legal and moral thing to sound all the alarms possible and demand immediate action to protect not only other Park District staff but the tens of thousands of Chicago children that frequent the city's pools and hundreds of thousands of residents and tourists that visit Chicago's many beaches each year. Kelly actions unfortunately were not an outlier when it came to Park District officials. Chicago Park District Board President Avis LaVelle told 32nd Ward Alderperson Scott Waguespack in a meeting that all the allegations that Dan uncovered were nothing more than "sour grapes" from women who had consented to the sexual harassment, abuse, and assault. Instead of demanding the Chicago Police Department and Cook County State's Attorney's Office get involved to make every effort to protect the women the Park District leadership did nothing more than coverup the allegations including firing the Deputy Inspector General running the investigation and later forced out the Inspector General. Not the response of ethical and moral people but exactly what you would expect from Chicago politicians. In our conversation with Dan we will touch many aspects of the scandal including how Kelly and LaVelle got to their positions of power. We also discuss the unbelievable fact that the Park District has a history of going back to at least 1975 of ignoring allegations of sexual misconduct at the city's pools and beaaches.

On the show today we feature a discussion with 22nd Ward Alderperson Michael Rodriguez on the topic of criminal justice in Chicago. Our wide ranging discussion cover topics from examining Mayor Lightfoot's record on police reform, the Mayor's inability to bring the George Floyd protestors to the table, and the recent move by city officials to extend the curfew for minors. The Mayor despite her rhetoric to the contrary when she was running for Mayor she has had a very mixed bag when it comes to police reform. It is clear she really is a centrist when it comes to finding a new way forward in policing. She is slow walking building up new systems to respond to 911 calls that do not require a police response and her move to extend the curfew will only increase negative interactions between BIPOC youth and the CPD. All of this makes our discussion with Rodriguez all the more important. Rodriguez is a vocal critic of the Mayor and the Chicago Police Department when their is cause to question their actions. As a member of the progressive caucus in the city council Rodriguez has distinguished himself by fighting for investment in communities as the long-term solution to crime and violence rather than the constant reactionary move by political leaders to throw more and more money at the CPD. A move the Mayor and many of the alt right contingent within the city council want to do currently. Rodriguez grew up in Little Village the same community he now represents in the city council. Rodriguez was a community organizer with Little Village Community Development Corporation which would later change names to ENLACE Chicago. He rose to lead that organization before running for and eventually winning a set in the city council to represent his community.

The long lasting FOIA battle for historical records related to police accountability within the Chicago Police Department made its way to the Illinois Supreme Court. The arguments in front of the Illinois Supreme Court stem from the Chicago Police Department failing to respond within the 5 days required by law to a request for records under the Illinois Freedom of Information Act. By law this failure eliminates the ability of the CPD to claim the request is overly burdensome. An exemption that is routinely used by public bodies across Illinois to get out from under the law's requirements. In this case specifically a lawyer filed a request for historical police accountability records ion Chicago. The request spanned multiple decades and included tens of thousands of pages of records at a minimum. After the CPD eventually got around to denying the request because it was overly burdensome lathe lawyer filed used in Illinois courts. At the trial level the lawyer won access but the appellate court reversed that decision which is why this case made it to the Illinois Supreme Court. This sordid case also includes the city offering Charles Green the man whose name is on the request and whose supposedly is trying to access these records to clear his name for a crime he says he was wrongly convicted of, $500,000 to drop the case. In the end Green never got his money and depending on how the Court rules he may not get his records either. Also on the show today we cover Fox 32 Chicago exploiting violence in Chicago to frame a multimillion dollar donation from a Illinois based billionaire to a University of Chic ago think tank as fighting gun violence in Chicago when it has nothing to do with gun violence at all. Governor Pritzker signing a bill that is as weak and useless on creating an alternative response system rather than sending cops to crimes that don't require them to be there as it can be.

On today's how we discuss three examples of media coverage of crime and violence in Chicago that perfectly demonstrate just how bad the coverage of these issues is in Chicago. There is little doubt that the tried and true methods of covering crime and violence in Chicago on a daily basis serves nobody's interest but the outlets and journalists' themselves. The internet has served not as an empowering tool for the media to crime and violence in a more nuanced and thoughtful way without the space and time restrictions that printing deadline or nightly newscasts put on local journalists. Instead it has mostly served to increase space available for the same horrible reporting. The secondary problem the internet has allowed for is the ever increasing pressure from political operations that disguise themselves as media outlets and push "reporting" that serves a fringe political ideology. Unfortunately for Chicago, there too many fringe political operations that put pressure on local media to report the news inline with their political ideology. All of this leads us to the three media stories we we discuss on today's show: Arrest rates have dropped over past few years in Chicago as crime rates go up -- why? Trump's Operation Legend's legacy: 2 years later, Chicago gun defendants getting stiff sentences 68 bullets fired in Near North shootout, but man accused of taking part only faces misdemeanor after prosecutors reject felony charges All three are horrific in their own way. Sometimes it is heard to figure out if a report on crime and violence in Chicago in Chicago is from a mainstream outlet or one of the fringe political operations if you read them without knowing what outlet it was coming from. Crime and violence reporting has always been an issues in Chicago unfortunately the internet has not brought about a boom in meaningful and thoughtful coverage of these issues.

On today's episode we sit down with 49th Ward Alderperson Maria Hadden for a wide ranging conversation about justice issues in Chicago. Hadden coming in to office at the same time as Mayor Lightfoot understands the impact the pandemic had on public officials and how the pandemic transformed their first terms in office. We start the episode by asking Hadden to give Mayor Lightfoot a grade on police reform to this point in her first term. It is pretty clear that Mayor Lightfoot pulled somewhat of a bait and switch when it came to police reform as her rhetoric during the campaign not really matched the her actions while in office. There is little doubt that she has confronted the Fraternal Order of Police and their alt right regime that is running the union. While this is something those that voted for her to push police reform would want her to do that is hardly the extent of the reforms her supporters were expecting. We also discuss with Hadden how the Mayor uses the consent decree to some extent to limit the range of legislative reforms that can pass the city council. Reforms like Hadden's Anjanette Young ordinance that would reform the Chicago Police Department's warrant practices including eliminating no-knock warrants and forcing the officers to actually wait 30 seconds after knocking to kick doors down. Hardly radical reforms but reforms non-the-less that Mayor Lightfoot is doing whatever she can to block the legislation from passing. We end our conversation discussing Mayor's very recent announcement that the Christopher Columbus statute will be returning to grant park. Hadden talks about how this is just another failure of process by Mayor Lightfoot because the city has a monument committee supposedly working on a city wide plan for all monuments and yet the Mayor makes a unilateral announcement before the process has been completed. Sadly this is very typical for the Mayor and is just one reason her approval ratings are not where she wants them.

There is at times some good journalism that makes way through the it bleeds it leads dribble that comes out everyday all day in the Chicago media. In today's show we talk about 2 fine examples of good journalism from WBEZ and the Chicago Tribune. These two examples are not the investigative journalism that we would usually feature but they come from the unlikely source of more traditional beat journalism. I usually reserve the content produced by beat repporters for scorn because how shallow and propagandist the coverage usually is; however, today we have two shinny examples of good journalism produced by more or less beat reporters. The first example we cover today is a piece by Chip Mitchell at WBEZ titled "A top suburban prosecutor blames Waukegan police for a boy's false confession".  In this piece MItchell does a great job of digging in to the fact that the cops clearly did something they know is illegal but because of the weakness of our state legislators there is no real punishment for the cops despite their illegal bebavior. Our second example of good journalism is a piece by Annie Sweeney and Stephanie Casanova at the Chicago Tribune titled "Surge in Chicago violence highlights teens in trouble and efforts to save them: ‘The stakes feel higher.' This piece actually digs in the the science regarding brain development of youth and it discusses how punishing the youth with incarceration rather than rehabilitation actually is more likely to lead to a life spent justice system involved. Later in the show we also discuss the ridiculous letter written by 12 alderpeople to Mayor Lightfoot demanding a special city council hearing on ending the City's vaccine mandate for city workers. The letter is a shining example of just how delusional our elected officials in Chicago are because it certainly seems as if they believe the pandemic is completely over. They are also showing their constituents that they believe it is fine for first responders to not take the vaccine and possibly bring with them a deadly disease as they respond to serve the people of Chicago.

On today's show we feature a interview with Dr. Joseph Richardson who is the Joel and Kim Feller Professor and MPower Professor of African-American Studies and Anthropology at the University of Maryland and the Executive Producer of the Life After the Gunshot. We discuss this incredible platform that Dr. Richardson created to launch a discussion about what life is like after the gunshot. This platform provides a space to humanize the victims of urban violence and learn about what it is like to be a victim of a gunshot and what your life is like after the gunshot. You learn about all of this not from the perspective of the researchers but from the survivors themselves. You learn about the social circumstances not just in their personal life but also in their communities and in the District of Columbia that are at the root causes of the violence. Life After the Gunshot brings voices to the forefront that are never really heard in the daily newspapers or nightly newscasts when they are covering gun violence. All too often the report is as shallow as person is the victim of a gunshot and the motive seems to be gang violence or drug related. Coded language to let their viewers know that nobody worthy of their sympathies was the victim of a gunshot. Also on the show today CJP takes a closer look at a horrific OpEd recently published in the Chicago Tribune authored by Alderpersons  Silvana Tabares from the 23rd ward, Raymond Lopez from the 15th ward, and Anthony Napolitano from the 41st ward. The OpEd reeks of pointing fingers while they refuse to take any responsibility for the public policy they pas that is contributing to creating the circumstances in these communities that drive the violence.

In today's episode, we cover a few examples of both journalistic and political malpractice in Chicago. There is little doubt that the Chicago media routinely generates proof of malpractice when covering the Chicago Police Department. Not to be undone, politicians throughout Illinois make sure to keep up their malpractice numbers on an almost daily basis. This unfortunately forces residents of the city and the state to put up with an unrelenting storm of malpractice. The first journalistic act of malpractice that we dive into is the Chicago Sun-Times' coverage of the episode involving the traffic stop of the niece of CPD Chief of Internal Affairs, Yolanda Talley. The reporting has been sensationalized, relying on a single source to report on abhorrent behavior within the CPD.  A week later, the Sun-Times still hasn't found another source to confirm the behavior, yet they also haven't retracted the reporting. Next, we move to the malpractice of ABC 7 Chicago's Stacey Baca.  She basically read 3 press releases on-air about the Magnificent Mile Association's complaints about prosecutors and judges. Baca seems to be clueless regarding the state of the social science research completed on these topics, that provides empirical evidence that the claims made by the Association just aren't supported by the facts. Baca also seems to be unaware that the Chicago Tribune published a story recently proving the similar claims made by Mayor Lightfoot and CPD Superintendent David Brown are not based on any facts. To do this story without including the research and the Chicago Tribune reporting is just basic malpractice. We finish today's podcast by taking a closer look at some great journalism proving that GOP gubernatorial candidate and Aurora Mayor Richard Irvin's campaign is one big act of political malpractice. Coming out as a staunch supporter of hard-on-crime policies and boasting about his 5 years as a prosecutor, but ignoring his 15 years of criminal defense defending people accused of the most serious crimes, is a prime example of political malpractice. Not to mention Irvin is suddenly a supporter of all lives mattering when just a few years ago he was a very strong supporter of Black Lives Matter and defunding the police.

On this episode we discuss recent developments in the ongoing misconduct saga of Chicago Police Officer James Hunt. You will remember him from a viral video where he tells a group of black males that he "kills mother fuckers". The video of Hunt saying this and then getting out of his patrol car to continue harassing the men went viral as the video was being uploaded live to the internet. Hunt must have realized that at some point in the interaction that he had screwed up because he falsely arrested the individual who was recording him. Hunt's actions that day resulted in a $100,000 payout by the city. The Civilian Office of Police Accountability investigated the incident, sustained allegations against Hunt, and recommend a one year suspension. Hunt is fighting the suspension through the arbitration in accordance with the union contract and has yet to serve a single day of his suspension. Hunt has just recently been striped of his police powers and put on desk duty but not for the incident for which he was recorded but another set of allegations that allege he physical abused a women who got caught up in a black lives matter protest shortly after the murder of George Floyd in Minneapolis. The real reason Hunt was finally put on desk duty isn't even about his new incident, one of 23 complaints in his 7-year career, but that he was applying for and had qualified to become a field training officer. Someone in the department must have through the optics of Hunt training cadets fresh out of the academy. It wasn't going to look so good so they sat him down. Also on the show today we will be discussing a WBEZ article about the toll being an anti-violence worker in Chicago takes on the workers themselves. We also discuss Mayor Lightfoot's recent revelations about the connection between remote learning in the Chicago Public Schools and carjackings in Chicago. Hint, once again Mayor Lightfoot's comments do not square with the data.

In this episode we feature an interview with Prof. Todd Clear from the School of Criminal justice at Rutgers University. Clear is one of the top voices in criminology as his resume includes stints as a Distinguished Professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, president of The American Society of Criminology, The Academy of Criminal Justice Sciences, and The Association of Doctoral Programs in Criminology and Criminal Justice. Our discussion with Clear focuses on the uptick in gun violence in many cities around the country and how there are many warning signs that America may take steps backwards in responding to this violence. Many cities, like Chicago for example, have seen an uptick in gun violence and is also experiencing a huge increase in the call for the return of draconian policies we know don't work but make great headlines in the media. Clear details how the huge increase in gun purchases starting in early 2016 and continuing in to 2020 and the onset of the world wide pandemic were predictors that we were going to see gun violence increases. Clear also discusses research he was involved in that looked at 50 years of crime. This research flies in the face of the constant calls for longer sentences to be handed down by judges. Also on the show today we discuss a terrible report by WGN TV news about the CPD's Gun Recovery Numbers and how they are being manipulated. This is a practice that has been ongoing in Chicago for decades so one has to wonder why this report is being done now.

On today's show we feature a discussion with Katherine Large who authored CJP's new report on the transparency of Chicago Police Department and police accountability system data. Large is a 3rd year student at the University of Chicago and former CJP intern. The report she authored is titled "Transparency and Accountability of the CPD: 1980-2021" which takes an in-depth look at the data available about police accountability in Chicago and then analyzes that data to present a true picture of just how impotent the police accountability has been over the last 40 years. It is of no surprise to anyone paying attention in Chicago that the CPD has always been for exploiting the idea of transparency for the organization's political gain but always have to be dragged kicking and screaming to release any meaningful data. Large's report details all of the wholes in the transparency practices of the CPD and a long stream of mayoral administrations starting in the 1980s and going right up to the current administrations of Mayor Lightfoot and Superintendent Brown. Both of which continue to brag about their transparency practices but when you go look under the hood you realize it is all shallow rhetoric and little to no meaningful change is actually occurring. The two main takeaways from Large's report and our discussion on today's show is just how minuscule the rate at which the police accountability system sustains findings against officers and then how little full, or any, discipline is actually enforced as the secretive process contained in the union contracts nullifies the vast majority of the discipline the police accountability system brags publicly about handing down. The lack of transparency in the process has allowed the CPD and the police accountability to avoid public scrutiny for its absolute dismal performance. Also on the show today we cover: an OpEd in the Chicago Tribune written by a former Cook County Criminal Court judge who wants to exclude the court from the public discussion around justice reform. a crappy article in the Chicago Tribune about the lack of progress by the city and the CPD to install reforms to policing in Chicago.

Our guest today is Albert Fox Chan who is the founder and Executive Director of the Surveillance Technology Oversight Project (STOP). The organization fights to end discriminatory surveillance by the New York Police Department and police departments across the country. According to Chan STOP was set up as an abolition focused organization because they don't believe domestic police departments have earned the right to be allowed to use the wide ranging surveillance technologies. Domestic policing in American has a long history of inappropriately using force against minority communities and according to Chan these same agencies regularly use these surveillance technologies against the same communities even through they were never approved for use against those communities. Chan provides on riveting example where the NYPD used one of these technologies to surveil and map the movements of the homeless in New York City that were not suspected of committing any crimes. There is little doubt that police agencies throughout urban areas in America have a long history of using state of the art surveillance technologies against the most vulnerable communities. As with force you rarely see the use access use of surveillance technologies used against rich white communities according to Chan. In our discussion with Chan we delve deep  in to a variety of different surveillance technologies that are being used by the NYPD and I would bet most other large urban police departments throughout the country including stingrays, x-ray vans, and the domain awareness system. The unregulated use of these technologies should scare people interested in making sure that minority communities throughout our urban centers are free from mass surveillance. Also on the show today we take a look at a couple recent articles in the Sun-Times that are all about a rumored no confidence vote in the leadership of Superintendent David Brown. For more context on Superintendent David Brown make sure to read our report on his hidden suspension for lying multiple times in an internal misconduct investigation while in Dallas and his suspension for his lies.

Alderperson Raymond Lopez, 15th ward, is a frequent critic of Mayor Lightfoot's policies and certainly her appointment of David Brown to the position of Superintendent of the Chicago Police Department. Alderperson Lopez is regularly on Twitter unleashing board side attacks against almost every policy that Superintendent Brown has announced since arriving. Unfortunately for everyone Alderperson Lopez unleashes his criticisms on Fox News shows like Tucker Carlson Tonight and The Sean Hannity Show frequently. One can only wonder why a local Chicago Democractic politician would be drawn to the news channel a much as Alderperson Lopez is giving the channel's history of racism, homophobia, and their diehard support of the big election lie. Superintendent David Brown is not without his own problems. Given his history of lying during an internal misconduct investigation during his time in Dallas he certainly was a questionable pick for the job. On today's show we chat with Alderperson Lopez about his topic of crime and violence in Chicago. Alderperson Lopez frequently takes to Twitter to push claims of Chicago Police Department being short officers and that many districts are then also short of officers. These claims are not uncommon in Chicago despite the fact that those lobbing to criticisms cannot say how many officers the CPD should have or how they should arrive at that number. We also touch on the subject of the CPD switching in 2014 from pursuing cases where an individual fired a gun in the commission of a crime to pursuing gun possession arrests. This switch was revealed by a webinar put on by the Kim Foxx's Office. Alderperson Lopez discusses his feelings about that switch and the inability of an agency the size and budget of the CPD to counter Foxx's narrative while at the same time the Mayor and Superintendent Brown challenged Foxx's narrative by bringing zero evidence to back up their claims. Also on the show today we take look at Mayor Lightfoot's Public Safety speech she delivered on Dec 20th. A speech full of flowery rhetoric that paints her administration in great terms but in no way matches the actions and policies of her time in office. In her speech she takes in great detail about the problem with the use of electronic monitoring for pre-trial release. Her claims have now been completely discredited by a recent article that takes a close look at the data and compares it to numbers used repeatedly by the Mayor.

Chicago Alderperson Scott Waguespack, 32nd Ward, joins the pod today to discuss the absolute abhorrent sexual harassment, sexual assault, and rape scandal at the Chicago Park District.  A scandal driven the the public consciousness by the stellar reporting by WBEZ's Dan Mihalopoulos. What is clear from Mihalopoulos' reporting is that the Park District leadership throughout the ranks is a very incestual affair that when challenged will close ranks to protect their own in the very Chicago style we are all way too familiar with. They did this for many years if not decades at the cost of the safety of the bodies and lives of females employees. While it is technically true that the Park District is a "sister agency" and as such is independent of the Mayor and Chicago City Council it has never really been independently except when it is politically expedient for politicians in Chicago. When the scandal broke the Mayor was very quick to distance herself from the leadership of the Park District of course and to put off calls from the public for the her to fire the Park District's leadership. Of course as Mihalopoulos kept breaking story after story on the scandal the Mayor eventually had to publicly call for firing of the Park District leadership at which time they saw the writing on the wall and stepped down. This just shows the Mayor could of and should have done this as soon as Mihalopoulos' frist story came out be she continued to put forward the myth that she had no influence on the Park District. Also on today's show we discuss a recent Greg Hinz column on the Chicago Police Department being short officers despite having no ability to prove that more officers equals less crime. Hinz joins the group of Chicagoans who are convinced Chicago needs more officers despite the ability to back up their assumptions with facts or evidence.

On today's show we discuss the gunshot detection system ShotSpotter with Alejandro Ruizesesparza from the Cancel ShotSpotter Coalition and Jonathan Manes, an attorney in  the MacArthur Justice Center's Illinois Office. Our discussion focuses on why activists and communities are rising up to confront the Chicago Police Department on their use of ShotSpotter. The scary truth about ShotSpotter is that the technology has never been independently validated so really the only evidence that the technology is reliable is from the company itself and from police departments that use the technology. It is pretty clear that both the company ShotSpotter and the various police departments that use the technology are rewarded for saying it works regardless of whether it does or not. The company gets additional sales of their technology while the police departments get a automated probably cause generator. Whether or not there was an actual shooting is irrelevant to the officers being sent to the scene because they have a system that says there was and that is all the probably cause they need to stop and frisk anyone they want in the vicinity of the alert. The incentives are built in to have both parties lie or completely ignore the validity of the ShotSpotter technology because they both benefit from the system. You also need to remember that the CPD with its $1.7 billion plus budget could not provide any statistics or data to prove the technology helps the police do their job. At the CPD's budget hearing Supt. Brown could only say that ShotSpotter helped them get to scenes quicker and has most certainly saved lives. Great! Show us the data. He had nothing.

The first episode of season 2 of the Chicago Justice Podcast drops on Wednesday Jan 5th. The first episode will feature Jonathan Manes and Alejandro Ruizesesparza from the LucyPparsons Lab. We will be discussing a gun shot identification system called ShotSpotter, now it works or doesn't work, and the Chicago Police Department secretly extending the contract with ShotSpotter months ahead of the current contract ending and without any public discussion about the validity of the technology. Other guests that will be featured in season two: 32nd Scott Waguespack discussing the Chicago Park District sexual harrassment, sexual assault, and rape scandal Jonathan Manes _ MacArthur & Alejandro Ruizes-esparza Lucy Parson's Lab - discussing ShotSpotter 15th Raymond Lopez - discussing crime and violence in Chicago and bail reform Albert Fox Cahn is the Founder & Executive Director of Surveillance Technology Oversight Project's (S.T.O.P.'s) - discussing the LA Police Department's use of predictive policing OLIVIA FARRELL - is the Director of Policy, Advocacy, & Research at The Network - discussing domestic violence Dr. Todd Clear -  is Professor of Criminal Justice at the Rutgers Univeristy in the CRJ department. He is also a past president of the American Society of Criminology - discussing the urge by law makers and the media to revert back to 1980s types of policing and incarceration

Today on the Chicago Justice Podcast we sit down for a conversation with Cook County Public Defender Sharone Mitchell, Jr. to discuss the state of the administration of justice in Chicago and Cook County. Mitchell Jr.'s office employees over 650 staff and handles around 100,000 criminal cases, including both misdemeanor and felony, per year. Mitchell Jr. unsurprisingly is a strong supporter of bail reform and a strong critic of both Superintendent Brown's and Mayor Lightfoot's attempts to point fingers at bail reform and its supporters for the increases in crime Chicago has experienced since the onset of the pandemic. There is little doubt that Brown and Lightfoot are being disingenuous with their finger pointing and are really just trying to skirt political responsibility for the crime and violence. Both of their terms in office have been packed full of finger pointing. Their terms in office have also been filled with a continue the Emanuel administration's efforts to get gun possession to be considered a violent felony rather than a non-violent offense it has always been categorized as. Mitchell Jr. discusses his theories as to why this push is happening and why the CPD switched at the end of 2013 from pursuing people that committed violent crimes with guns that than just those who possess guns. This switch is reflected in data released by the Cook County State's Attorney's Office that details that when this switch happened the CPD's rate of clearing gun related felonies cases plummeted. We also get Mitchell Jr.'s thoughts on the media's reporting on issues surround crime and violence in Chicago, including bail reform, and the impact that reporting has on the administration of justice in Chicago. The media is in a tough spot as they complete with social media and alt right websites like CWB Chicago and others for attention. However, the media still fails pretty miserably at properly contextualizing violence and crime and especially how the crime and violence Chicago is experiencing compares to what is going on around the country.

Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara has officially resigned from the Chicago Police Department after his recent hearing in front of the Chicago Police Board demonstrated he was going to fired. Despite this being extremely good news as Chicago is much better off without this man having the authority and power police officers enjoy the city is not yet rid of the man as he retains his position within the FOP. As we read the FOP guidelines he is able to complete his term in office but is unable to run for re-election as you have to be a sworn officer in good standing to run for the office. How having 50 complaints against him in 23 years meant he was still in good standing is anyone's guess. Don't worry though Catanzara has a plan to stay in the media spotlight and do his best to launch attacks against those he believes are responsible for aggrieving white men in power like himself. Since his election the media has been really bad at legitimizing Catanzara and his views on policing as if he has the credentials of someone who has earned the respect of the public and his fellow officers. I am sure this pattern is going to continue. On this site we started referring to him as John50 to denote the amount of complaints he was able to rack up during his time as an officer on the street. Oddly enough a sizable number of complaints against Catanzara come from internal sources like fellow officers and superiors. So one could say that the rank and file officers within the CPD are just a lucky he is gone as the public is. Imagine how bad Catanzara had to be for that many internal sources to file formal complaints against the man. This of course didn't stop a significant number of members of the FOP from voting him in. Our course say he got elected by courting the vote of retired members of the department. It is pretty clear from his history of social media posts and just his language on camera that those that voted for him were alt righters also. CJP report on Catanzara's history of misconduct. CJP podcast interview with author of the report. Charges filed against Catanzara with the Chicago Police Board. Also on today's how: fired Ferguson cop protesting Rittenhouse prosecution

Chicago Contrarian is nothing more than a platform for extremist views that have been growing in Chicago and around the country for decades. In this episode we take a look at a couple recent posts that provide insight in to the mind set of the insurrectionists on January 6th. The posts from Chicago Contrarian also provide insight in to minds of far too many Chicago police officers. The first post we look at from Chicago Contrarian is a post authored by Second City Cop an alt right blog that folded mysteriously shortly after the insurrection and then appeared posting to the Chicago Contrarian site. It is our belief that the timing of the the shutting down of their blog was no accident. The comment section of the blog was home to some of the most hate filled content on the internet related to Chicago. The interesting part of their posts on Chicago Contrarian is that there are no comments allowed. Just more evidence that Second City Cop is trying to distance itself from the comments they attracted and encouraged. The second post on the Chicago Contrarian site is authored by Benjamin Blair. His post details a spoof of a memo that he says would come from Mayor Lightfoot's desk. It is filled with hatred and privilege that Blair seems immune form recognizing. As is typical for this webstie this post it is based on what we call IKnowItAllism - a somewhat rare affliction that affects white straight conservative men in Chicago that makes the impervious to facts or reason. Also on the show today we discuss the city trying to fire the Sergeant that oversaw the raid on Anjanette Young raid.

The pro cop media bias in Chicago was on full display when the media failed to report appropriately on a domestic violence incident involving two police officers that resulted in one officer shooting and killing her husband. The media instead writes headlines and stories about how the two officers were involved in an altercation or argument that resulted in a struggle over one of the officer's guns. There is no way the pro cop media would have been so standoffish in their headlines if the two people involved in the incident were not cops. This of course is weird considering the pro cop media is actually involved in a massive left wing conspiracy to paint all cops as bad and turn the simplest of brutal beatings of civilians at the hands of officers in to major incidents. it is crazy to think that that the left winged bias media refused to report the incident as a domestic violence incident yet it is very easy to understand a pro cop media doing that. This incident hearkens back to another shooting when a male officer was murdered by his wife while in bed in the same district. The police covered up the incident and the pro cop media bought the suicide explanation immediately without question because that is what you do when you lose objectivity and have aligned your worldview with that of the police. This isn't to say that there are not good independent reporters working hard everyday to expose police abuse and misconduct, because they are. It is just means that the shallow beat reporting on police is very bad and is very pro cop centered. Also on the show today: Is Kim Foxx a Scapegoat Female cop charged in stupidest of shootings Video from today's show:

Mayor Lori Lightfoot flip flops on here commitment for full transparency in the Anjanette Young case despite making such a commitment publicly. Lightfoot has received a report from the Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety that contains the results of their investigation of the case. An investigation that was stymied from the beginning by Lightfoot's arranging for an external investigation of the handling of the Young case as well as the actions of the Law Department and her office from the law firm of Jones Day. Lightfoot external investigation made the records and statements collected inaccessible to DPSIG under bogus attorney client claims. There is good reason to believe that the Jones Day investigation was started in part or mostly to prevent the DPSIG from being able to look in the actions of the Lightfoot's office in this matter. Let's not forget this is not Lightfoot's first flip flop on this case. When the video was made public by CBS 2 Chicago the Mayor originally claimed she knew nothing about the case. Then emails came out she was in fact briefed on the case. Oops! Lightfoot's Law Department is still to this day fighting the civil suit in court and seems committed to not settling the case. One would think she would be smart enough to stop fighting the case and settle to get it out of the headlines and to stop wasting tax payer money fighting the case. Also on the show today: Weak Traffic Stop Analysis Video of today's show:

Republicans House Leader Jim Durkin and State Senator John Curran authored a horrific OpEd in the Chicago Tribune calling for a return to the good old days of law and order Cook County style. You remember when people like Richard Daley and Dick Devine were doing their level best to wrongfully convict people as long as it served their political interests. When the Cook County State's attorney's Office worked like an extension of the Chicago Police Department and never questioned their abusive and corrupt actions. The truth is Durkin and Curran are yearning for a time that never existed. The criminal justice system has always been broken and racist in Chicago but of course not during the time Durkin and Curran were part of that system. It is only after they left that the system broke down. While there is not easy to nail down the exact years both Durkin and Curran where in the office it is pretty clear that their terms overlap the terms or Daley - Devine - and Anita Alvarez. Not sure if i was Durkin or Curran I would be using my affiliation with those individuals as a measure of my credibility on any issue. All three ran offices rocked with internal corruption and with long histories of political favors and letting abuse by the CPD run rampant. The Chicago Tribune was all to happy to run this horrific piece because they also with they could go back in time to when black and brown people knew to keep their crime in their communities so white people didn't have to put up with it. This is basically what Durkin and Curran are also talking about but of course they use coded language to to veil their racism. Durkin & Curran with the assistance of the Chicago Tribune are pushing for a return to policies that failed us in the past and will doom us to be back where we are 10 years from now. Video from today's show: