Chicago Sun-Times: All posts by Colleen K. Connell2021-05-11T14:06:17.413-05:00https://chicago.suntimes.com/authors/colleen-connell/rss2021-05-11T14:06:17.413-05:002021-05-11T14:06:21-05:00Mayor Lightfoot: Police reform cannot wait
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>On April 15, Mayor Lori Lightfoot discusses videos of the police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. </p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Ashlee Rezin Garcia/Sun-Times</p></div></div>
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<p>Mayor Lori Lightfoot recently criticized Chicago’s Civilian Office of Police Accountability, saying she was “extraordinarily unhappy” with the slow pace of their work. </p><p>If the mayor wants to point out those not moving quickly enough to bring real change to policing in the city, she needs to look in the mirror. True self-reflection would reveal that she has become an obstacle to police reform — not the change agent she promised. </p><div class="RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement" data-module data-align-floatRight><a class="AnchorLink" id="module-760000" name="module-760000"></a>
<div class="RichTextSidebarModule-title">Opinion bug</div>
<div class="RichTextModule-items RichTextBody"><h2>Opinion</h2></div>
</div><p>As a candidate, Lightfoot spoke of transforming the Chicago Police Department. Responding to an ACLU questionnaire about police reform, she promised to take transparent accountability measures “over and above the monitoring” required by a federal consent decree designed to address patterns of police violence against people of color and people with disabilities. </p><p>Mayor Lightfoot’s actions have not met that rhetoric. She is defaulting on her campaign promises to fix broken and violent policing. While continuing her “performative” oratory, she is acting behind the scenes to block reform in key areas designed to improve both transparency of law enforcement and the accountability of officers who commit unlawful acts. </p><p>During her candidacy, Lightfoot criticized the consent decree governing the Chicago Police Department as not going far enough to reform. She cited the failure of the decree to require the immediate development and implementation of a foot pursuit policy for CPD. Yet, in two years in office, the mayor took no meaningful action to adopt a policy. </p><p>Instead, under her watch, the city rejected repeated recommendations for CPD foot pursuit policy, including a specific request in October 2019 . Predictably, without a policy restricting foot pursuits, police killings after foot chases have continued, including the recent police shooting deaths of Adam Toledo and Anthony Alvarez </p><p>The mayor also has blocked reform of problematic search warrants served at the wrong address and/or the wrong person resulting in “wrong raids.” In August 2020, community organizations and their allies, including the ACLU, alerted the city and the mayor of our intent to enforce consent decree provisions related to wrong raids. The city refused to meet with us, even after the video documenting the abuse of Anjanette Young surfaced. </p><p>This disdain for community input in police reform is in stark contrast to Lightfoot’s repeated public references to the need for community input and involvement in reforming CPD. Last year the mayor trumpeted her creation of a working group to provide input on changing CPD’s use of force policy. That working group, made up of community members and residents of communities affected by police violence in the city, presented the CPD with more than 100 recommandations for improving the use of force by CPD. The city rejected nearly all of them with a late night press release. </p><p>The mayor’s disregard for meaningful reform is matched only by her indifference to the impact of police misconduct on Black and Brown communities. During her tenure, police have continued to make hundreds of thousands of traffic stops each year, the vast majority of them targeting Black and Brown drivers. These stops have increased dramatically during her tenure. Similarly, Chicago police targeted Black people for enforcement under the State of Illinois’ new cannabis law, arresting them in 2020 at three times the rate for people of all other ethnicities combined in 2020, according to CPD data. And a recent report revealed that CPD targets Black men in warrants 25 times more than white men with approximately 25% of such warrants containing inaccurate or incomplete information. </p><p>Mayor Lightfoot’s approach to reform increasingly appears to be performative rather than substantive. Whenever there is a public revelation of police misconduct, she holds a press conference and makes promises of unilateral action, despite her previous efforts to block reform. This is not real reform. </p><p>Police reform is challenging. Nobody doubts that. But reform cannot be achieved by making public pronouncements in the moments of public embarrassment and then stiff-arming reform in the courtroom, the legislature and the back chambers of City Hall. Real reform needs to be driven by community members who have suffered police violence and police abuse over many years and have insight into needed changes. Candidate Lightfoot appeared to understand this. Mayor Lightfoot ignores it. </p><p>The obstacle is not others; it is the mayor herself. It is time to stop casting blame. </p><p><i>Colleen K. Connell is executive director of the ACLU of Illinios.</i></p><p><i>Send letters to </i><a class="Link" href="mailto:letters@suntimes.com" target="_blank" ><i>letters@suntimes.com</i></a><i>.</i><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2021/5/11/22430958/chicago-police-reform-aclu-illinois-colleen-connell-mayor-lori-lightfoot-cpd-police-departmentColleen K. Connell2020-06-16T16:05:00-05:002020-06-16T22:27:06-05:00Chicago’s curfew was illegal and a mistake
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chicago Police Department officers gather as curfew nears during a demonstration on June 6.</p></figcaption><span class="line"></span><div class="Figure-credit"><p>Natasha Moustache/Getty Images</p></div></div>
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<p>The eight-night Chicagowide curfew enforced by the police in the wake of protests against police violence targeting Black people was unconstitutional and the wrong response. </p><p>The ACLU made this case moments after the curfew was announced, expressing concern that the curfew would be used to restrict constitutionally protected speech and protest and that it would be enforced in a biased way against Black people. Data about how the curfew was enforced validate both concerns. </p><div class="RichTextSidebarModule Enhancement" data-module data-align-floatRight><a class="AnchorLink" id="module-400000" name="module-400000"></a>
<div class="RichTextSidebarModule-title">Opinion bug</div>
<div class="RichTextModule-items RichTextBody"><h2>Opinion</h2></div>
</div><p>On May 30, with thousands of people protesting in the streets and plazas of the Loop, the city announced by Twitter that it would impose a curfew beginning only 20 minutes later. The city made matters worse by raising all bridges across the Chicago River except for one and by shutting down CTA service into and out of the Loop. </p><p>A recent Sun-Times<i> </i>report, examining data of arrests during the curfew, confirms our fears that protesters had no notice of the curfew and that “hundreds of people [were] trapped in the Loop” due to the city’s actions. The data show that in the first few moments after the curfew, police arrested hundreds of people in the Loop area. </p><p>Chicago’s sordid history of racism shows that whenever police are given unfettered discretion to stop or arrest people, the police invariably stop, frisk, and arrest more people of color — even without reasonable suspicion or probable cause of wrongdoing. Before Illinois’ new cannabis law took effect this year, Black people in our state were seven times more likely to be arrested for simple possession than white people, despite data showing that these groups use cannabis at comparable rates. Traffic stop data reported every year show that Black drivers are far more likely to be subject to a consent search — a vehicle search based on the hunch or gut feeling of an officer — than white drivers. This disparity has remained in the data for entire 15 years that Illinois has been collecting this information. </p><p>A 2015 report by the ACLU revealed that more than 70% of all people subjected to police pedestrian stops were Black, even though Black people make up only about 32% of the city’s population. These examples show that when police are given latitude about who to stop, the police stop Black people far more than any other group of people in Chicago.</p><p>So it is not surprising that data reported out by the Sun-Times on arrests for curfew violations shows that most of the arrests conducted by Chicago police during the time of curfew targeted Black people. Over the eight nights the curfew was enforced, 75% of all those arrested for curfew violations were Black. Given the racial diversity in the protests following the murder of George Floyd, there seems little explanation for this. </p><p>But the data gets even worse the deeper one digs. If you remove the arrests made on the first night of the curfew, an astonishing 93% of those arrested for curfew violations were Black. 93%. </p><p>Despite primarily enforcing the curfew in Black neighborhoods, we see that CPD did little to protect Black and Brown neighborhoods — reports that were corroborated by this newspaper’s own reporting about CPD officers lounging in Congressman Rush’s office — without permission — while neighboring businesses were vandalized and looted. </p><p>The protests continue and so do the call for fundamental reforms in our country. It is sad that the city’s response to those calls was to permit the police to abuse their powers to arrest hundreds of Black people in Chicago, many of whom were doing little other than protesting police abuse. </p><p><i>Colleen K. Connell, a lawyer, has been executive director of the ACLU of Illinois since 2001. </i></p><p><i>Send letters to </i><a class="Link" href="mailto:letters@suntimes.com" target="_blank" ><i>letters@suntimes.com</i></a><i>.</i></p><p></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2020/6/16/21293454/chicago-curfew-illegal-mistake-aclu-protestsColleen K. Connell2018-11-27T13:48:00-06:002019-04-17T22:09:13-05:00Trump trashes the courts so he can rule like a dictator
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<div class="Figure-content"><figcaption class="Figure-caption"><p>Chief Justice John Roberts has pushed back against President Donald Trump’s description of a judge who ruled against the administration’s new asylum policy as an “Obama judge.” | AP Photo</p></figcaption></div>
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<p>As a lawyer who has practiced in courts including the Supreme Court of the United States, and as part of an organization that vindicates our clients’ rights in our courts, it is clear to me that we are in the midst of a constitutional crisis.</p><p>The president of the United States is engaged in a campaign to erode public confidence in our federal courts — so he can rule in an unchecked fashion.</p><div class="Enhancement" data-align-center>
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<blockquote><p>OPINION</p></blockquote>
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<p>The president’s nefarious and dangerous campaign emerged in plain sight this week in an ACLU case involving the Trump administration’s efforts to rewrite our nation’s asylum law. President Donald Trump recently signed an executive order which purported to deny the ability to claim asylum to anyone who did not make the request at a port of entry. Congress has not made this requirement part of immigration law, so the president’s order was clearly in violation of law.</p><p>A district court judge, in response to a lawsuit by the ACLU and another human rights organization, temporarily blocked enforcement of the president’s order for a few days while the court considers more detailed arguments on the matter. This is a perfectly normal process — giving the parties time to make their case but blocking enforcement of a measure that could do harm to vulnerable individuals.</p><p>The president’s response was predictably over-the-top. He called the decision a “disgrace” and suggested that the judge (and all the judges of the Ninth Circuit even though they were not involved in this decision) was political since he was appointed by former President Barack Obama. He claimed he would be putting in a “major complaint” and suggested that the temporary bar on enforcement risked national security.</p><p>Seemingly disgusted by the president’s remarks, the usually taciturn Chief Justice John Roberts issued a measured, but strong rebuke making clear that one of our nation’s great hallmarks is an independent judiciary that carefully and faithfully interprets our laws and the Constitution. Again predictably, the president lambasted the chief justice on Twitter (after having called Roberts a “disaster” during the presidential campaign).</p><p>Putting aside the lack of decency and decorum from the Oval Office and the reality that the president gets nearly everything wrong about this situation, this latest attack on the judiciary must be seen in the larger context. President Trump simply does not understand our system of government with its checks and balances. And, his love for dictators and despots across the globe reflects his own desire to operate without limits or accountability.</p><p>In the nearly two years that Donald Trump has occupied the White House, we have seen this tendency grow and become less subtle. Trump’s attack on the media as the “enemy of the people” is evidence of his aversion to anyone who questions his policies, his misstatements and the malfeasance of his administration. When someone points out questionable activity by the White House or his cabinet, the president blames others and denies the right of the media or others to question him.</p><p>And when the courts seek to enforce the rule of law by holding the president accountable, he lashes out, suggesting to his shrinking base of supporters that the actions of the court, rather than the White House, are motivated by politics and self-interest. It is especially dangerous that this campaign against the courts is ramping up now that the administration will be held accountable by a House of Representatives led by a majority of the opposite party.</p><p>Let me be very clear. I do not agree with every decision by every court across our state and federal systems. But it is clear that the men and women who preside in courts across the nation do their best to make decisions on the basis of the law and the facts. It is a difficult job in the best of circumstances. It is made even more difficult when a demagogic president uses decisions he disagrees with to sow disrespect for the rule of law and division in our country.</p><p>We need an independent judiciary as a check to protect basic rights. It is exactly the role our founders designed for the courts. It is a threat to that constitutional order — and our very republic — when the president attacks the judiciary in an attempt to justify lawless actions. And, like the chief justice, we must be stirred to action and resolve. Our nation must not bend our principles to the autocratic will of Donald Trump. Instead, we must hold him accountable within that system.</p><p>Not doing so presents a fundamental threat to our the constitutional system that is the foundation for our democracy.</p><p><i>Colleen K. Connell, a lawyer, is the executive director of the ACLU of Illinois.</i></p><p><i>Send letters to: </i><a class="Link" href="mailto:letters@suntimes.com" target="_blank" ><i>letters@suntimes.com</i></a><i>.</i><br></p>
https://chicago.suntimes.com/2018/11/27/18465326/trump-trashes-the-courts-so-he-can-rule-like-a-dictatorColleen K. Connell