Activists sue for oversight of Chicago Police

CHICAGO Black Lives Matter activists and other civil rights organizations filed a federal lawsuit Wednesday in an attempt to force court- monitoring of the embattled Chicago Police Department’s reform efforts.

The lawsuit filed in the U. S. District Court of Northern Illinois comes after Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration said this month that it had floated a proposal to the Justice Department to install an independent monitor to oversee reform efforts in the police department. The Emanuel proposal would not require the police department to enter what is known as a consent decree, which requires court monitoring. That proposal is under review by Justice Department officials.

The plaintiffs include the groups Black Lives Matter Chicago, Blocks Together, Brighton Park Neighborhood Council, Justice for Families, Network 49, Women’s All Points Bulletin and 411 Movement for Pierre Loury as well as six people who say they have faced excessive force by Chicago cops.

“The City of Chicago has proven time and time again that it is incapable of ending its own regime of terror, brutality and discriminatory policing,” the plaintiffs argue in the lawsuit. “It is clear that federal court intervention is essential to end the historical and ongoing pattern and practice of excessive force by police officers in Chicago.”

The Justice Department completed a 13- month investigation in January of the police department days before President Trump was inaugurated. The investigation, which was spurred by widespread protests in the city following the courtordered release of video that showed a white police officer fatally shooting a black teen as he ran from cops, found that the nation’s second- largest po- lice department was beset by racial bias, excessive use of force and a cover- up culture within the ranks.

The Justice Department forced more than a dozen troubled police departments — such as the ones in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore — into consent decrees during the Obama administration.

But Trump’s attorney general, Jeff Sessions, has said that he worries the decrees undermine police and that he will avoid using them.

Even before the release in November 2015 of police video of the fatal shooting of 17- yearold Laquan McDonald, Chicago Police faced mistrust in large swaths of Chicago’s black and Latino communities.

AP This scene from dashcam video taken Oct. 20, 2014 shows Laquan McDonald walking down the street moments before being shot by officer Jason Van Dyke in Chicago.