Chicago police can’t dismiss seriousness of officers’ ties to right-wing extremist groups
It is more than an unsettling abomination when those entrusted with upholding law and order in our streets are suspected of being in cahoots with right-wing extremist groups linked to violent behavior.
Yet it appears as if Chicago police officials are unfazed or at least willing to look the other way until the city’s inspector general strongly insists that they reconsider their indifference.
Once again, for the third time, watchdog Deborah Witzburg has asked the police department to revisit its investigation of an officer drawn to a nefarious organization flagged by the Southern Poverty Law Center.
The CPD seems to be taking Witzburg’s advice by circling back to the case of Officer Kyle Mingari, who wore a face mask bearing the logo of an anti-government militia group while he was on duty assigned to a racial justice protest in the wake of George Floyd’s murder.
But it shouldn’t take the inspector general’s goading for the police department to acknowledge the glaring red flags that were unfurled as soon as a picture of Mingari emerged in the Three Percenters gear in 2020, prompting the Bureau of Internal Affairs to look into the matter.
Mingari was never disciplined and there is no record he was interviewed about the face mask or his possible ties to the Three Percenters, whose reputed members were charged in the U.S. Capitol riots and a plot to kidnap Michigan Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, the Sun-Times Tom Schuba reported.
Equally alarming is that Timothy Moore, a police lieutenant assigned to an FBI task force, relayed in the midst of a prior investigation that the Three Percenters were not “considered an extremist militia group” and officers only bore the group’s emblem because they liked the “design.”
When Mingari’s case was reopened after several men were charged with Whitmer’s attempted kidnapping, Moore, then commander of the Bureau of Internal Affairs, re-emerged with inconsistent and contentious information about the Three Percenters’ ideology.
While Moore is no longer with the police department, it is clear those who remain must reverse course with this repeated pattern of nonchalance.
If a police officer takes a vow to serve and protect a city as a diverse as Chicago, any affiliation with the Proud Boys, Oath Keepers, Three Percenters or other far rightwing group renders him or her suspect. Most Chicago residents would agree. It is time the police department stops playing coy by burying the seriousness of the perils involved with such unsavory associations.