Lightfoot’s gang asset seizure plan advances
Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s controversial plan to fight crime by seizing street gang members’ assets advanced Thursday despite continued condemnation of the idea from some aldermen and other critics.
The ordinance cleared the Public Safety Committee by a 10-4 vote. It heads to the full City Council next week.
The plan moved forward even as aldermen expressed frustration with city officials’ inability to provide clear evidence that civil asset forfeiture programs actually lower crime, as well as concerns that its language remains too vague.
Lightfoot’s proposed ordinance could allow judges or court officers to impose fines as high as $10,000 for each “street gang-related” offense and seize “any property that is directly or indirectly used or intended for use in any manner to facilitate street gang-related activity.”
It also calls for the seizure of any property that gangs obtained through illegal means such as drug dealing or other crimes.
And it allows the city to seek fines up to $30,000 against people convicted of illegal gun possession.
The mayor introduced the ordinance last fall and received criticism from aldermen, attorneys and others who said it would mainly harm poor young gang members and their families.
The mayor responded in January by bringing forward a retooled ordinance that seeks to more narrowly target “adult gang leaders” for forfeiture.
“We are not talking ... about low-level drug dealers on the street,” John O’Malley, Lightfoot’s deputy mayor for public safety, said Thursday.
The Lightfoot administration’s latest plan also gives families of people who get cars or other assets seized a way to appeal on the grounds that other family members need the vehicles for legitimate purposes.
Ernest Cato, chief of the bureau of counterterrorism for the Chicago Police Department, said the aim of the ordinance isn’t to take cars away from family members.
“The goal is to deter families from getting involved with that,” Cato said.
Still, aldermen continue to have reservations.
South Side Ald. Roderick Sawyer, 6th, said the measure seems aimed only at minorities who form gangs with people they know, rather than wealthier high-level drug dealers who aren’t affiliated with a “street organization.”
“If we’re going to do something, I hope that it would be equally applied across the board,” Sawyer said.
North Side Ald. Maria Hadden, 49th, said the mayor’s plan falls short in failing to define explicitly whose assets the city can go after.
“I’m really uncomfortable with the loose definitions,” Hadden said.
She said it seems likely the amount of time city lawyers will have to spend going after gang members’ relatively modest assets makes it likely the actions will be “completely financially worthless” to the city.
And North Side Ald. Matt Martin, 47th, said city lawyers would be better served pursuing cases against gun traffickers than trying to seize gang members’ cars.
The committee also discussed but didn’t vote Thursday on an ordinance allowing the Civilian Office of Police Accountability to redact the names of officers killed in the line of duty from its published reports.
The move is an attempt by COPA interim administrator Andrea Kersten to address the criticism she received when COPA included the name of slain Officer Ella French in a report published on the wrongful Anjanette Young police raid after French was shot during a traffic stop.
Some aldermen and transparency advocates, among them the Better Government Association, pushed back against the redaction proposal.
The BGA said it “would be a clear danger to the reliability of public records,” and would contradict the state Freedom of Information Act.
Kersten on Thursday said the ordinance wouldn’t break state law because the names would only be redacted in published reports, not copies of reports requested through FOIA. But she welcomed more discussion on potential unintended consequences of the change.