A task force appointed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has unleashed a blistering account of racism in the Windy City’s police department, reports The New York Times.
The report was issued April 13, just as the police department’s new superintendent was being installed.
According to The New York Times:
“The community’s lack of trust in CPD is justified,” the task force wrote. “There is substantial evidence that people of color — particularly African-Americans — have had disproportionately negative experiences with the police over an extended period of time.”
The report gives validation to complaints made for years by African-American residents here who have said they were unfairly targeted by officers without justification on a regular basis. It raises the pressure on Mr. Emanuel and other Chicago leaders to make significant changes at a pivotal time for the nation’s second largest municipal police force, which has been under intense fire from residents and under scrutiny from the federal authorities. It includes more than 100 recommendations for change.
The task force amassed data that shows the extent to which African-Americans appear to have been targeted. In a city where whites, blacks and Hispanics each make up about one-third of the population, 74 percent of the 404 people shot by the Chicago police between 2008 and 2015 were black, the report said. Black people were targeted in 72 percent of thousands of investigative street stops that did not lead to arrests during a recent summer.
Prominent Black Lives Matter activist DeRay Mckesson responded to the news with a concise summary in a single tweet:
I'm not sure this is a breaking news. https://t.co/7udnwWlKQZ
— deray mckesson (@deray) April 13, 2016
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