Where We Stand

Policing in Chicago: Divest and Reinvest in Black and Brown Communities

Where We Stand: Across the country and in our own troubled city, Black and Brown communities are over-policed, under-protected, and under-served. Many communities that lack quality schools, affordable housing, basic health care services, or even a grocery store must contend with policing that criminalizes people of color. The national defund/divest/reinvest movement is broad and encompasses many platforms, but at its core demands a reduction of police budgets and a reallocation of those funds into disinvested communities and essential services that have long been neglected or denied. Locally, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights has advocated alongside students of color to dismantle the gang database, remove all police officers from schools, and reallocate the funding for school police to other student services and supports. We see the inspirational organizing led by groups like Black Lives Matter, and we hear the demands of Good Kids Mad City and other community-led efforts for an end to the nightmare of police brutality and mass incarceration. We stand ready to support those efforts.

The Legacy of Police Brutality in Chicago: Over the past two centuries, there have been at least six “task forces” assigned to reform the Chicago Police Department’s disturbing patterns of corruption, misconduct, and racial bias. Throughout the years, advocates have connected the persistence of these problems to the origins of American policing in the 1800’s, which can be traced to private slave patrols and union-busting militia. At the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Grant Park, more than 24,000 police officers, National Guardsmen, and Army soldiers used tear gas and clubs on demonstrators who had come to protest the Vietnam War, to mourn the murder of Martin Luther King, Jr., and to call for an end to racial injustice. Born of these turbulent times, Chicago Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights immediately took on powerful institutions, including the Chicago Police Department and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office, and called for an investigation of the police-orchestrated murder of Black Panther Leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. In the years since, we have consistently worked with a wide array of community members and organizations, seeking an end to unconstitutional police tactics, an increase in the City’s accountability, and meaningful reform to the Chicago Police Department.

The Summer of 2020 Marks a Turning Point: Amid COVID-19, a global health pandemic that has upended our lives, and following the brutal murders of George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, and too many other individuals at the hands of police officers across the nation, we have heard the message of our community partners as they once again take to the streets: Black lives do not matter to law enforcement. State-sanctioned violence against Black people spans decades and is too deeply engrained into policing to be meaningfully altered through incremental reform. The aggressive, violent police response to recent protests in Chicago has further traumatized Black community members and serves to amplify and clarify calls for divesting funds from law enforcement and reinvesting those funds to help our neighbors in communities of color. The national divest/reinvest movement responds to the failure of incremental police reform, which in some ways has been most clearly illustrated here in Chicago. The federal court’s consent decree mandating reform of the Chicago Police Department, which was finally won after years of activism gained momentum in the wake of the murder of teenager Laquan McDonald, has failed to be implemented in a timely matter. Even it if were fully implemented, consent decrees, by design, have a relatively narrow focus - Constitutional compliance - and do not address broader problems with oversized police budgets and the layers of statutory protections wrapped around police officers. Nor has the consent decree stopped the wave of violence and illegal tactics meted out to peaceful protesters in the last few months. These protesters have said loudly and clearly that divestment - beyond incremental reform –is necessary to reimagine community safety in Chicago.

Divest/Reinvest Now: We hear and support the calls from local community groups for a reduction in funding for the Chicago Police Department and for a strategic reinvestment of these funds to directly benefit Black and Brown neighborhoods through health and educational programs, economic development, restorative justice, and community violence prevention.