Cops in Schools: Tracking Nationwide Changes after George Floyd
Chicago Justice
by Anna Bryant
12h ago
During the summer of 2020 following the death of George Floyd, calls for police reform echoed across the country, including around the issue of cops in schools. Activists called for change in the use of school police, also known as School Resource Officers (SROs). Concerns about the school-to-prison pipeline and its racially disparate impact on black and brown youth sparked a national conversation on the role of policing in America’s schools. As more than three years have passed since the heightened calls for police reform began in 2020, it is important to examine how these movements have impa ..read more
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Trying to Erase History is Purposeful
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
4M ago
On today’s show, we discuss the connection between racialized policing in the US and the efforts by the right-wing to erase slavery from America’s history. We discuss this with Joseph Flynn, the Executive Director for Equity and Inclusion in the Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Northern Illinois University. The efforts to rewrite American history are an attempt to prevent Americans from realizing the connection between slavery, Jim Crow laws, the civil rights struggle in the mid-20th century, and policing in commu ..read more
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ACLU on CPD Traffic Stop Lawsuit
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
8M ago
On today’s episode, we feature an interview with Alexandra Block from the ACLU of Illinois about their lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department’s highly questionable traffic stop practices. The ACLU alleges that the CPD pulls people over exclusively to search them and their care for drugs and guns. According to their statistics, the CPD’s rate of finding guns, drugs, or cause to arrest the person they have pulled over is about 1%. In 2020 the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office documented a significant switch in tactics by the CPD from pursuing gun offenders, those who have committed a ..read more
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IDOC Forces CJP to Sue
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
8M ago
The Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC) has refused to produce the public records and data that has been requested by CJP. In failing to provide the requested records and data, IDOC is in violation of its obligation as required by the state’s Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), which requires affairs of the government in its entirety to be produced to the public when requested. FOIA is binding on IDOC and its refusal to produce the requested data and documents is inconsistent with the terms outlined in the statute. Despite what data CJP requests, or how the FOIA requests are worded, IDOC ..read more
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FOIA: CPD Do Not Call Officers
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
8M ago
On July 17th the Cook County State’s Attorney’s Office released their Do Not Call List made up of many CPD officers who for various reasons the office will not longer call as witnesses. While the existence of the list is an important step forward in accountability for CPD officers the list itself if very limited because it doesn’t provide any further information about the officers. In a recent episode of our YouTube series Good & Bad Justice Journalism we detail the massive shortcomings in the media’s reporting on the release of this list. It is embedded below. As we state in the video we ..read more
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Mismanagement & Abuse at JTDC
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
9M ago
Today’s episode discusses the long history of abuse and mismanagement at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) with Injustice Watch reporters Kelly Garcia and Carlos Ballesteros. The JTDC has long been a dumping ground for clouted workers in Cook County government who were too incompetent for any other job in the county. This, combined with a seeming refusal of half of those running the facility to see their role as anything less than jailers, has led to a point where over the last decade, report after report has come out on the facility and their treatment of the youth in ..read more
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CPD Doesn’t Take Lying Seriously
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
10M ago
Despite promises to the contrary by the Chicago Police Department and the agencies that make up the police accountability system in Chicago, lying while undertaking your official duties as an officer isn’t taken all that seriously. The CPD’s rule 14 bars any officer from knowingly submitting a written or oral false report. In other words, they are not supposed to lie. A recent report issued by the Chicago Inspector General’s office details how the CPD and the police accountability system are utterly inconsistent in how they respond to officers lying in their official duties. While all the agen ..read more
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Kareem Butler – Truth About Electronic Monitoring
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
10M ago
On today’s show we attempt to bring facts and science to the discuss around the Pre-Trail Fairness Act (PTFA) and the state of electronic monitoring (EM) in the Cook County criminal justice system. We were honored to sit down with Kareem Butler, a pretrial justice fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, to discuss these vital issues. The hyperbolic response to bail reform in Cook County and the subsequent passage of the PTFA by the Illinois General Assembly having nothing to do with the reality of what the efforts mean for communities throughout the state but are all about an i ..read more
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Raina Lipsitz on Toxic Cycle of Justice Reform
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
11M ago
On the show today we sit down with Raina Lipsitz to discuss America’s problem with justice reform and how cities like Chicago are caught in endless cycle of failure when it comes to passing meaningful justice reform. A meaningful conversation to engage in now as Mayor Lightfoot’s time in office has ended with a pretty dismal record on justice reform including endlessly scapegoating judges as being to lenient despite all the scientific evidence to the contrary. Lipsitz in an article published last summer in The Crime Report discusses a couple national level examples including Philadelphia’s pro ..read more
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Our Take on Adam Toledo Shooting
Chicago Justice
by Tracy Siska
11M ago
The Adam Toledo shooting while a massive tragedy was not out of line with Chicago Police Department guidelines and so the firing of Eric Stillman smells like politics. Despite how the video of this shooting has been exploiting repeatedly for political purposes the reality is that tragic police shootings can occur and those shootings can also be inline with CPD guidelines. The fervor over the shooting of Toledo makes sense as nobody really wants to see children die at the hands of anyone, especially law enforcement. This fact however does not allow people to say the shooting of Toledo is unjust ..read more
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