A measure that grants the Chicago Police Board the power to overrule the Chicago Police Department and remove a Chicagoan from an under-development gang database advanced Wednesday — even though it is not clear when that system will be up and running.
Gangs
The new system for tracking gang members in Chicago was supposed to be up and running last month, but it remains stalled.
Intense criticism has not prompted Mayor Lori Lightfoot to rethink her plan to demand that the Chicago City Council give the city’s Law Department the authority to sue the leaders of Chicago’s gangs and “go after their blood money.”
Mayor Lori Lightfoot wants to employ a new tactic in the fight against crime and violence: sue gang members in civil court. But the plan is proving controversial.
Chicago police Superintendent David Brown on Friday announced that officers serving on the department’s Community Safety Team will be moved into new units centered on gang investigations, homicides, carjackings and narcotics.
For the first time since a damning 2019 audit was released by the city’s watchdog, police officials defended their continuing use of records that list approximately 135,000 Chicagoans as members of gangs, citing their need for the data to prevent “retaliatory violence.”
Police Superintendent David Brown on Monday said investigations remain ongoing into a shooting in the South Shore that left one dead and five injured, and another at Marquette Park that left one dead and 10 injured.
Eugene Burns, 19, allegedly acted as the getaway driver in a 2020 gang-related shooting and later “terrorized” another man and his two family members during a home invasion on the West Side earlier this year.
As gangs were targeted by police and federal authorities using anti-racketeering laws from the 1970s onward, many gang leaders were incarcerated in federal prisons. That left behind a more fractured and anarchic gang culture, say gang experts.
Protesters took to the streets this weekend — both in Little Village and other parts of the city — after the Civilian Office of Police Accountability released videos of the fatal police shooting of 13-year-old Adam Toledo. We speak with neighborhood organizations working to help residents.
Police officials continue to use “deeply flawed” records that list approximately 135,000 Chicagoans as members of gangs more than two years after Inspector General Joseph Ferguson found the databases were riddled with errors, according to a follow-up audit released Wednesday.
The Chicago Police Department will change the way it tracks Chicagoans suspected of being affiliated with a gang as part of the resolution of a class-action lawsuit that alleged the city’s gang database was riddled with errors.
About 200 people took part in a peaceful walk Sunday in Albany Park to bring attention to a recent increase in gun violence in the Northwest Side neighborhood, where last week at least seven people were shot, including two teens.
More than 16 months ago, a report found the databases used by the Chicago Police Department to track gang members was riddled with errors. Despite those findings, the City Council has ignored calls to hold hearings on the issue.
After a mass shooting outside a funeral home in Auburn Gresham last week, Chicago’s top cop said the city’s problem with gang violence is huge in scope. But do numbers tell the full story?
How Chicago communities came together to push past tensions that were feeding a racial divide.
