Black Agenda Report
Black Agenda Report
News, commentary and analysis from the black left.

  • Home
  • Africa
  • African America
  • Education
  • Environment
  • International
  • Media and Culture
  • Political Economy
  • Radio
  • US Politics
  • War and Empire
  • omnibus

There’s Only One Cure for Chicago Police Lawlessness: Black Community Control
20 Apr 2016

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel thinks he can squelch Black rage against the police by appointing a Black cop as superintendent. But the new top cop climbed the ranks of a force that has “no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.” He’s part of the problem, not the solution. Young activists demand nothing less than community control of the police.

There’s Only One Cure for Chicago Police Lawlessness: Black Community Control

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by executive editor Glen Ford

 “Democracy demands that “the people must be empowered to hold the police accountable for their crimes and misconduct.”

The absolute intransigence of the U.S. mass incarceration regime is most dramatically on display in Chicago, where Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s own special investigative task force has concluded that the “police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.” The report backs up that conclusion with a now-familiar recitation of statistics that show, by the numbers, the raw nature of the police as an occupying army that perceives that its mission is to stop, humiliate, frame, physically abuse, torture and kill Black and brown people. Seventy-four percent of the 404 people shot by the Chicago police last year were Black. Seventy-two percent of those stopped on the street but who were not arrested, were Black. Three quarters of those singled out for tasering were Black. And, the bulk of the remainder were Latino.

The task force was Mayor Emanuel’s response to demonstrations in protest of a massive cover-up of the police killing of Laquan McDonald, whose death in a hail of 16 bullets was caught on video that was hidden from public view for more than a year. Since then, the killer cops have been gunning down Black folks like clockwork, including last week’s shooting of 16 year-old Pierre Loury after he ran away from a police stop. Witnesses say the cops high-fived each other over the dead boy’s body.

“The mayor thinks he can hide behind Eddie Johnson’s Black face – but those days are over.”

Mayor Emanuel was forced to fire his police superintendent in the wake of the Laquan McDonald cover-up. Last week he passed over three candidates recommended by a police oversight board, to pick Eddie Johnson, a Black 28-year veteran of the force, as the new superintendent. Emanuel made it clear that Eddie Johnson’s first job is to restore the “morale” of his fellow officers. “He’s well-respected within the department among the rank-and-file officers,” said Emanuel, as if the main task is to keep the cops happy – instead of confronting the fact that they “have no regard for the sanctity” of Black lives. The mayor thinks he can hide behind Eddie Johnson’s Black face – but those days are over. Johnson’s record of service to the Chicago Police Department is a badge of shame, not honor. He served as chief of patrol, commanding 8,000 of the very same officers that have compiled an unbroken record of lawlessness and contempt for civilian authority. Eddie Johnson would not have climbed so high in such a department if he were not, himself, a protector and champion of killer cops.

The young people that forced the issue of police terror to the forefront vow that they won’t settle for anything less than community control of police. They say democracy demands that “the people must be empowered to hold the police accountable for their crimes and misconduct,” the power to tell the police how they want their communities to be made safe and secure. As Frank Chapman, Field Organizer for the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression wrote on the organization’s Facebook page, “Community control of the police is not a utopian dream, it is what we are fighting for now in this present reality.”

The present reality, in Chicago and throughout the United States, is that the police are an occupation army in the Black community. If there is to be peace, that army must be dismantled and disbanded.

For Black Agenda Radio, I’m Glen Ford. On the web, go to BlackAgendaReport.com.

BAR executive editor Glen Ford can be contacted at [email protected].



Your browser does not support the audio element.

listen
http://traffic.libsyn.com/blackagendareport/20160420_gf_ChicagoPolice.mp3

More Stories


  • Black Agenda Radio June 27, 2025
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Black Agenda Radio June 27, 2025
    27 Jun 2025
    In this week’s segment we hear about a peace agreement between the Democratic Republic of Congo and Rwanda.
  • Gerald Horne
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Gerald Horne Discusses His Book "The Capital of Slavery: Washington DC 1800 - 1865"
    27 Jun 2025
    Dr. Gerald Horne is an author and historian who currently holds the John J. and Rebecca Moores Chair of History and African American Studies at the University of Houston. Dr. Horne is a prolific…
  • Peace treaty signing
    Black Agenda Radio with Margaret Kimberley
    Congo and Rwanda Agreement Will Benefit the West at the Expense of the Congolese People
    27 Jun 2025
    Maurice Carney is the Executive Director of Friends of the Congo. He joins us from Washington to discuss the ongoing crisis in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, Rwanda’s continued intervention…
  • Margaret Kimberley, BAR Executive Editor and Senior Columnist
    War Propaganda, State Controlled Media, and the End of African Stream
    25 Jun 2025
    African Stream's Pan-African, anti-imperialist journalistic perspectives made it the target of a state that colludes with corporate media to spread war propaganda.
  • Editors, The Black Agenda Review
    POEM: The Beirut Jokebook, June Jordan, 1982
    25 Jun 2025
    “What did the Arab lady say to the Israeli tank?”
  • Load More
Subscribe
connect with us
about us
contact us