In a country where time is often spent majoring in minor things, issues that should be placed on an elevated level are ignored or neglected—and that neglect can have major consequences.
Consider a “pilot program” underway in Chicago that allows police officers in Englewood, a majority Black neighborhood, to arrest and charge people with felony gun possession crimes without the oversight of prosecutors.
Newly elected Cook County Prosecutor Eileen O’Neil Burke introduced the dangerous approach in a neighborhood that has suffered from police abuses and had Black lives destroyed as a result.
She also introduced a program that demands trusting a police department where planting guns, evidence and forcing false confessions remain major problems and concerns.
Chicago has a well-documented history of police torture and a police department already under a feckless federal consent decree that is supposed to ensure reforms. It hasn’t.
In Chicago, a “study of federal settlements from 2000-2023 shows the city paid out nearly $538 million in settlements and jury awards for wrongful convictions and nearly $138 million more for private outside legal fees,” ABC News 7 reported last year.
The nefarious new program was implemented in Englewood’s 7th Police District in January with no opportunity for public review. But residents and aldermen came out April 5 for a meeting with the district police commander and representatives of Ms. Burke’s office.
“There was no consultation between us, not from the state’s attorney’s office or from the 7th District commander whom we have a generally good relationship with and open communication,” said Dion McGill.
A member of the Chicago Police District Council in Illinois, representing District 7. He took office in May 2023. His current term ends in May 2027.
He is one of three elected councilors chosen as part of an attempt to bring accountability, work with police and get Englewood’s sentiment and feedback on programs and initiatives.
“Englewood has historically been one of the most overpoliced, over-surveilled, under-resourced communities in our city,” said Mr. McGill, in an exclusive interview the day after the community meeting.
“Englewood has consistently been a place where programs are tested and programs are piloted,” he said. “Another alderman actually made a point that the focus of this is guns. And she said, ‘Well, our gun crimes are down.
They’ve been down, and actually our gun crimes are actually lower than some of the other districts. So why didn’t you go there and pilot this program?’ ”
Instead of prosecutors reviewing body cam footage, police reports and approving charges, cops control the entire process with a police lieutenant deciding if charges are valid.
According to media reports, the program is expanding into the 5th Police District, whose residents are a little over 90 percent Black.
“The Cook County Public Defender’s Office opposes the expansion of this initiative. Strategies that focus solely on end users of firearms do little to address the supply or demand of firearms and often carry unintended and harmful consequences,” the office warned.
“Public safety must be pursued through strategies rooted in fairness, accountability, and due process—not through shortcuts that compromise the integrity of our legal system and increase the likelihood of harm to those we serve.”
Bolts, a non-profit that initially broke the story, noted, “Felony review is a first line of defense against unconstitutional stops and searches, flimsy evidence, and other deficiencies that could cause a case to be later thrown out.
After police make a felony arrest, they notify the Cook County prosecutor’s felony review division, where an on-call prosecutor examines each case to determine whether the charges are appropriate and whether they have sufficient evidence.
They might review body camera footage or police reports, interview the arresting officers, or even act like another detective on the case, helping police collect evidence and interrogate suspects.”
The state’s attorney’s office has said the change will put officers back on the street more quickly, instead of waiting for approval of charges from prosecutors. This logic, with a billion dollar police department and one of the major prosecutorial operations in the country, goes nowhere and cannot be trusted.
In addition, how can such power be vested in police in a city with a “reputation as the False Confession Capital of the country?” This is how Alexa Van Brunt, of the MacArthur Justice Center, described the Windy City.
If the program isn’t bad enough, Englewood may be the worst choice for a wrong approach.
In 2017, the “Englewood Four,” who were threatened and coerced into giving false confessions in a rape and murder, reached a $31 million settlement paid for by taxpayers. It is one of the largest settlements in Chicago’s history.
The four Englewood residents were wrongly convicted as teenagers. They served between 12 years and 17 years in prison.
Last year, a separate $50 million settlement was reached with four other Black males wrongly convicted as teenagers.
An attorney in that case said, “three of the officers involved in this case—James Cassidy, Kenneth Boudreau, and Frank Valadez—framed four other teenagers (the ‘Englewood Four’), including my client Terrill Swift, just nine months before the teens in this case were arrested. Yet these officers have never been held to account for stealing so many young lives.”
Even with the oversight of prosecutors, we have suffered massive injustice at the hands of police and prosecutors. In the Englewood Four case, a former prosecutor who broke with the office opened the door for their exoneration.
A Black woman, Kim Foxx, walked away from the county prosecutor’s office after being hounded by the mainstream media, the police union and others after being elected to introduce reforms. She may not have been perfect, but she tried to bring some balance to a grossly biased and imbalanced system. She’s gone now.
As Mr. McGill noted, Ms. O’Neil Burke ran on being tough on crime. “But if tough on crime means decimating communities, I’m not with it,” he said. “I think our carceral system is one of the worst messes known to humankind, and I think it needs to be reformed top to bottom.
So, if we can find ways to keep people out of it, reform, rehabilitate, and restore, and get them into the community to be productive citizens, I’m going to be in favor of that 100 percent.”
“We need third-party review of everything because of that lack of trust. Do I trust you, the state’s attorney? Do I trust the officers who’ve been known to do some nefarious things? Do I trust the judges who’ve been known in the past in Illinois to do some nefarious things?” he asked.
As a beginning, Mr. McGill wants a pause placed on the program in Englewood and a lot more discussion.
We cannot afford to be ignorant, apathetic or oblivious to what is happening around us. Our very survival is at stake, and we must take responsibility for ourselves.
That means organizing, working and actively protecting our communities, our children and our interests. We cannot depend on others for what we can and must do for ourselves.
—Naba’a Muhammad, editor, The Final Call
