The DOJ Investigation of the Chicago Police Department

The DOJ Investigation of the Chicago Police Department
Author: U.S. Department of Justice
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
Total Pages: 341
Release: 2017-10-10
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 1631582127

“Perhaps the most damning, sweeping critique ever of the Chicago Police Department.” —Chicago Tribune Chicago, 2016. In a time of civil unrest in America, when racism, brutality, and division have taken prominent places in the daily news, the federal government conducted an investigation into the affairs of the Chicago Police Department. It is only one of many instances where the federal government has issued investigations of law enforcement across the nation before President Obama’s term expired. In a searing report, the department of justice examines Chicago’s law enforcement officers and officials for period of nearly thirteen months, digging to uncover moral and legal infractions committed within the department. Revealed is a pattern of aggression, lack of training, excessive use of force, racism and racial profiling, among other misconduct. Read the report in its entirety here. This edition is sure to provide readers with eye-opening insight into an epidemic of injustice and oppression across a divided nation.

The Torture Letters

The Torture Letters
Author: Laurence Ralph
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 267
Release: 2020-01-15
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 022672980X

Torture is an open secret in Chicago. Nobody in power wants to acknowledge this grim reality, but everyone knows it happens—and that the torturers are the police. Three to five new claims are submitted to the Torture Inquiry and Relief Commission of Illinois each week. Four hundred cases are currently pending investigation. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 125 black suspects were tortured by Chicago police officers working under former Police Commander Jon Burge. As the more recent revelations from the Homan Square “black site” show, that brutal period is far from a historical anomaly. For more than fifty years, police officers who took an oath to protect and serve have instead beaten, electrocuted, suffocated, and raped hundreds—perhaps thousands—of Chicago residents. In The Torture Letters, Laurence Ralph chronicles the history of torture in Chicago, the burgeoning activist movement against police violence, and the American public’s complicity in perpetuating torture at home and abroad. Engaging with a long tradition of epistolary meditations on racism in the United States, from James Baldwin’s The Fire Next Time to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s Between the World and Me, Ralph offers in this book a collection of open letters written to protesters, victims, students, and others. Through these moving, questing, enraged letters, Ralph bears witness to police violence that began in Burge’s Area Two and follows the city’s networks of torture to the global War on Terror. From Vietnam to Geneva to Guantanamo Bay—Ralph’s story extends as far as the legacy of American imperialism. Combining insights from fourteen years of research on torture with testimonies of victims of police violence, retired officers, lawyers, and protesters, this is a powerful indictment of police violence and a fierce challenge to all Americans to demand an end to the systems that support it. With compassion and careful skill, Ralph uncovers the tangled connections among law enforcement, the political machine, and the courts in Chicago, amplifying the voices of torture victims who are still with us—and lending a voice to those long deceased.

Investigation of the Chicago Police Department

Investigation of the Chicago Police Department
Author: U. S. Department of Justice
Publisher:
Total Pages: 166
Release: 2017-01-14
Genre:
ISBN: 9781542622776

This is the complete report of the United States Department of Justice into police brutality and corruption in Chicago.On Dec. 7, 2015, Attorney General Lynch announced the investigation into the CPD and the city's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). The investigation focused on CPD's use of force, including racial, ethnic and other disparities in use of force, and its systems of accountability.In the course of its pattern or practice investigation, the department interviewed and met with city leaders, current and former police officials, and numerous officers throughout all ranks of CPD. The department also accompanied line officers on over 60 ride-alongs in every police district; heard from over 1,000 community members and more than 90 community organizations; reviewed thousands of pages of police documents, including all relevant policies, procedures, training and materials; and analyzed a randomized, representative sample of force reports and the investigative files for incidents that occurred between January 2011 and April 2016, including over 170 officer-involved shooting investigations and documents related to over 400 additional force incidents.The department found that CPD's pattern or practice of unconstitutional force is largely attributable to deficiencies in its accountability systems and in how it investigates uses of force, responds to allegations of misconduct, trains and supervises officers, and collects and reports data on officer use of force. The department also found that the lack of effective community-oriented policing strategies and insufficient support for officer wellness and safety contributed to the pattern or practice of unconstitutional force.In addition, the department also identified serious concerns about the prevalence of racially discriminatory conduct by some CPD officers and the degree to which that conduct is tolerated and in some respects caused by deficiencies in CPD's systems of training, supervision and accountability. The department's findings further note that the impact of CPD's pattern or practice of unreasonable force falls heaviest on predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods, such that restoring police-community trust will require remedies addressing both discriminatory conduct and the disproportionality of illegal and unconstitutional patterns of force on minority communities.In short, the United States government found a decades-long pattern of racially-motivated brutality and corruption in the Chicago police department, and now has required the city to enhance officer training in order to rectify officer attitudes and deficiencies. This report is the full accounting of the Justice department, and includes the consent decree to which Chicago has agreed.

Chicago Police

Chicago Police
Author: Thomas Joseph Jurkanin
Publisher: Charles C Thomas Publisher
Total Pages: 243
Release: 2006
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0398076111

"The book also delves into how the Chicago Police Department battles gangs, guns, drugs, and murder; how Hillard exhibited leadership in good times and in bad times; how Hillard dealt with politicians, the community, cops on the street and the media; how the department handled difficult crimes and their investigations; and how Hillard led, what he learned in the process, and what he accomplished. The book also discusses contemporary police issues including police corruption and brutality, use of force by police, police pursuits, police shootings and deaths, community policing, police accountability, and the use of emerging technologies in the fight against crime."--BOOK JACKET.

The Torture Machine

The Torture Machine
Author: Flint Taylor
Publisher: Haymarket Books
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2019-03-19
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 1608468968

With his colleagues at the People’s Law Office (PLO), Taylor has argued landmark civil rights cases that have exposed corruption and cover-up within the Chicago Police Department (CPD) and throughout the city’s political machine, from aldermen to the mayor’s office. [TAYLOR’s BOOK] takes the reader from the 1969 murders of Black Panther Party chairman Fred Hampton and Panther Mark Clark—and the historic, thirteen-year trial that followed—through the dogged pursuit of chief detective Jon Burge, the leader of a torture ring within the CPD that used barbaric methods, including electric shock, to elicit false confessions from suspects. Taylor and the PLO gathered evidence from multiple cases to bring suit against the CPD, breaking the department’s “code of silence” that had enabled decades of cover-up. The legal precedents they set have since been adopted in human rights legislation around the world.

The Gang Book

The Gang Book
Author: Franco Domma
Publisher:
Total Pages: 384
Release: 2018
Genre: Crime
ISBN: 9780692951910

A detailed overview of street gangs in the Chicago metropolitan area.

Investigation of the Chicago Police Department

Investigation of the Chicago Police Department
Author: U. S. Department of Justice Civil Rights Division
Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2017-01-17
Genre: Criminal investigation
ISBN: 9781542621847

This is the complete report of the US Department of Justice Civil Rights Division and the office of the District Attorney for the Northern District of Illinois, into the long, brutal history of the Chicago Police Department. On Dec. 7, 2015, Attorney General Lynch announced the investigation into the CPD and the city's Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). The investigation focused on CPD's use of force, including racial, ethnic and other disparities in use of force, and its systems of accountability.In the course of its pattern or practice investigation, the department interviewed and met with city leaders, current and former police officials, and numerous officers throughout all ranks of CPD. The department also accompanied line officers on over 60 ride-alongs in every police district; heard from over 1,000 community members and more than 90 community organizations; reviewed thousands of pages of police documents, including all relevant policies, procedures, training and materials; and analyzed a randomized, representative sample of force reports and the investigative files for incidents that occurred between January 2011 and April 2016, including over 170 officer-involved shooting investigations and documents related to over 400 additional force incidents.The department found that CPD's pattern or practice of unconstitutional force is largely attributable to deficiencies in its accountability systems and in how it investigates uses of force, responds to allegations of misconduct, trains and supervises officers, and collects and reports data on officer use of force. The department also found that the lack of effective community-oriented policing strategies and insufficient support for officer wellness and safety contributed to the pattern or practice of unconstitutional force.In addition, the department also identified serious concerns about the prevalence of racially discriminatory conduct by some CPD officers and the degree to which that conduct is tolerated and in some respects caused by deficiencies in CPD's systems of training, supervision and accountability. The department's findings further note that the impact of CPD's pattern or practice of unreasonable force falls heaviest on predominantly black and Latino neighborhoods, such that restoring police-community trust will require remedies addressing both discriminatory conduct and the disproportionality of illegal and unconstitutional patterns of force on minority communities.Similar to recent Justice Department reports into police brutality and misconduct in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, this book traces the long history of police abuse (and failures of leadership, for decades) to the present day, in an attempt to make sense of the outbreak of violence--and to explain the basis for new, enforceable actions the police department must take in order to change.

Investigation of the Chicago Police Department

Investigation of the Chicago Police Department
Author: Department of Justice
Publisher:
Total Pages: 164
Release: 2017-03-19
Genre:
ISBN: 9781457862915

On December 7, 2015, the Department of Justice (DOJ), Civil Rights Division, Special Litigation Section, and the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Northern District of Illinois jointly initiated an investigation of the City of Chicago's Police Department (CPD) and the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA). The goal was to determine whether the CPD is engaging in a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct and, if so, what systemic deficiencies or practices within CPD, IPRA, and the City might be facilitating or causing this pattern or practice. Contents: Background; CPD Engages in a Pattern or Practice of Unconstitutional Use of Force; Chicago's Deficient Accountability Systems Contribute to CPD's Pattern or Practice of Unconstitutional Conduct; CPD Does Not Provide Officers with Sufficient Direction, Supervision, or Support to Ensure Lawful and Effective Policing; CPD Must Better Support and Incentivize Policing That Is Lawful and Restores Trust among Chicago's Marginalized Communities; Recommendations. This is a print on demand report.

The Wagon and Other Stories from the City

The Wagon and Other Stories from the City
Author: Martin Preib
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 176
Release: 2010-04-15
Genre: True Crime
ISBN: 0226679810

Martin Preib is an officer in the Chicago Police Department—a beat cop whose first assignment as a rookie policeman was working on the wagon that picks up the dead. Inspired by Preib’s daily life on the job, The Wagon and Other Stories from the City chronicles the outer and inner lives of both a Chicago cop and the city itself. The book follows Preib as he transports body bags, forges an unlikely connection with his female partner, trains a younger officer, and finds himself among people long forgotten—or rendered invisible—by the rest of society. Preib recounts how he navigates the tenuous labyrinths of race and class in the urban metropolis, such as a domestic disturbance call involving a gang member and his abused girlfriend or a run-in with a group of drunk yuppies. As he encounters the real and imagined geographies of Chicago, the city reveals itself to be not just a backdrop, but a central force in his narrative of life and death. Preib’s accounts, all told in his breathtaking prose, come alive in ways that readers will long remember.

Neoliberal Chicago

Neoliberal Chicago
Author: Larry Bennett
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Total Pages: 291
Release: 2016-12-12
Genre: Political Science
ISBN: 0252099036

The neoliberal philosophy of fiscal austerity aligned with reduced regulation has transformed Chicago. As pursued by mayor Rahm Emanuel and his predecessor Richard M. Daley, neoliberalism led officials to privatize everything from parking meters to schools, gut regulations and social services, and promote gentrification wherever possible. The essayists in Neoliberal Chicago explore an essential question: how does neoliberalism work on the ground in today's Chicago? Contextual chapters explore race relations, physical development, and why Chicago embraced neoliberalism. Other contributors delve into aspects of the neoliberal vision, neoliberalism's impact on three iconic city spaces, and how events like the 2008 foreclosure crisis and the bid to attract the Olympic Games reveal the workings of neoliberalism. Contributors: Stephen Alexander, Larry Bennett, Michael Bennett, Carrie Breitbach, Sean Dinces, Kenneth Fidel, Roberta Garner, Euan Hague, Black Hawk Hancock, Christopher Lamberti, Michael J. Lorr, Martha Martinez, Brendan McQuade, Alex G. Papadopoulos, Rajiv Shah, Costas Spirou, Carolina Sternberg, and Yue Zhang.