op ed for roving cpd units the third time will not be the charm

wrong within my community that needs to be changed. Poverty, gun violence, antiBlackness, police brutality, COVID-19. It's a lot of things going on. And then especially when the looting started, people were like only talking about the looting and I'm like, it's bigger fsh to fry than just be worried about the looting that's happening. We don't really care too much of that because merchandise can be replaced. Black lives cannot be replaced. Brown lives cannot be replaced. Lives period cannot be replaced.

CS: Activism is needed in my community because it will help bridge the disparities that people don't even know about. When I learned about the gang database, I was like, wow, this is something used against us. Tere's a whole database of suspected gang members. Tere's no actual proof behind all of this especially since a lot of Black people don't know if or when they're put on a gang database. Tat's something that we need to know about. And once we learn about these things and we know about these things, it will create outrage and that's what's needed. We need to be upset that things like this are in place. We need to be upset that things like this can hold us back. And once we get that outrage, activism happens.

MB: Youth and Black and Brown people in the city of Chicago, if we all come together on one accord, despite the racial problems that people might have with one another, put that all to the side, because at the end of the day, we're better united.

CS: Tose disparities can be faced if everybody works together.

MB: Te most important thing that I've learned over this time is that no matter what the dream is or the goal is, is to always go for it. Fight for it. With this whole defund CPD, we're still working. We're still going to put that work forth to go out there and stop what we think is wrong because we don't want cops in our schools and the school to prison pipeline is real and people just need to wake up. Tat's one thing that I've defnitely learned.

MB: Another thing that I've learned is to always save money, because you never know when the rainy day is going to come and due to the coronavirus stay-at-home order, it was a lot of people that was misplaced and a lot of people are still misplaced even after the stupid government assistance that they were giving out because that wasn't enough and it's not enough. It never will be enough. Tat's temporary money that will be gone within the next few weeks. People deserve so much better than what we're getting. And that's just the truth.

CS: I've learned that I'm a human. I'm young. I am motivated, but I also have emotions. Being on the front lines of protests, constantly having to scream at people to get your point across, it hurts, especially when you see slow progress. I've just decided that the activism is worth it for me. And I think that anybody who is in that feld, anybody really, but this is really to my young Black activists, we're human. We need to regenerate too.

CS: Tank y'all for listening to me talk. Young Black queen, South Side of Chicago, I'm going to do great things. You're going to hear my name somewhere and it's not just going to be to eulogize me. It's going to be because I'm going to grow up and do big things. I'm going to fx this community. I'm going to fx as many communities as I can. Y'all just going to have to watch out for me and the rest of the youth. We coming strong. Period. ¬

Erisa Apantaku (@erisa_apantaku) is the executive producer of South Side Weekly Radio. She recently helped produce a piece on COVID-19 in Cook County Jail.

Adeshina Emmanuel (@Public_Ade) is an editor at Injustice Watch, a non-partisan, not-for-proft, multimedia journalism organization.

BY EMMA PEREZ & MAIRA KHWAJA

Chicago Police Superintendent David Brown recently announced plans to create a permanent, “anti-gang” mobile unit as a response to ongoing gun violence this summer. He faces a daunting challenge as new police chief: 2020 has already seen 353 homicides, compared to 254 during the same period last year— an increase of thirty-nine percent, CPD statistics show. To staf a new citywide unit, CPD will deplete the “gang, gun, and saturation” units of each of the department’s fve Police Areas and assign them to a centralized unit. But his new plan to address the gun violence crisis is a failure of imagination and a denial of a violent history. Te history of past roving units weighs heavily on the proposed new division of CPD. CPD Former Supt. Garry McCarthy disbanded the mobile strike force—the most recent iteration of a roving unit— in 2011, and its predecessor, the Special Operations Section (SOS), was likewise disbanded in 2007 after evidence of abusive policing and corruption surfaced. Supt. Brown tried to distinguish the proposed unit from previous ones by emphasizing police ofcers’ expected role in the community, such as mentoring young people or helping senior citizens. As a means to overcome the strategy’s violent history, this reassurance is empty—particularly to those who have sufered the trauma of being “jumped out” on or “shaken down” by specialized law enforcement. Simply put: roving, anti-gang units encourage ofcers to use their power and subjective judgement to the fullest extent, exacerbating abuse with impunity.

According to Supt. Brown, adding a community-oriented component would make this plan “not your father’s citywide unit.” He’s right; it would make it worse. First, a plan that puts children and police ofcers together in a community service or mentoring setting, increasing the interactions between them, only serves to further criminalize children and mocks the notion of community policing. In our work with the Invisible Institute’s Youth/Police Project, we have learned from multiple generations of students that cops-and-kids programs carry an undercurrent of deceit and uneven power dynamics. Where kids might see an ofcer not wearing a badge and uniform, playing basketball or chess, as an of-duty cop who can’t get them in

trouble, the unstated reality to the kids and community is that those ofcers hold all the same power as they would with a badge on in their encounters—to detain, to arrest, to shoot. Anything a kid says or does can inform an arrest, and information a kid shares in a false sense of confdence can be used to criminalize them.

Tis unit is not to be confused with the Summer Mobile Patrol Unit, a force of up to 200 ofcers that was just unveiled in May and during summer months is deployed to crime hot spots, according to police spokesman Luis Agostini. Supt. Brown used the same community rationale to announce that unit. "We’re adding a component... to do some type of community service project as part of their workweek,” he said. “We don’t want them (to be) perceived, or in actuality, a strike force, or something that’s not connected to the community,” the Tribune reported.

Roving citywide units have a history we cannot revive in any iteration in good conscience. Some of the most corrupt and abusive CPD ofcers came from this very kind of unit. Consider the SOS of the CPD formed in 1998. SOS operated through the late 1990s and early 2000s as a response to elevated rates of crime and violence in the city, much like Brown’s proposed unit. SOS was meant to target narcotics dealers and trafckers. Tey were given broad deference to roam across the city to seize drugs and weapons in the name of public safety. With a blank check to reduce crime through whatever means necessary, SOS terrorized Black and brown neighborhoods in Chicago.

On top of being indiscriminate in their persecution of Black and brown people, ofcers in SOS were corrupt. Tey shook down suspected drug dealers and bystanders alike and raided peoples’ homes without warrants, pocketing hundreds of thousands of dollars and contraband. Some of our city’s most notorious ofcers racked up dozens of complaints during their time in the Special Operations Section. Most of these complaints were for use of force or illegal search. Tese ofcial complaints likely only represent a slice of the individual acts of harm caused by these ofcers.

SOS was able to operate undetected for many years, in large part because roving, citywide units face very little scrutiny from the CPD. Te scandal blew up because lawyers from the State’s Attorney’s Ofce informed the CPD that SOS ofcers were consistently missing court appearances. Te investigation was not triggered by the CPD, but by the State’s Attorney’s intervention.

Because they are centralized units, the task of overseeing divisions like SOS often falls through the cracks of CPD’s supervisory structure. As evidenced by the high volume of complaints against ofcers in SOS, few of which resulted in disciplinary action by the department, CPD turned a blind eye to abuse from SOS reported by citizens.

Consider the “jump-out boys.” In 2003 CPD created an Enhanced Foot Patrol Unit, known colloquially, and notoriously, as the “Jump-Out Boys,” to patrol high-crime neighborhoods. Te ofcial unit was closed soon after, in 2004, but a similar “jumpout” initiative was created in 2013 under Supt. McCarthy’s Operation Impact. Te jump-out boys concentrated their eforts in Black and Brown neighborhoods, stopping primarily young men through use of force.

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) published its fndings that described the “jump-out” tactic. Ofcers in plain clothes or unmarked cars will often suddenly drive toward a group of pedestrians in a high-crime area, and then an ofcer is tasked to chase or “zero-in” on a feeing person. According to the DOJ report, “Some of the most problematic shootings occurred when that sole ofcer closed in on the subject, thus greatly increasing the risk of a serious or deadly force incident."

In a complaint made to the Ofce of

Professional Standards (OPS) in 2004, for example, one Chicago resident alleged that her nephew was beaten in the alley outside her West Side house by ten police ofcers. According to the complaint, they jumped out of their squad cars, held him down, beat him with batons, stomped on him, arrested him, and put him in the paddy wagon, where they continued to beat him as they drove away. Te complaint contains 141 pages of evidence and investigatory documents. Te OPS, headed at the time by current Mayor Lori Lightfoot, found that evidence insufcient and ruled the complaint was unfounded.

A specialized unit would give ofcers nearly unfettered access to random passersby, empowering them to stop, frisk, and criminalize Black and brown people. Even without such a unit, ofcers do so on a regular basis by entering names into the fawed gang database. If CPD were to send ofcers into communities of color and task them with stopping as many “suspicious” looking people as possible, based on superfcial markers like clothing or proximity to a hot spot, the gang database would be more overrun with the names of Black and brown people, including many innocent people, than it already is.

Headlines recently lamented the loss of seven-year-old Natalia Wallace and fourteenyear old Vernado Jones to gun violence. Te loss of any life, and particularly a young life, is heartbreaking and frightening. In moments

ILLUSTRATION BY KAHARI BLACK

of fear for our safety, society often turns to what it knows: police and violence. But Supt. Brown’s plan to address gun violence is an overplayed strategy that is doomed to fail, much like its predecessors. Brown has already attempted to quell the summer violence by putting 1,200 additional cops on the street. “Flooding the zone” is a tactic employed every year in the summer heat, and yet, our gun violence persists. Embracing an old strategy that has proven to lead to police abuse and impunity will worsen, not prevent or stop, violence in Chicago.

An uptick in gun violence and shootings of children points more towards urgent, desperate mental health and economic crises that need immediate attention and funding. Tis crisis cannot be solved by police ofcers, whose objective is to put more suspects in jail. Te roving, citywide police unit’s directive is antithetical to the response needed to endemic street violence, as policing leads to a revolving door between poverty and jail that exacerbates gun violence. Creating a community service-themed reprisal of the “jump-out boys,” emboldened to criminalize based on their instincts, will not lead us to a safer future, but a more fearful and violent one. ¬

Emma and Maira work at the Invisible Institute, a journalism production studio on the South Side of Chicago. Maira and Emma last wrote about the treatment of detainees in Cook County Jail during the pandemic.