Chicago’s Cop Watchers: Youth stand up to police violence

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from In These Times:


Chicago’s Cop Watchers
Youth stand up to police violence.

BY KARI LYDERSEN


The spontaneous uprising in Ferguson over the killing of 18-year-old Michael Brown has cast the national spotlight on racially charged police violence, a slower-burning but increasingly potent movement has been building in Chicago. Young activists and veteran organizers are working to demand accountability and justice for communities that routinely endure violence and harassment at the hands of the city’s police force.

In late August and early September, hundreds of people marched in a series of protests on the West Side against the fatal police shooting of 19-year-old Roshad McIntosh. As in Ferguson, community members are demanding the department release the name of the officer who shot McIntosh. Police say McIntosh pointed a gun at officers; community members have said he was unarmed and on his knees when he was killed.

Chicago has a long history of struggles between communities and police, from union members who fought with police in the 1800s to the Black Panthers in the 1960s to the 1990s-2000s movement against police torture—namely the alleged systematic use of electric shocks, beatings and other brutality to obtain confessions under former Police Commander Jon Burge. Burge is now in prison, serving a four-and-a-half-year sentence for perjury and obstruction. But police brutality, misconduct and shootings continue to make headlines and roil communities in Chicago.

In late August, for example, prosecutors brought charges against a West Side police commander accused of shoving a gun down a man’s throat, holding a Taser to his groin and threatening to kill him during an incident in 2013. A lawsuit filed this spring involved officers videotaped beating and threatening a handcuffed, diminutive woman who managed a tanning salon being raided over prostitution allegations. ........................(more)

The complete piece is at: http://inthesetimes.com/article/17147/chicagos_cop_watchers