As federal agents prepared to come to Chicago with the stated goal of stopping violence, activist groups voiced fear that those forces would be used to quell protests against police brutality and sued federal officials Thursday to prevent the kinds of civil rights violations alleged during protests in Portland, Oregon.
At the same time, a different coalition of activist groups complained separately in federal court that Chicago police have abused and insulted protesters for weeks. The groups demanded the city restrain the cops and threatened litigation if Mayor Lori Lightfoot’s administration doesn’t move to stop the alleged abuse.
The court filings spelled out concerns that President Donald Trump is using federal agents to attack protesters who oppose him. They also illustrated the ways local protests over policing have worsened the already tense relationship between Chicago cops and those who allege that they hurt minorities with impunity.
Trump announced Wednesday he planned to send a “surge of federal law enforcement” to Chicago, among other cities. Attorney General William Barr said hundreds of federal agents could take part and engage in “classic crime-fighting” actions such as investigating homicides, gangs, gun crime and drug trafficking organizations. The new agents will include members of the FBI, U.S. Marshals Service, the Drug Enforcement Administration and Department of Homeland Security, among others.
Lightfoot has expressed both cautious optimism about the additional resources and skepticism of Trump’s motives. She repeatedly has said Chicago would not welcome the kind of force captured on camera on the streets of Portland, where agents appear to have arrested protesters and whisked them away in unmarked vehicles.
In that city, federal agents have fired rubber bullets and tear gas, and their presence has intensified protests that started after the death of George Floyd under the knee of a Minneapolis police officer in late May.
Concerns over a Portland-style response run through the lawsuit filed in Chicago federal court by groups including Black Lives Matter Chicago. The suit alleges that Trump is sending agents to Chicago in an effort to “intimidate and falsely arrest civilians who are exercising their constitutional right to speak and to assemble.”
The groups — including Black Abolitionist Network, Chicago Democratic Socialists of America and GoodKids MadCity — seek an injunction preventing federal authorities from “interfering in or otherwise policing lawful and peaceful protests” in Chicago or arresting people without cause.
At a news conference Thursday in Federal Plaza, activists pointed to Portland as evidence of what could come this weekend in Chicago. Still, they called on people to continue to protest.
“We want to be clear that what is happening nationally is an attempt to stifle righteous rage and anger at the continued killing of Black people by police,” said Aislinn Pulley, a co-founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago. “We have been fighting back consistently for two months and we will not stop.”
Activists pushed back on the claim that surging gun violence calls for more law enforcement officers, arguing that community investment, not more policing, will reduce violence.
“What we need is funding, what we need is investment in Black and brown communities, we don’t need police, we don’t need feds coming in,” said Alycia Kamil, of GoodKids MadCity. “As Black and brown people who are already targeted, already under surveillance, I fear for my life.”
Barr is one of the federal officials the lawsuit names as a defendant. Spokespersons for the U.S. Department of Justice could not immediately be reached for comment.
A Portland federal judge on Thursday signed a two-week temporary restraining order barring federal officers from using force or taking other actions against journalists or legal observers to the protests.
One plaintiff in the Chicago suit is a union bargaining unit representing journalists from the Chicago-based progressive magazine In These Times. Many Chicago Tribune journalists are represented by a different unit organized under the same national union, the NewsGuild-CWA.
Even as those activist groups voiced concerns about federal authorities, lawyers for a separate coalition of activists sent City Hall a letter decrying what their lawyers described as the Chicago Police Department’s “brutal, violent, and unconstitutional tactics that are clearly intended to silence protesters.” The letter also was filed in federal court as the groups threatened legal action related to the ongoing court process of reforming the Police Department.
The suit against federal authorities and the letter to City Hall mostly involve different groups, though Black Lives Matter Chicago is involved in both efforts.
The lawyers for the groups that sent the letter accused officers of clubbing protesters over the head with batons and knocking out the teeth of 18-year-old activist Miracle Boyd.
During a protest downtown May 30, officers inflicted “massive head trauma” on a woman and then pepper sprayed a woman who tried to help her, the letter alleges. The letter states that on the same day outside Trump Tower, an officer hit a protester with a baton and said, “If you aren’t trying to get hurt, then don’t come to a protest.”
The letter goes on to accuse police of using degrading language about women and homophobic slurs. It states that one officer yelled at protesters, “Wait ’til I get my badge off, you f—ing (anti-gay slur).”
Some officers did not wear masks as a precaution to avoid getting or spreading COVID-19 and told protesters, “I don’t care if you get sick,” the letter alleges.
The letter accuses officers of violating both department policy and the consent decree, a broad federal court order designed to change the way the troubled police force treats people.
That court order is one of the most substantive consequences of the protests that erupted in late 2015 after the release of video of white Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times. That spurred a Justice Department investigation that castigated the police in January 2017 as poorly trained, badly supervised and prone to excessive force. The report helped make way for the consent decree now being implemented under the supervision of a federal judge.
The city has moved sluggishly to enact the decree, missing more than 70% of its deadlines in the first year under the order. The activists’ letter cited the city’s slow progress, stating that “the CPD has failed to make any meaningful changes to its operations, policies, patterns, and practices.”
In addition, the letter called on Lightfoot’s administration to bar cops from using force against peaceful protesters. The lawyers also demanded the city punish cops who abuse protesters and avoid arresting people on minor charges. Activist groups have alleged that protesters were held for long periods without access to lawyers, and the letter calls on the police to promptly allow arrestees to use phones and talk to lawyers.
The letter asks the city to make the changes voluntarily but threatens to seek court enforcement of their demands under the consent decree. The letter threatens a separate lawsuit if they’re not allowed to push for enforcement under the consent decree. The lawyers asked the city to respond by Friday afternoon, and a hearing is scheduled in the consent decree case earlier that day.
Asked about the letter, Law Department spokeswoman Kathleen Fieweger said the city was reviewing it and added that the Lightfoot administration is “committed to ensuring and protecting all individuals’ First Amendment rights to peacefully protest in this city.”
She did not respond to a request for comment on the separate suit over federal agents’ involvement in Chicago.
Thursday’s filings add to the mounting legal paperwork stemming from recent protests. In June, the Cook County public defender’s office and others sued the city over allegations that police have routinely denied arrestees access to lawyers, including during the protests. And a youth-activist training organization is suing the city over allegations that police and consumer protection officials illegally ordered the group to stop its efforts to aid protesters in May.
Meanwhile, the former federal prosecutor tasked with monitoring the city’s progress on the consent decree, Maggie Hickey, is working on a report on alleged civil rights abuses during the protests.
![A Cook County judge issued an arrest warrant for an Aurora man in connection with the killing of Chicago police Officer Luis Huesca, according to court records. Xavier Tate Jr. was named in a first-degree murder warrant that ordered authorities to detain him, according to documents filed in Cook County Circuit Court Friday. A felony complaint accuses him of firing a .40 caliber handgun at Huesca, killing him. Huesca, 30 and a six-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, was in Gage Park when he was shot multiple times on the 3100 block of West 56th Street while off-duty but […]](https://www.chicagotribune.com/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/CTC-L-CPD-luis-huesca-01_187858445_de8a4b.jpg?w=620 "A Cook County judge issued an arrest warrant for an Aurora man in connection with the killing of Chicago police Officer Luis Huesca, according to court records. Xavier Tate Jr. was named in a first-degree murder warrant that ordered authorities to detain him, according to documents filed in Cook County Circuit Court Friday. A felony complaint accuses him of firing a .40 caliber handgun at Huesca, killing him. Huesca, 30 and a six-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department, was in Gage Park when he was shot multiple times on the 3100 block of West 56th Street while off-duty but […]")
