They will still vote for Rahm in the next election.
Faith leaders, community activists and alleged victims of police harassment held a prayer vigil outside the mayor’s office on Ash Wednesday, demanding that Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy “repent” for police violence.
Organized by the Community Renewal Society, the protesters carried signs with black and white photos of Emanuel and McCarthy against a red background, with the caption, “Repent. Show us that black lives matter.”
They railed about the $80 million tab last year and the $500 million paid by Chicago taxpayers over the last ten years to settle cases stemming from alleged police misconduct.
They beefed about an Independent Police Review Authority that investigates excessive force complaints, but penalized just two percent of officers held responsible, and about the fact that black Chicagoans are shot by police at ten times the rate of whites.
They also complained about a pilot program to equip police officers in the Shakespeare District with body cameras that “lacks public oversight of any kind.”
The protesters demanded an end to “stop-and-frisk policies that disproportionately target communities of color” and an overhaul of the already-revamped and independent agency that replaced the Police Department’s old Office of Professional Standards.[…]
“Mayor Emanuel is refusing to address the issue of police brutality and the misuse of authority in black and brown communities…. In Chicago, African-Americans were subject to an estimated 69 percent of the stops. But we are only 33 percent of the city’s population…From 2009 to 2011, 92 percent of the subjects Tasered were African-American and Hispanics. They were ten times more likely to be shot.”