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The Trump administration on Friday announced to a federal judge in Chicago that it was trying to defeat a plan negotiated between the country's third largest city and Illinois, which is planning deep reforms to the Chicago police force of 12,000. agents, under the close supervision of a federal court.
In a statement announcing his intervention, the Attorney General, Jeff Sessions, criticized the plan of about 200 pages, also called the Consent Decree, because of the control exercised by the court. And he offered a brave defense to the Chicago police, claiming that she had to take the lead in stemming the violence in the city.
"There is a misperception that the police are the problem and that their failures, lack of training and abuse create a crime," said Sessions. "But the truth is that the police are the solution to crime and that criminals are the problem."
An 11-page Department of Justice Statement of Interest – filed with Judge Robert M. Dow Jr., which is to give final approval for the proposal – indicates that the reform plan, as it stands, would deprive policemen the flexibility to do their job well. And he criticizes the criteria of the plan to assess police compliance as vague.
He is asking Dow "to allow state officials and local authorities – as well as the brave front-line police in Chicago – to deploy flexible and localized efforts to advance the goal of the city." Safe, effective and constitutional police in Chicago ".
The Sessions' submission and commentary comes a week after the jurors sentenced Jason Van Dyke, Chicago police officer, for second degree murder, for firing 16 times at the black teenager Laquan McDonald, while He was away from the police with a knife.
A video of the shooting, broadcast about a year later, caused a power cut across the country and led to an Obama administration investigation into the Chicago police, which was followed several months later. by a damning report revealing numerous abuses on the part of the police.
The Department of Justice simultaneously announced the creation of a "Firearms Crime Prosecution Team" at the Chicago Attorney General's Office dedicated to gun crimes. The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives will appoint five violent crime coordinators to work with federal prosecutors.
In response to the announcements, a spokesman for Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, Matt McGrath, said the city appreciated the additional resources, "but we do not appreciate the efforts to undermine our public security or to curb our efforts to restore trust between officers and residents. "
Illinois lawyer Lisa Madigan – with no objection from Emanuel – sued the city last year to ensure that any police reform is supervised by a judge. This killed a draft plan negotiated with the Trump administration that did not envision a judicial role in departmental reform and which ultimately resulted in fruitful discussions to create the current plan.
The reform plan currently on the table provides for much stricter rules on the use of force by agents. A provision requires agents to file documents whenever they point their guns, even if they do not shoot.
The sessions again echoed President Donald Trump, who told officers at a convention in Orlando Monday that a three-year agreement between Chicago and the Illinois Civil Liberties Union, aimed at ending the rigorous police procedures prevented jobs.
"When the police are prevented from using legally established policies (…), when the number of arrests has decreased and their work and personality have been misunderstood, the crime has increased sharply," he said. declared Sessions. "There must never be another consent decree that perpetuates the madness of the ACLU regulation."
Chicago officials and the ACLU have stated that these and other similar claims made by the Trump administration were exaggerated, skewed crime data in Chicago, and distorted the causes of misrepresentation. -Joint crime.
Karen Sheley, director of the Police Practices Project at the ACLU of Illinois, said the decision made Friday by the Trump administration to put a plan together for more than one year. an was "a last-minute political game at the expense of real people in the country". our city."
"The Trump administration and the Justice Department's Sessions have never tried to educate themselves about Chicago's problems nor about the needed reform," Sheley said in a statement Friday.
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Follow Michael Tarm on Twitter at http://twitter.com/mtarm
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