A major issue in the city of Chicago, is the excessive, deadly use of violence by police officers.

The Department of Justice started an investigation on Dec. 7, 2015 that addressed the issue of the Chicago Police Department using excessive and deadly forces against citizens unreasonably.

Rainbow PUSH (People United to Save Humanity), an organization dedicated to improving the economic lives in African-American communities, held a meeting on Jan. 18 discussing the DOJ report and what should be done as a result of police brutality.

Hon. Dorothy Brown started off the meeting by explaining how we should not only be concerned about our citizens, but our police officers, too.

Although we are concerned about the people who are supposedly obligated to serve and protect us, it makes it hard to support them. Police brutality has been so frequent throughout the past years that many civilians are scared when approached by police officers.

One issue that needed to be addressed is the relationship between the task-force and the community.

“Many of you know that the relationship between the community and the police task-force some would say was nonexistent for a very long time,” attorney Lori Lightfoot said.

Forces will essentially try to come into a community and make changes without actually knowing much about the community itself. How can somebody try to change something they know nothing about? How would they know that there is change needed?

Officers shouldn’t be able to come into a community and essentially try to make changes without having the knowledge as to why they’re making adjustments.

Lightfoot went deeper into the police task-force and elaborated on how police officers create circumstances because of bad training to justify their use of deadly forces.

Officers aren’t trained long enough or with the correct mindset to make life or death decisions while in a situation where they feel threatened. At what point is a person considered dangerous in a police officer’s eyes?

These are not the types of people that need to be armed and in the streets “protecting” us.

“The loss of life by this cycle of dysfunction: the failure to train, the failure to supervise, the failure to hold people accountable, that’s something that can and must change,” Brown said.

Brown was not the only speaker that had this issue on the mind. Attorney Andre Grant spoke very openly and opinionated about how Chicago shouldn’t just have to deal with “racist policing” and that everything shouldn’t be a pity party for the police.

People seem to think we should support all cops because they are here to protect us and have a badge signifying that they’re on our side.
Anything seems to justify a cop killing a civilian in the eyes of the legal system.