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LOCAL News :: Crime & Police : Protest Activity

Police declare war on Uptown CopWatch

Ten month low-intensive CopWatch begins to see cop pressure. Pictures are officers in a racial profiling incident from the Fall harassing a young Ethiopian man.
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During and since the recent Operation: Taking Back Uptown carried out by the Chicago Police Department's 23rd District Sector 1 anti-narcotics units, unmarked police cars and plain clothes officers had increased overt racial profiling of the Wilson-area of Uptown, stopping young Black and Latino men without cause. Some Black men reported cases of planted evidence, and others were arrested without charges, in some cases having bicycles impounded.

A low-intensity CopWatch campaign began, with a few activists and residents, usually armed with cameras, phone numbers for lawyers and cards with citizens' rights printed on them. Occasional CopWatch patrols were conducted down certain streets, and certain trouble intersections and alleyways were targeted.

The police were hostile from the beginning, often making derogatory comments about CopWatch participants to their victims. In one case, one white CopWatch participant was approached after an incident and told that "All these black people on this street are selling crack."

Today, as some of the CopWatch participants sat at a bench taking in the sun at a small park, they were passed by three officers in an unmarked car. The car approached a group of about seven Black teenagers, some of whom had been arrested during police sweeps before. The officers told the teenagers that the CopWatch activists were racists who had spoken out against Blacks and had told the police that the teenagers were selling drugs, and then the officers offered the teenagers that if they violently attacked the CopWatch activists, there would be no reprecussions.

The teenagers, confused, approached the activists and asked for confirmation, but quickly realized that they had been had. Contact information was shared, but by then the unmarked car had driven away. A marked police car later followed the activists a short way.

All of this is in the context of longtime gentrification processes in the Uptown community. For decades, landlords have burned down homes in order to collect insurance and make way for sales of the land for condos, as documented by groups including Kuumba Lynx and O.N.E. Condos have been springing up, along with a Starbucks, Curves, and other typically gentrifying chain shops and local businesses. The Chicago police also orchestrated a rally a few months back opposing panhandling, advocating donations instead go to charities like the Christian fundamentalist Salvation Army.

The CopWatch activists are hoping to gather more evidence on the incident, and use it both to grow and attract new participants from the neighborhood, and perhaps to report it to the local ostensibly sympathetic Alderwoman. Stay tuned for more details.
 
 

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