According to police, last Sunday at about 2.30pm Chicago police responded to a ‘call from a person with a gun’ in the South Side neighborhood of Englewood, and saw one that matched the description in an alley. Police said the subject then ran and shot at officers while chasing him on foot. Officers fired back and attacked the subject, who was seized and transported to a hospital. Three officers involved were also treated in a hospital. A gun that was all used by the subject was found on the scene. On Monday night, police accused 20-year-old Latrell Allen of two counts of attempted murder and unlawful possession of a weapon. Bond is set at $ 1 million.
Community activists challenged police news reports, asking the question of the gun that was allegedly found at the scene and whether the subject was shot first, stating that the details were not cooperated. “Chicago police say they arrested someone they suspected of possessing a gun. “After that, the boy ran away, rightly afraid for his safety in this dangerous interaction with racist armed police,” Black Lives Matter Chicago wrote in a statement on Monday. “The police then chased him on foot, and went directly against the DOJ’s recommendation to eliminate foot chases. The chase culminated in CPD shootings on this young person, and created violence from a situation where no one was in danger. “
The shooting is being investigated by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA). In a statement COPA said preliminary investigations determined the police were involved “no bodies carrying cameras.” Meanwhile, the officers involved are placed 30 days per protocol for protocol.
After the shooting, videographers reported online that neighbors were gathering in the area as more police moved in. Tensions built on Sunday afternoon when, say police, social media posts circulated claiming the person who was shot was a younger boy. “Just wrong information around,” Chicago Police Chief Yolanda Talley said in a press release, via CBS Chicago. Talley admitted that things became “very hostile” between police and the community that gathered.
“Englewood is an example of the extremely organized farewell that has taken place in the black community in Chicago over the past 40 years. And what we saw was a community that has been so heavily abandoned by the state and in terms of resources, but so heavily polite in response to that abandonment, “said Aislinn Pulley, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Chicago Rolling stone. “So when the police were carrying out an illegal foot prosecution, which they are no longer allowed to do, because it is so dangerous and because so many people have been killed and damage caused by this foot prosecution, the neighborhood arose in righteous anger. in response. “
That same night of the shooting, hundreds of people converted the city’s Magnificent Mile, a stretch known for its high end shopping, where storefront windows were smashed and merchandise taken. More than 400 police, who said they were tipped off after potential looting via social media, responded to the area. As the night dried up and into the early hours of Monday, the unrest spread to surrounding neighborhoods downtown. By the end of the day, sharpness of glass and pun peppery sidewalks and parking lots throughout downtown. More than 100 people were arrested, 13 policemen were injured and two people were shot, said police superintendent David Brown.
In a news conference Monday morning with city officials, Mayor Lori Lightfoot addressed the night’s unrest, calling it “abject criminal behavior, pure and simple.” “This was not an organized protest,” said Police Superintendent David Brown. “Rather, this was an incident of pure crime.” Brown said looters were ’emboldened’ after being arrested earlier but were not charged during the unrest following George Floyd’s death in May. Cook County State Attorney Kim Foxx responded Monday to a separate news conference, saying “dishonest debt games” did not improve the situation. “We can not confront peaceful Protestants with what we saw yesterday,” Foxx said.
At the surface, Sunday’s May sounded like a heartbreaking familiar situation with cause and effect: a police officer shooting a black man from a subordinate community in one of the country’s most segregated cities demanded a response driven by gaping inequality. Some saw the looting as a horror; others called it righteous repairs; in between there were viewpoints as varied as the neighborhoods of the city. Arrests were made, and looting became a focus in national news.
Pulley, the cofounder of Black Lives Matter Chicago, tells Rolling stone that the response is similar to how people focus on violence within a community, instead of concentrating on the circumstances that produce outbreaks. “We know what causes intra-communal violence – it’s the economic inequality that exists in our neighborhoods, it’s the fact that black unemployment in some of our neighborhoods is as high as 80 percent,” she says. “We know this scientifically: increases in gaps between rich and poor increase intra-communal violence. And Chicago is one of the most segregated cities in the country, and the economic inequality is so clear. ‘
While the recent unrest was comparable to the reaction to shootings in other cities nationwide, the urgency for solutions is palpable in Chicago, long fueled by systemic racism, generation after generation, and disinvestment in subordinate communities.
“The level of segregation is high in this city. Sure, the poor neighborhoods in some of the larger cities have similar problems, but the level of housing segregation here is different, “says Reuben Jonathan Miller, PhD, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago’s School of Social Service Administration. He follows the lives of present and once established people, and he says that many return to the same underserved communities where recidivism is as high as unemployment. ‘We know that a negative interaction with a police officer in harmful ways in your life shows that overwhelming amounts of police officers are overwhelming amounts of health and mental health problems. Where overwhelming policing is, we know that people who go to jail have a hard time finding work when they get home. In other words, we know that mass imprisonment itself is a driver of social inequality. ”
Add to that a pandemic, the loss of federally assisted unemployment at a time when those in need are most in need, and a movement that calls for defending police and instead investing in communities as mistrust continues to partying, and the events resonate well above what seems to be putting things off first and what apparently followed the last few days.
“Relationships are currently being punished with life by a crisis,” said Miller, who grew up in a black community on the South Side. “And crises still affect relationships. With that said, it’s an economic crisis, it’s a health pandemic, it’s a public health crisis and it’s a crisis of confidence in the inability of the government not only to protect or provide, but to treat people on the basis of human dignity. And so this COVID helped the powder felt we have now produced. “
While the results of the shootings and the fate of those arrested during the riots are still evolving, Chicagoians are preparing for new restrictions and owners of damaged businesses and shops – many of which were just reopened after previous months’ unrest – began the process of rebuilding. Mayor Lightfoot announced a temporary restriction from downtown from 8 p.m. to 6 p.m., which began on Monday. On Thursday, officials announced that 1,000 police officers will be patrolling downtown this weekend in an effort to prevent more violence, and on Friday, Lightfoot also introduced strategies the city is implementing to prevent future looting, which includes use of technology and data analysis and performing a task force monitor social media, ABC Chicago reports. Several gatherings have taken place throughout the week around the city and they are expected to continue. On Friday night, Black Lives Matter Chicago will hold a rally with Allen’s family, Pulley said.
“What we are seeing is a political crisis that is erupting and continues to erupt, where the people are demanding change and taking responsibility for the brutality that is being perpetrated by policing and the organized disinvestment that is happening in our communities at the same time which has created such dire circumstances – poverty, unemployment, etc. ”, says Pulley, noting that more than 2,500 people have been arrested in connection with protests since May.
Until the conditions are met – something she says the city has not done – people will continue to fight for progress. “The circumstances that produced the unrest have not changed, so there is no expectation that the unrest will die,” she says. “Until there is change, there is no expectation that organizing, marching, rallying and unrest will die.”
