Breaking News: It's All Cops

July 13, 2023 11:01 AM

tw: systemic sexual assault / Last week, a Chicago PD officer was accused of 'impregnating a teenage asylum seeker' while other officers were accused of “improper sexual relations” with immigrants who have been housed in police stations

About 4,500 people are staying in city-run temporary shelters. Hundreds more are staying in police stations, sleeping on crowded floors and relying on donations from neighbors while they wait for shelter space to become available while this investigation is ongoing.

Chicago's Civilian Office of Police Accountability are the ones investigating though ProPublica reports that they may not have the fastest or least bureaucratic mandate. In order to clear some of this red-tape, they are apparently getting rid of a backlog of 800+ investigations into potential abuses by CPD.

In a video posted on Twitter Friday evening, Fraternal Order of Police President John Catanzara said the allegations are baseless and blamed “police-hating groups that would go to any length to start this kind of nonsense.”

The people and organizations advocating for the immigrants include Baltazar Enriquez, president of the Little Village Community Council and Britt Hodgdon, a trauma therapist and manager of the behavior health program at UChicago Med Pediatric Department who had cosigned a letter advising the mayor's office of the potential for child sexual abuse within this system.

Some background on what the Chicago news media is calling their 'Migrant Crisis'

There have been some criticisms of how Chicago City Council has handled the influx of immigrants to Chicago. Some additional criticism. And some more. There's also a lawsuit targeting LexisNexis' contract that sold metadata on migrants to ICE that was filed by immigration advocates in Cook County.

This is, of course, not the first time it's come to light that children caught up in our immigration system have been subjected to systemic sexual abuse with considerable reporting on this within the last few years such as in20192021, and 2023, along with reports of unaccounted minors who are pressed into forced labor.

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Your Call to Action

How you can help asylum seekers in Chicago

posted by paimapi (8 comments total)

Fraternal Order of Police President == The nation's top mobster.
posted by Abehammerb Lincoln at 11:11 AM on July 13, 2023 [5 favorites]

Meanwhile, in Seattle, video recently leaked showing that a precinct break room had a mock tombstone for a Black man killed by SPD cops in 2017.
posted by lunasol at 11:18 AM on July 13, 2023 [6 favorites]

Just yesterday I saw some folks on my sosh meeds being angry that teachers were volunteering to work with asylum-seeking kids and teens over the summer. They're pretty quiet today. Imagine being angry that someone was helping a teen who's lost their home learn to read English, and not being angry that a cop raped that kid. What is it even like to live inside that mind.
posted by We put our faith in Blast Hardcheese at 11:23 AM on July 13, 2023 [19 favorites]

"Police-hating groups"

I wonder why they might hate the Chicago Police...

Please.
posted by tiny frying pan at 11:35 AM on July 13, 2023 [24 favorites]

I'm so angry I'm having trouble breathing when I think of this.
Catanzara is a bastard liar, and I hope he rots.

I once wanted to be the person that didn't wish evil on those that committed evil. I'm just not able to be that person anymore. I hope the actual perpetrators suffer agony and the deniers and abettors die a horrible death knowing what they did was wrong.
posted by BlueHorse at 2:07 PM on July 13, 2023 [4 favorites]

Thanks for this post, paimapi. Other ways to help on the North Side (there are likely similar efforts elsewhere too). 19th District and 18th District (which currently has 49 people sleeping on the floor in the lobby). The volunteer coordinator at the 18th District told me they need extra food because the food at the city shelter is so inadequate that people come back to the police station even after being placed in a shelter just to get enough to eat. The lack of coordinated governmental response to the calculated cruelty of those who transported these human beings here to make a political point is impossible to comprehend.
posted by slmorri at 6:13 PM on July 13, 2023 [3 favorites]

Police stations, refugee camps, workplaces, prisons... Where men are left unaccountable, you'll find sexual assault.
posted by Rykey at 8:36 AM on July 14, 2023

Note: The Chicago Police Department is under a federal consent decree as a result of the Laquan MacDonald murder by a Chicago Police Officer while 11 other police stood around and watched. A whistleblower who accused CPD of organizing false reports was the only bystander charged and convicted of wrong doing other than the murderer. The city covered up the existence of video of the murder for a year to protect Rahm Emanuel's election prospects and it only became public thanks to a single whistleblower out of the dozens who knew about it (conspiracies do exist and this murder cover-up came very close to succeeding!)

The consent decree has not gone well and progress is so poor (5% full compliance) that they were granted a three year extension on the agreed upon duration in March of this year. The office of CPD responsible for the consent decree implementation and monitoring has had constant staff turnover and several firings. The federal monitor has changed There is pretty much no chance that Chicago's police department will meet the substantive requirements of the consent decree even with the extension. So far all they have managed to do is some very minor paperwork changes.

The murderer of Laquan McDonald is already out of jail and next year it will be one decade since Laquan was killed.

So in short Chicago doesn't actually have a police force.
posted by srboisvert at 11:53 AM on July 14, 2023 [3 favorites]