Chicago Justice Podcast
Covering crime, violence, and justice issues in Chicago
Episodes
November 15, 2023 • 52 mins
On today’s show, we discuss the connection between racialized policing in the US and the efforts by the right-wing to erase slavery from America’s history. We discuss this with Joseph Flynn, the Executive Director for Equity and Inclusion in the Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Northern Illinois University.
The efforts to rewrite American history ar...
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August 9, 2023 • 34 mins
On today's episode, we feature an interview with Alexandra Block from the ACLU of Illinois about their lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department's highly questionable traffic stop practices. The ACLU alleges that the CPD pulls people over exclusively to search them and their care for drugs and guns. According to their statistics, the CPD's rate of finding guns, drugs, or cause to arrest the person they have pulled over is about...
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June 28, 2023 • 41 mins
Today's episode discusses the long history of abuse and mismanagement at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) with Injustice Watch reporters Kelly Garcia and Carlos Ballesteros.
The JTDC has long been a dumping ground for clouted workers in Cook County government who were too incompetent for any other job in the county. This, combined with a seeming refusal of half of those running the facility to see their...
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June 21, 2023 • 35 mins
Despite promises to the contrary by the Chicago Police Department and the agencies that make up the police accountability system in Chicago, lying while undertaking your official duties as an officer isn't taken all that seriously.
The CPD's rule 14 bars any officer from knowingly submitting a written or oral false report. In other words, they are not supposed to lie. A recent report issued by the Chicago Inspector General's off...
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June 1, 2023 • 45 mins
On today's show we attempt to bring facts and science to the discuss around the Pre-Trail Fairness Act (PTFA) and the state of electronic monitoring (EM) in the Cook County criminal justice system. We were honored to sit down with Kareem Butler, a pretrial justice fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, to discuss these vital issues.
The hyperbolic response to bail reform in Cook County and the subsequent passag...
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May 19, 2023 • 44 mins
On the show today we sit down with Raina Lipsitz to discuss America's problem with justice reform and how cities like Chicago are caught in endless cycle of failure when it comes to passing meaningful justice reform. A meaningful conversation to engage in now as Mayor Lightfoot's time in office has ended with a pretty dismal record on justice reform including endlessly scapegoating judges as being to lenient despite all the scienti...
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May 2, 2023 • 25 mins
The Adam Toledo shooting while a massive tragedy was not out of line with Chicago Police Department guidelines and so the firing of Eric Stillman smells like politics. Despite how the video of this shooting has been exploiting repeatedly for political purposes the reality is that tragic police shootings can occur and those shootings can also be inline with CPD guidelines.
The fervor over the shooting of Toledo makes sense as n...
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April 26, 2023 • 21 mins
Cook County State's Attorney Kim Foxx has announced that after two terms in office she will not be running for re-election in the fall of 2024. On today's show we will provide our quick response to Foxx deciding to end her political career and provide some insight on what brought us to this point.
It is very hard for progressive politicians to bring in the changes they campaign on because of the vitriolic response from centrist...
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April 13, 2023 • 26 mins
On today's show we discuss the new process for how a new superintendent (supt) for the Chicago Police Department gets selected. With the creation of the new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability the process is slightly different from the last time a new supt was selected.
In years past the Chicago Police Board would select 3 candidates for the job of supt and send that list to the mayor. Legally it seemed the...
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April 7, 2023 • 23 mins
On today's episode I am going to give you my very initial thoughts on the Brandon Johnson victory in the Chicago mayoral runoff election as it pertains to police reform issues.
The majority of the mayoral field ran primarily on the issue of crime and violence being out of control in Chicago. If you are thinking that black "progressive" alderpeople who jumped in the race wouldn't do that you would be wrong. Instead it was a chor...
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March 29, 2023 • 21 mins
On today's pod we discuss the alleged reasoning behind Chicago CRED's founder & leader Arne Duncan's endorsement of Paul Vallas for mayor. Later we also discuss the Chicago Tribune's editorial comparing Donald Trump & Jussie Smollett.
We know about Duncan's endorsement because Duncan authored an OpEd in the Chicago Tribune announcing it. While we are not going to judge the endorsement itself other than to say we believe nonprof...
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March 22, 2023 • 25 mins
The coverage of the runoff in the race for mayor and the intense focus on crime and criminal justice matters exposes bias in the Chicago Tribune and the reporters. In the article we discuss today there are massive assumptions embedded in the article that are presented as facts by the two authors. Also embedded in the article if you look closely are topics for which Chicago journalists continue to fail the public by not making the c...
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March 15, 2023 • 27 mins
This week we take the first of what will be many looks at soon to be former Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown and his time in Chicago.
Unfortunately for Chicago despite the Mayor's glowing endorsement and hiring of Brown the reality is that the Lightfoot administration was engaged in a conspiracy with Brown to hide his misconduct while a member of the Dallas Police Department. Their lack of transparency and i...
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March 1, 2023 • 12 mins
Mayor Lightfoot just lost re-election and now stands as the first mayor in forty years to fail to lose re-election after their first term in office. Her is our quick reaction to her loss.
There is little doubt that the reaction to to Mayor Lightfoot from the beginning was based partially on her race, gender, and sexuality. There is also little doubt that her style of governance and lack of relationship building skills contribut...
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February 22, 2023 • 26 mins
An interesting piece of research documenting in their own words how some practitioners in Illinois' justice system use jail. While the research on the uses of jail throughout Illinois vary there seems to be a thread that the use is regularly extrajudicial and goes well beyond the legal purposes of jail and bail.
The goal of the report was to seek out how practitioners use jail and why they seem to be against the Pretrial Fairnes...
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February 15, 2023 • 30 mins
The police accountability system in Chicago just provided all of us more examples of just how broken the system really is. It is a system I have spent over 25 years trying to reform but unfortunately the system cannot seem to provide the Chicago Police Department the oversight and accountability that has been so desperately needed in Chicago.
On today's show we take a look at a recent example where the failures of this system ha...
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February 8, 2023 • 48 mins
On today's show we feature a interview with Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg discussing the case of Chicago's Proud Boys cop. As it has been reported in Chicago the Bureau of Internal Affairs had two chances to fire a Chicago Police officer who was associating both in person and online with the white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys.
Officer Robert Bakker failed to report to the CPD that he had been qu...
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February 1, 2023 • 53 mins
On today's show we sit down with 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez to discuss her efforts to get Chicago to implement true crisis response that doesn't involve the Chicago Police Department. While focusing mainly on her ordinance we also get a little politics in given it is the season as Chicago's elections will be held in just a few weeks.
In response to protests stemming from the murder of George Floyd cities arou...
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January 25, 2023 • 47 mins
On today's episode we sit down with Susan Lee who is currently Chief of Strategy and Policy at Chicago CRED but was previously Deputy Mayor for Public Safety under the Lightfoot administration.
Lee is known as an expert on violence prevention and was doing this same work in Los Angeles before coming to Chicago. Lee was brought in to city government to try to help build a more robust and coordinated anti-violence effort from a ...
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January 18, 2023 • 47 mins
On today's episode we feature a discussion about the real cost of the Chicago Police Department and how the City of Chicago uses corrupt budget practices to hide some of the cost from taxpayers and the media. These practices are not new to the city but Mayor Lightfoot's administration has done nothing to correct them. Thus, like other corrupt mayors before her she hides the true cost from taxpayers.
Trying to figure out exactly...
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