Chicago Reporter (https://www.chicagoreporter.com/category/key-issue/criminal-justice/page/2/)
Photo by Grace Donnelly
Images and video show Chicago officers hiding identifying information during protests over the police killing of George Floyd.
Violent clashes between police and protesters have led to a large number of allegations of police misconduct.
George Floyd’s horrifying death at the hands of Minneapolis police underscores the urgent need to continue working towards reforms outlined in the consent decree at the Chicago Police Department.
A recent Chicago Tribune investigation relies on incomplete data and cherry-picked anecdotes to attack the work of the Chicago Community Bond Fund and The Bail Project.
In phone interviews with The Chicago Reporter, men inside the jail’s quarantine facility doubt their ability to recover while waiting for their day in court.
New safety measures have been ordered while advocates insist that medical vulnerabilities are being ignored and many remain locked up only because they can’t afford bail.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker is deploying medics from the Illinois National Guard to the Illinois Department of Corrections facility, where advocates have declared a ‘disaster.’
The Chicago Community Bond Fund and dozens of other organizations call to release detainees held because they can’t afford bail and limit new admissions to protect inmates, staff, and the general public.
Federal agency cites collaborative investigation by the Reporter, NPR and the Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University which exposed disparities at prisons across the country.
While the Cook County state’s attorney’s office declined to charge two men in the first bond court hearing of the year for low-level marijuana possession, they still spent a night locked up.