Letter to Lori Lightfoot, Mayor of Chicago - Congressman García Leads Letters to DOJ and City of Chicago Urging Policing Reforms

Letter

Dear Mayor Lightfoot,

As you develop a formal foot pursuit policy, I write to strongly urge you and relevant City of Chicago officials to seek and incorporate feedback from community members and advocates. While transformative police reform is long overdue, perfunctory policy changes that are not fact-based, substantive, and based on input from the community, will do more harm than good.

Community advocates have long called for the Chicago Police Department (CPD) to adopt a formal foot pursuit policy. Additionally, the U.S. Department of Justice recommended CPD adopt one in January 2017, and as of March 5 of this year the consent decree between the Illinois Attorney General's Office and the City of Chicago requires CPD to implement a foot pursuit policy.

Still, no foot pursuit policy was in place on March 29, when police shot and killed 13-year-old Adam Toledo in my home neighborhood of Little Village after a brief foot chase. On March 31, fewer than 48 hours after CPD killed Adam, police repeatedly shot Anthony Alvarez in the back during another foot chase. Anthony died of his injuries. Although it is too late to save the lives of these young men, a foot pursuit policy is one of many urgently needed police reforms.

While creating a foot pursuit policy is of utmost urgency, the implementation of an ill-conceived or insufficient foot pursuit policy could threaten the safety of fleeing individuals, bystanders, and officers. Therefore, I additionally urge you to incorporate community input and consider models from other cities to ensure any proposed policy successfully reduces the number of dangerous foot chases.

I look forward to continuing to work with your office as we develop federal and local police reform policies that keep our communities safe.

Sincerely,

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