“There is a misperception that police are the problem,” Jeff Sessions said.
WASHINGTON –– Attorney Gen. Jeff Sessions on Friday announced that he is sending more violent crime prosecutors to Chicago as his department filed a brief opposing a pending consent decree drafted in the wake of allegations of police misconduct.
“Public safety, security and order are the fundamental responsibility of the executive branches of our state, local and federal governments,” Sessions said in a news release .
“This constitutional duty rests primarily, for large cities, on their police departments. These departments are composed of some of our finest citizens who daily display courage, respect for law, judgment, and integrity. It is these officers who stand between crime and security. There is one government institution, and one alone, that has the ability to make Chicago safer — that is the Chicago Police Department. Our goal should be to empower it to fulfill its duties, not to restrict its proper functioning or excessively demean the entire Department for the errors of a few. Make no mistake: unjustified restrictions on proper policing and disrespect for our officers directly led to this tragic murder surge in Chicago.
“At a fundamental level, there is a misperception that police are the problem and that their failures, their lack of training, and their abuses create crime. But the truth is the police are the solution to crime, and criminals are the problem. The results of the ACLU settlement in November 2015, as revealed by Judge Cassel’s study, established this fact dramatically, conclusively, and most painfully for the City of Chicago. When police are restrained from using lawfully established policies of community engagement, when arrests went down, and when their work and character were disrespected, crime surged. There must never be another consent decree that continues the folly of the ACLU settlement.”
Bolstering the federal prosecutorial bench comes in a week where President Donald Trump three times singled out Chicago’s crime problems: on Thursday in a meeting with Kanye West in the Oval Office and on Monday in a speech before a group of police chiefs where he said an agreement between the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois and the Chicago Police Department on stop-and-frisk procedures was “terrible.”
Mayor Rahm Emanuel said he has “work to do” and doesn’t have the time or the patience to worry about a legal objection that has no more weight than a so-called “amicus brief” filed by another attorney or any other interested party.
The Justice Department earlier in the week said that it would weigh-in against the proposed decree with a hearing in Chicago scheduled for the end of the month before a federal judge.
