Latest news with #AmericanCivilLibertiesUnionofIllinois
Mint
19-06-2025
- Politics
- Mint
Chicago Allows Summer Curfews for Minors as Mayor Vows Veto
(Bloomberg) -- Chicago's city council voted to give its police chief the green light to enforce temporary curfews for minors in a bid to curb violence that has typically ramped up during the summer months, prompting Mayor Brandon Johnson to vow to block the measure. The council approved a proposal Wednesday to allow Police Superintendent Larry Snelling to enact three-hour curfews with just 30 minutes of notice. Under the measure, which would take effect in 10 days unless it's vetoed, a so-called snap curfew can be enacted when gatherings 20 or more minors are thought to present a threat to public safety. The third-largest US city has struggled to manage mass gatherings of teenagers in recent years, many of which have taken place near Millennium Park and the Magnificent Mile, Chicago's luxury shopping district. In March, a tourist from Connecticut was accidentally shot when a 15-year-old opened fire after his group of teenagers was kicked out of a movie theater downtown, according to a local news report. Johnson called the measure a 'knee-jerk reactionary ordinance' and said there isn't any empirical evidence that curfews will reduce violence. He pledged to veto the bill, which passed with 27 votes in favor and 22 against. The proposal was sponsored by Brian Hopkins, the councilman whose district covers much of the wealthy Gold Coast and Streeterville neighborhoods. 'This curfew ordinance is a better alternative to arresting teenagers,' Hopkins said at Wednesday's meeting. 'The police can arrest them, but let's give them something better so that they don't have to. Let the teenagers be safely returned to their families when a parent or guardian comes and gets them. That is much better than having to arrest them for doing the things that are in fact criminal acts. These are criminal acts, not innocent high jinks.' The American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois opposed the measure, saying in a letter that it 'does not comport with legal standards for arrest and prosecution.' The Chicago chapter of the National Lawyers Guild was also against it, saying it 'has the serious potential to violate people's due process rights to have notice of what conduct is prohibited or illegal.' 'We are concerned this proposal would subject Black and brown teenagers to the same historical over-policing that violates equal protection rights and is harmful and unjust,' the group said in a statement. Crime rates fell 12% in Chicago last year, but were still up 48% from 2020, according to data from the city's police department. Still, Chicago typically sees a rise in crime during the summer months, which account for a third of the city's shootings each year, according to the University of Chicago's Crime Lab. Under the measure approved by the city council, a snap curfew can be enacted after Chicago's police chief consults the deputy mayor of community safety. The superintendent also needs to inform the public and Office of Emergency Management and Communications, which will issue a notification to sister agencies and to offices of the city's councilmen. (Updates with mayor's veto pledge in first paragraph.) More stories like this are available on
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Yahoo
The Man Who Fought Chicago for His Cadillac—and Never Got It Back
I first met Spencer Byrd in a Chicago diner one afternoon in 2018. Sitting across from me, he told me an outrageous story about how he'd been battling the city government for two years to get his 1996 Cadillac DeVille out of impound. Byrd's story would help lead to reforms to Chicago's impound program and an ongoing federal class action lawsuit against the city. But despite fighting in court for nearly a decade, he never got his Cadillac back. I learned this week that Byrd died in February, while that lawsuit was still pending. I've often considered it something—if not fate, then at least fortuitous—that Byrd and I connected. In 2017, a staffer at the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois told me about Chicago's punitive vehicle impound program and put me in touch with a local attorney doing pro bono work with people whose cars had been seized. The attorney gave me the phone numbers of five or six clients who he thought would be interested in talking to me. Byrd was the only one who responded, and the story he told me was a doozy: He was a carpenter and a part-time auto mechanic in Harvey, Illinois. He said he was giving a client a lift in his car one evening in June 2016, when he was pulled over by Chicago police and searched. Byrd was clean, but his passenger, a man he says he'd never met before, had heroin in his pocket. The police released Byrd without charging him with a crime, but his car was seized and dually claimed by both the Cook County State Attorney's Office and the city of Chicago. Essentially, his car was being claimed by two distinct layers of government. Even after a state judge declared Byrd innocent in the county's asset forfeiture case against his car, Chicago refused to release the vehicle until Byrd paid thousands of dollars in impound fines and fees under the city's municipal code, which didn't include a defense for innocent owners. Byrd couldn't afford to pay the fines, and he'd never be able to without his car or the carpenter tools locked in the trunk. The car previously belonged to his late brother, and on some court forms, he listed it as a family heirloom. "I can't understand it, because I'm almost to the point of being homeless," Byrd told me. "If I was found guilty or in the wrong, do what you gotta do, but I was blind to the fact." Then at the diner, a small journalistic miracle occurred. Byrd slid over a large binder with every court filing and document in his case, even a letter from his local carpenter union vouching for him. He quite literally dropped the story in my lap. I took pictures of all of the documents, which allowed me to build a two-year timeline of Byrd's Kafkaesque battle with Cook County and the city of Chicago. Thanks to Byrd's folder, the story I eventually wrote was one of the best of my career. Other investigations by WBEZ, and ProPublica Illinois also showed how Chicago's massive impound program regularly ensnared innocent owners and low-income residents, soaking them in thousands of dollars of fines and storage fees, regardless of their ability to pay. In 2019, Byrd became one of the lead plaintiffs in a civil rights lawsuit filed by the Institute for Justice, a public interest law firm, against Chicago. The suit alleged that the city's impound scheme violated the Illinois and U.S. Constitution's protections against excessive fines and unreasonable seizures, as well as due process protections. Under pressure, Chicago partially reformed its vehicle impound program in 2020, including adding a defense for some innocent owners. Not to discount the work of the many other plaintiffs, attorneys, and reporters who exposed Chicago's impound racket, but it occurs to me that part of this was all set in motion because Byrd fought for two years before I met him, with barely any resources, and refused to accept a farce where Chicago could take his car for a crime he'd been declared innocent of by a state judge. Sometimes I imagined that one day Byrd would win his car back, and I'd fly to Chicago to take a picture of him reunited with his beloved Cadillac. That would have been a good story. I had professional self-interest in that of course, but Byrd also was also, as far as I could tell, a decent guy. "I have no background in drugs, no felonies, no nothing, just been working hard all my life," Byrd told me at the diner. "I believe the city just wants you to throw money at them and not fight for what's right, and I'm fighting for what's right." In March, a federal judge ruled in favor of Chicago and dismissed the Institute for Justice's lawsuit challenging the city's impound program. The Institute for Justice says it plans on appealing the decision. "Chicago's impound program has violated residents' rights for far too long," Institute for Justice senior attorney Diana Simpson said in a press release. "Innocent owners should not face sky-high fines and fees for others' actions, and the city should not treat its car owners as a revenue source. We look forward to appealing this ruling and tackling head-on cases approving of this unconstitutional system." The post The Man Who Fought Chicago for His Cadillac—and Never Got It Back appeared first on
