SI | STOP-Imperialism.com

The Chicago Police Department has shot 400 people in the past eight years, but city officials have declared that only one of those shootings was unjustified. The government body that decides this is the Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA).

This week, Lorenzo Davis, a former investigator for IPRA, revealed he had been fired because he refused to change the results of his investigation into two shootings. In those cases, he ruled cops were “unjustified” for shooting civilians. IPRA bosses said because he didn’t change his conclusions, he wasn’t a “team player.” When Davis spoke out, he said IPRA management had an “agenda” to justify all the shootings.

On July 23, 40 protesters from the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression gathered outside the offices of IPRA to demand an end to the rubber stamp body, and its agenda of police impunity. The crowd was Black, Latino, Asian, Arab and white, with significant number of trade unionists, as well as leaders of the Black Lives Matter movement.

A statement from the Alliance read, “IPRA has failed in its supposed mission to hold the police accountable, while it has succeeded in its real mission of generating an untouchable police force. The answer is clear: IPRA must go.”

Beyond condemning IPRA, the Alliance demanded of the City Council the enactment of an elected Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC).

LaCreshia Birts of the Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression said, “We are calling upon everyone in the Greater Chicago Area to join us this August 29, 2015 in a militant protest march on City Hall and the Federal Building demanding that CPAC be enacted and that the DOJ investigate and prosecute police criminals who are violating constitutional and human rights under the color of their police authority.”

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