CHICAGO URBAN DAILY
CHICAGO (CHICAGO URBAN DAILY)— National activist Amir A.H. Shakur — Amir Shakur Speaks — leader of Freedom First International, stood outside Chicago Police Headquarters on Thursday with Samaria Rice, mother of Tamir Rice, alongside families and community activists, demanding a full investigation and real correction of Chicago’s police accountability system after the city closed 654 misconduct investigations under the Civilian Office of Police Accountability’s so-called “Timeliness Initiative.”
The numbers behind the demand are staggering. The 654 closed investigations named 1,041 individual Chicago police officers. Nearly 90 percent of the allegations involved civil-rights violations or excessive force. And the average case sat for roughly 1,020 days — nearly three years — before it was closed out.
“Chicago did not investigate these complaints — it buried them,” Shakur said. “When a system closes 654 files to make its numbers look better, that is not reform. That is a cover-up with a deadline. The people of this city deserve investigations that actually investigate — and somebody at the top of this system must be held accountable for what was done in their name.”
Standing with Rice — whose 12-year-old son Tamir was killed by police in Cleveland — and representatives of their affiliate organizations, Shakur laid out four demands for how these investigations must move forward:
- Real investigations, on real timelines. Every complaint — especially those alleging civil-rights violations and excessive force — must be fully investigated, not closed out to satisfy a quota or a clock. Cases closed under the Timeliness Initiative that were never fully investigated must be identified and reopened.
- Staff the system to do the job. COPA and the Bureau of Internal Affairs must be funded and staffed to carry the caseload, and district accountability sergeants must stop being diverted away from the accountability work they were assigned to do.
- Discipline in the light, not behind closed doors. Serious police discipline belongs before the public Police Board — not in private, closed-door arbitration.
- Named accountability. This backlog did not happen by accident; it happened by decision. The officials who chose speed over truth must answer for it — publicly.
And the battle does not stop at police headquarters. Shakur made clear the fight is now going to City Hall — straight to Mayor Brandon Johnson — because the system that buried these complaints answers to the fifth floor, and City Hall is going to answer for it.
Samaria Rice added a statement of her own: “The families of Tamir Rice and George Floyd will not hesitate. We are moving forward, and our focus is fighting police brutality.”
Shakur also addressed the death of 1-year-old Kohen Wiley, killed on June 14 in Senatobia, Mississippi, renewing the coalition’s demand that Mississippi Attorney General Lynn Fitch and state authorities release the body-camera, dash-camera, and surveillance video of the shooting. The coalition — the Amir Shakur Speaks Broadcast Network, Samaria Rice and the Tamir Rice Foundation, Freedom First International, and Rodney Floyd of the Justice for George Floyd Committee — filed an emergency FOIA on October 20; under Mississippi law, the agencies’ response is due Thursday, October 29.
The press conference also announced a march against police brutality held later Thursday at 5:30 p.m. at 35th Street, with families and community members standing for an end to police violence and real accountability in Chicago and across the nation.
Stay tuned to Chicago Urban Daily for continuing coverage of this fight for accountability. Reported by Chicago Urban Daily News. Visit chicagourbandailynews.com for updates.
