Under pressure to crack down on Chicago’s homicide problem, Mayor Lori Lightfoot introduced an ordinance Tuesday that would slap gang members with fines and give police the authority to seize their property if they’re known to be behind street violence.
The proposal — dubbed the “Victims’ Justice Ordinance” — is likely to prompt legal challenges from civil rights attorneys and social justice organizations who believe the measure could wrongly accuse Black and Latino residents of being involved in gang activity.
Lightfoot’s proposed ordinance could allow judges or court officers to impose fines as high as $10,000 for each offense and seize “any property that is directly or indirectly used or intended for use in any manner to facilitate street gang-related activity.”
It also calls for the seizure of any property that gangs obtained through illegal means such as drug-dealing or other crimes.
Seeking to shore up support for her ordinance, Lightfoot said the proposal “directly targets the gang leadership” as well as violent gunmen. It is not meant to go after “guys on the corner” or small players, she said.
“To be very blunt and clear, we are going after their blood money,” Lightfoot said.
Chicago’s violence statistics shot upward last year during the pandemic and the extended period of unrest following the police-custody killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. But the spike has not abated during 2021, leaving the mayor and leaders of the Chicago Police Department searching for solutions.
The ordinance indicates that law enforcement could be prioritizing its efforts to go after criminal suspects who are 18 and older instead of minors who could be driving illegal activity.
“The city further finds that street gangs are often controlled by criminally sophisticated adults who take advantage of our youth by intimidating and coercing them into membership by employing them as drug couriers, and by using them to commit brutal crimes against persons and property to further the financial benefit and dominance of the street gangs,” according to the ordinance.
When Lightfoot introduced the ordinance to the full council Tuesday, Northwest Side Ald. Rossana Rodriguez-Sanchez, 33rd, used a parliamentary procedure to move it to the council Rules Committee. That should delay its implementation for at least a month, as that body will need to convene and vote on sending it to the Public Safety Committee for an up-or-down vote.
Rodriguez-Sanchez and other progressive aldermen oppose Lightfoot’s proposal to seize gang assets, saying they’re concerned the city will target poor minority residents who aren’t gang members.
Asked about protecting civil rights of Black and brown residents. Lightfoot said the city will gather cases based on information brought by police and not rely on its gang database.
Referring indirectly to her ordinance being sent to the rules committee via parliamentary maneuver, Lightfoot said, “Unfortunately, it also became clear that not all of the members of the city council understand how vitally important it is for us to protect victims of gang violence and they will have to answer to their constituents for that.”
Law enforcement has routinely pointed to Chicago as having one of the worst gang problems in the country.
But in recent years, its police force has come under severe scrutiny for allegations that its officers have wrongly labeled people as gang members, particularly Black and Latino residents.
The city’s inspector general’s office has criticized the Police Department’s controversial “gang database,” finding that the police for years erroneously entered or kept names of people who didn’t belong in the database.
Just last week, police Superintendent David Brown said the database is still in use, the names in it “have been vetted” and an appeal process for those who believe they’ve been wrongly placed in the database is being finalized.
Also last week, Brown announced he would be shifting officers from the department’s roving citywide unit, the community safety team, to work assignments that focus on combating gang activity.
The ACLU of Illinois was quick to criticize the mayor’s proposal, calling it a recycled version of failed state forfeiture law.
“The mayor’s time would be better spent on the real work of reducing violence, which includes investing in communities, reforming police practices and expanding access to social and mental health services,” said Colleen Connell, executive director of the organization.
“It is astonishing to hear the mayor and law enforcement officials pretend that this power would be used solely in a targeted fashion against gang members,” Connell said. “The city had to scrap use of its flawed gang database because it included thousands of people who had no history of gang membership or criminal involvement. It is hard to see how their capacity about who to target has improved since that time.”
Chicago officials have a history of testing legal boundaries to try to keep tabs on those labeled as gang members.
The city’s 1992 gang-loitering law was struck down in 1999 by the U.S. Supreme Court, which said it gave police too much discretion in enforcement, was too vague and affected too many innocent people. Then-Mayor Richard M. Daley helped push through a new version later that year meant to adhere to the Supreme Court’s guidelines, which remains part of the city code today.
Critics charged at the time that the loitering law would lead to harassment of innocent young people of color and questioned whether it violated the constitutional rights of people suspected to be gang members. But Daley argued law-abiding residents of Chicago neighborhoods had constitutional rights as well, saying critics who defended the rights of suspected gang members didn’t live in communities with gang problems.
