The Chicago Police Department was unprepared to handle the mass protests, unrest, violence and looting that followed the murder of George Floyd last summer, according to a new report released Tuesday morning.

The report was put together by Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor who’s in charge of overseeing court-ordered reforms to the Chicago Police Department.

The report details how officers rushed to stores and spent their own money to buy zip ties used in mass arrest situations, while other officers rushed to rent vehicles that would allow for proper transportation of cops to areas of potential unrest.

The 464-page report, compiled after numerous interviews with both police and protesters, isn’t even the first report to rip the city’s response to the George Floyd protests.

In February, Joe Ferguson, the city’s inspector general released a highly critical report on the city’s ill-prepared response. CPD also conducted its own “after action” report that laid out failures and how to improve.

Tuesday’s report adds to those.

Among its other findings is that for many officers who were deployed, it wasn’t clear who was in charge or what exactly they should be doing.

One communication failure left a police vehicle on a bridge that was being raised to stem the flow of looters and protesters downtown.

“Even if the city and the CPD had predicted the level of protests and unrest after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, the city and the CPD did not have the policies, reporting practices, training, equipment, community engagement, or inter-agency coordination required to respond timely and efficiently,” the report states.

The city, Hickey noted, hadn’t dedicated sufficient resources toward responding to protests and potential unrest since it hosted the NATO summit in 2012.

The report states: “Some CPD leadership told us that they were sent to a location downtown, but there was no one there to provide further instruction when they arrived. In response, some supervisors and officers who responded downtown pushed crowds in various directions, and unsuccessfully, chased people who were looting from store to store. Others said that, without direction, they directed officers with them to not engage with crowds to avoid risking injuries to people in the crowd and themselves. As a result, they had their teams pull away from conflicts.”

“Many city and CPD personnel told us that, once they received word of what was occurring downtown, they rushed to work and many officers self-deployed.”

The city’s standard approach of planning and preparing for large protests was inadequate for responding to quickly evolving mass protests that were often fueled by social media. As a result, the city was left “to improvise,” the report states.

Problems deploying the right number of properly equipped officers to the correct locations followed.

“Many officers were deployed without their equipment, including radios, body-worn cameras, or protective gear and also without provisions for their basic needs, such as transportation or access to rest periods, restrooms, food or water,” the report states.

The report said another consequence of being unprepared was the use of excessive force by officers.

“Some officers engaged in various levels of misconduct and excessive force, many instances of which are still under investigation,” it stated.

The report also detailed the response of community members who said they faced excessive force.

“We heard from many community members who expressed new fears, frustrations, confusion, pain, and anger regarding their experiences with officers during protests,” the report states.

“We heard from community members who participated in protests — some for the first time — who said that officers were verbally abusive toward them; pushed and shoved them; tackled them to the ground; pushed them down stairs; pulled their hair; struck them with batons, fists, or other nearby objects; hit them after they were ‘kettled’ with nowhere to go or after being handcuffed; and sprayed them with pepper spray without reason.”

The report hammers home the need for the city to implement reforms laid out in the consent decree, according to Nusrat Choudhury, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois.

“This includes desperately needed changes to ensure police accountability, respect for community members, unbiased policing, and a dramatic reduction in police use of force against people,” he said.

The city has been criticized for its slow pace of cementing consent decree reforms.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), the former Chicago police officer now chairing the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, said Tuesday that the monitor’s report covers the same ground already plowed by Ferguson in February.

Taliaferro said CPD already has “learned from its mistakes” and claimed “a lot of right things were done as well” during the two devastating rounds of looting that spread from downtown, River North and Lincoln Park into South and West side commercial strips.

“We certainly could have had much more hysteria, much more looting and much more harm than we did. So there had to be some things that were done right as well. But no one is going to highlight those because it doesn’t sell,” Taliaferro said.

“I’m really tired of it. … Look at how people are perceiving Chicago. That’s because you guys keep throwing this stuff in their throats. … Why isn’t anybody highlighting what we’re doing good as a city? I’m waiting for that. I’ve been waiting for that for years. To keep printing the same thing over and over and over again about the negative in this city — it just dogs people out. It just dogs this city and makes this city look like crap — and it’s not.”

Ferguson’s scathing 124-page report described mistakes at the highest levels of CPD that “failed the public” as well as rank-and-file police officers “left to high-stakes improvisation without adequate supervision or guidance.”

His report also concluded the mayor’s decision to raise the Chicago River bridges and stop CTA trains from entering downtown to keep out looters may have backfired by trapping protesters there.

Ferguson further accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot of rejecting Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s early offer to call out the National Guard to assist overwhelmed and exhausted Chicago police officers. Lightfoot denied the charge as “completely untrue.”

The mayor has said she waited until very late on Saturday, May 30, after widespread looting in the downtown area to request the Guard. “I’m a kid who grew up in Ohio down the road from Kent State. My earliest memories are very seared by the then-Ohio governor calling in the National Guard to Kent State, and the result was four students dead.”

Lightfoot responded to the inspector general’s report with a claim that CPD has learned from its mistakes.

Taliaferro’s response to the monitor’s report was pretty much the same.

“We have a very smart superintendent. I’m quite sure that he didn’t look at the inspector general’s report and throw it in the trash. He and his command staff are smart enough to look at what needed to be changed and where they fell short,” the chairman said.

Northwestern law professor Sheila Bedi, who was part of a group that urged Hickey to create the report, said Tuesday its findings bolster her belief that the police department needs to change — and quick.

“We’re asking the department to do far too much, and the report lays bare the department doesn’t have the training, supervision and planning to respond to crises, whether they arise from First Amendment expression or people living in mental health crises,” Bedi said.

“And the report’s findings can be extrapolated out to the department at large. It’s inherently violent in a deeply racialized way and therefore ill equipped to respond to the needs of Chicago’s communities,” she said.

The report also acknowledged the police department faced unprecedented challenges in dealing with the protests, unrest and the pandemic at the same time.

“This report is not a blanket disapproval or approval of the city’s and the CPD’s responses to recent protests and unrest,” the report released Tuesday states.

“We believe that the city and the CPD can and must make immediate, deliberate, and transparent efforts — in compliance with the consent decree — to better protect and serve and to be accountable to Chicago’s communities.”

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MILWAUKEE — High atop the outside of Fiserv Forum — way above even a leaping Giannis Antetokounmpo’s reach — blares the Bucks’ postseason motto.

“HISTORY IN THE MAKING” it reads, a sign and a situation that’s now impossible to ignore.

And yet, that’s exactly what the Bucks are trying to do.

They can indeed make history Tuesday night as Milwaukee’s first NBA champion since 1971. But the Bucks have to resist thinking about what happens if they beat the Phoenix Suns in Game 6.

“It’s hard, because you work so hard to be in that moment, which is tomorrow,” Antetokounmpo said Monday. “It’s hard not to get ahead of yourself. But this is the time that you’ve got to be the most disciplined.”

The Bucks have won the last three games to set up a potential party 50 years in the making.

Around 17,000 fans are expected inside the arena and the Bucks announced Monday that the Deer District has been expanded to allow up to 65,000 fans to stand shoulder-to-shoulder outside. Barricades line the sidewalks around the arena and restaurants within walking distance were contemplating how to get employees into and back home from work through the anticipated crowds.

It’s a scene that couldn’t have happened for much of this season that has been played during the coronavirus pandemic. The Bucks only began permitting a limited number of fans at games in February, nearly two months after the season began. Even when postseason play started in May, capacity was capped at 9,100, a little above 50%.

Whatever the number is Tuesday, it will sound a whole lot louder if the Bucks are lifting the Larry O’Brien Trophy.

“But we got to focus, we got to do our job,” Antetokounmpo said. “Then they can do their job celebrating at the end. But we got to do our job first.”

The Suns are excited, too.

That’s how Chris Paul said they feel, despite blowing a 2-0 lead and facing elimination for the first time in this postseason.

“Something that Coach and everybody has been saying: If you went to the beginning of the season and said we had a chance to be where we are right now, would you take it? Absolutely,” Paul said.

“And we get a chance to determine the outcome. It’s not like the game is going to be simulated or somebody else’s got to play. We get a chance. We control our own destiny. So I think that’s the exciting part about it.”

If the Suns do win Tuesday, they would bring the series back to Phoenix for Game 7 on Thursday.

To do so, they will have to call upon the fight they showed in Game 5, when they gave themselves a chance to win in the closing seconds after the Bucks had pounded them for 79 points in the second and third quarters to open a double-digit lead.

The comeback fell short when Jrue Holiday stripped Devin Booker and fired an alley-oop pass to Antetokounmpo, but coach Monty Williams saw a resilience that will be needed now more than ever.

“For us to be able to cut it to one point, you know that was the thing that stuck out to me and gives our staff and team a lot of confidence as we go into this Game 6,” Williams said.

Booker has scored 40 points in two straight games, something Antetokounmpo earlier in the series and only five other players have done in the NBA Finals. Yet as good as he’s been, the star guard said he has to be even better in Game 6.

“We all know what’s at stake and what’s on the line,” Booker said. “Everybody is going to have to give a little bit more because what we have done hasn’t been enough.”

Just two years ago, the Bucks had the league’s best record and were two wins away from their first NBA Finals since 1974 before losing a 2-0 lead in the Eastern Conference finals against Toronto.

That disappointment helped build a Bucks team that doesn’t waver when it’s down. Milwaukee was behind 2-0 to Brooklyn in the second round and is now a victory away from overcoming that deficit again.

The Bucks ended all three series in this postseason on the road. Now they have the chance for the biggest one of all in their building, knowing that won’t make it any easier than their other clinchers.

“It is funny, you want to treat it the same as any other game, but at the same time, it is what it is. It’s a close-out game of the finals,” center Brook Lopez said. “But I definitely think we can take from our other experiences in the playoffs.

“And one thing, you know, if you look all of them, obviously we know that the other team is just not going to roll over and stop playing. They are going to fight till the last second. We have be ready to come out at our best.”

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In 2014, Chicago pedicab owners accused the City Council of “discriminating” against pedicabs and warned aldermen they would be forced out of business by the draconian regulations.

Now downtown Ald. Brendan Reilly (42nd) wants to put the brakes on pedicabs yet again — this time by banning them from the River North entertainment district during prime hours and by prohibiting pedicabs from using amplified sound during all hours of the day and night.

In an email to the Sun-Times, Reilly noted there is already a pedicab “prohibition zone” on Michigan Avenue and State Street.

At the behest of the commander of the Chicago Police Department’s 18th District, Reilly plans to introduce a new ordinance at Wednesday’s Council meeting that would prohibit pedicabs from operating from 6 p.m. to 9 a.m. in the area from Michigan Avenue west to Wells Street, and from Ohio Street south to the Chicago River.

“There are an increasing number of incidents involving pedicabs congesting narrow (and busy) two-way streets illegally staging in traffic lanes and lay-by lanes. This is making it difficult for Fire, EMS and Police to respond to call for service in a timely manner,” Reilly wrote.

“In addition to the unsafe traffic conditions they are creating, they are also negatively impacting quality of life and public safety.”

Arguing that “most” pedicabs are now equipped with “amplified music systems and light shows,” Reilly also wants to prohibit amplified sound during specified hours.

“The Police and local business owners complain pedicab drivers are being paid to provide curbside DJ service to illegal curbside parties on sidewalks in the entertainment district. This is resulting in disorderly behavior and fights in the streets. This places local hospitality security staff at serious risk & creates mayhem in River North. The loud music is also generating constituent complaints in select areas,” Reilly wrote.

“When the Police, local hospitality businesses and my constituents all asked for help with this problem, I was more than happy to oblige.”

Attached to Reilly’s email was a photo of a downtown pedicab set on fire outside what appears to be a downtown high-rise.

“Word has it the sound system shorted,” the alderman wrote.

Provided

The 2014 pedicab ordinance capped the number of pedicabs at 200, permanently banned them from Michigan Avenue and State Street and kept them out of the Loop during rush hours.

Pedicabs also were: required to post fares and meet rigid safety standards, including passenger seat belts; provide proof of workers compensation insurance; and face impoundment if they violated city rules.

The roughly 400 people trying to eke out a living by driving pedicabs accused the Council of going too far and making it virtually impossible for them to survive.

“Not allowing me . . . to operate without restrictions would only kill my business. … I would basically be forced to sell my cabs and start another business if I cannot operate on these two iconic streets [Michigan and State]. This is where the tourists are. This is where the Chicagoan locals are. [About] 300,000 people walk up and down this street,” said Antonio Bustamante, owner of Kickback Pedicabs said then.

The first few months of the city crackdown proved the doomsayers right.

The city had issued licenses for just 15 pedicab vehicles, with 65 more pending completion of the application process, including proof of insurance. As for the separate city license for pedicab drivers, only 44 people had applied.

At the time, T.C. O’Rourke, a board member of the Chicago Pedicab Association, said there was only one explanation for the trickle of applications: the decision to ban pedicabs from Michigan and State between Congress Parkway and Oak Street and also to ban them from the Loop during rush hours.

“The impact of the downtown street bans has really been felt. It’s really cut into business,” O’Rourke said. “People are unwilling to take on that expense and that risk. Many people have just quit doing this work. Others have moved away to less overbearing regulatory environments.”

Two years later, then-Mayor Rahm Emanuel moved to close a legal loophole that Chicago pedicab operators were “exploiting” to get around rigid city regulations.

At Emanuel’s behest, aldermen amended the municipal code governing pedicab licenses to state: “A person engages in the occupation of a pedicab chauffeur by seeking or accepting a fee, an economic benefit of a donation or gratuity or any form of compensation [goods or services] for providing transportation to passengers in a pedicab.”

“I’ve seen pedicab operators near the United Center with signs that encourage ‘tips or donations’ – so they may be using that as a way to circumvent licensing requirements,” Reilly said then.

“Clarifying the definition of ‘operator’ will close a loophole that’s being exploited by some operators and will ultimately help the city ensure pedicab operators are complying with existing licensing, insurance and safety regulations that are intended to protect their customers.”

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TOKYO — Athlete activism is making a comeback at these Olympic Games.

When play starts at the Tokyo Games on Wednesday, acts of free expression of the kind athletes were long banned from making at the Olympics will take center stage.

The British women’s soccer team has pledged to take a knee before kickoff against Chile in their Olympic tournament opener in Sapporo, to show support for racial justice.

“We want to show to everyone this is something serious,” Britain defender Demi Stokes said. “What a way to do it, on an Olympic stage.”

One hour later in Tokyo, the United States and Sweden should follow in a gesture recognized globally since the murder of George Floyd 14 months ago. The England and Italy men’s teams took a knee before the European Championship final this month.

What is common in modern soccer starts a new era for Olympic athletes more than 50 years after the raised black-gloved fists of American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos in Mexico City made them icons and pariahs.

Still, it is a limited freedom allowed by the International Olympic Committee, which just this month eased its longstanding ban on all athlete protest inside the Games field of play. The change followed two reviews in 18 months by the IOC’s own athletes commission which advised against it.

Gestures are now allowed before races and games start, on the field, and at the start line.

Medal podiums remain off limits for protest, and even the IOC concessions left each sport’s governing body free to retain the ban.

Lawyers who study Rule 50 of the Olympic Charter — that banned any kind of “demonstration or political, religious or racial propaganda” until July 2 — see issues ahead with athletes and the IOC heading on a fast track to the Court of Arbitration for Sport.

“I think we can clearly expect some frictions around Rule 50 in the coming weeks,” sports law academic Antoine Duval said when hosting a recent debate on the inevitable athlete activism at Tokyo.

FIFA has had a relaxed view on taking a knee since players were inspired by the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

“FIFA believes in freedom of speech and opinion, and this applies to players, coaches, officials and any other person or organization within the scope of FIFA’s activities,” soccer’s world body said in a statement.

Expect raised fists at least on the start line in the main Olympic stadium when track and field events begin on July 30.

World Athletics president Sebastian Coe, a two-time Olympic gold medalist in the 1,500 meters, has gone even further. He put in play medal ceremonies where protest is denied as it was for Smith and Carlos in 1968.

“I’ve been very clear that if an athlete chooses to take the knee on a podium then I’m supportive of that,” Coe said inside Tokyo’s National Stadium last October.

Soccer and athletics are the progressive end of the 33 sports governing bodies at these Summer Games.

Swimmers’ pre-race introductions are similar to track athletes, one by one toward their starting block, but governing body FINA followed the IOC announcement by refusing to allow any gesture that could be viewed as protest.

FINA president Husain al-Musallam spoke of the pool deck “remaining a sanctity for sport and nothing else,” where there should be “respect for the greater whole, not the individual.”

That stance was at odds with the new Rule 50 guidance yet was defended by IOC president Thomas Bach last week.

“There is not really a ‘one size fits all’ solution,” Bach said when asked about the apparent contradiction of some Olympic athletes having fewer freedoms than others in Tokyo.

It will fall to the IOC to decide on potential disciplinary cases which it promised to handle “in full transparency.”

This could lead to inconsistencies, according to Mark James, who teaches sports law at Manchester Metropolitan University in England.

“There will be flashpoints,” James said in the Rule 50 debate hosted by Netherlands-based Asser Institute. “Why are some (gestures) acceptable but some are a breach?”

James anticipated issues over the political intent of flags, and if the more open approach to athlete free speech in Tokyo would survive in China at the 2022 Beijing Winter Games.

What seems clear is a shift in the social media era of athletes’ influence over event organizers and sports bodies.

“It is not just an IOC challenge, this is global sport,” said David Grevemberg from the Geneva-based Centre for Sport and Human Rights.

“This is actually, I would say, a crossroads for all sport.”

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A man wanted for months in connection with the fatal April shooting of 7-year-old Jaslyn Adams has been arrested by the FBI, federal prosecutors disclosed Tuesday.

Devontay Anderson has been wanted since late April when he was charged with first-degree murder in Cook County Circuit Court, records show. Last month, the FBI announced a $25,000 reward for information leading to his arrest and conviction.

Meanwhile, the feds separately charged Anderson with unlawful flight to avoid prosecution. In a two-page document filed late Tuesday morning, Special Assistant U.S. Attorney M. David Habich disclosed the FBI arrested Anderson on Monday in Chicago.

No further details about Anderson’s arrest were contained in the document, which asked a judge to dismiss the federal unlawful flight charge against him. The FBI did not immediately respond to a request for comment. A spokeswoman for Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx told the Sun-Times in an email, “We have no information to provide.”

A complaint filed earlier in the federal case described the Chicago police response to the April 18 shooting at a McDonald’s in the 3200 block of West Roosevelt Road. It said officers found a 2003 Infiniti sedan “riddled with bullets in the drive-thru lane of the restaurant.”

FBI

Jaslyn and her father, Jontae Adams, were in the Infiniti about 4:20 p.m. when two gunmen got out of an Audi and fired into the Infiniti, authorities have said. Jaslyn was killed and her father was wounded.

The complaint described surveillance video viewed by the Chicago Police Department that captured the shooting. It said the Audi contained three occupants when it pulled behind the Infiniti.

“Two adult males then exited the Audi,” the complaint said. “One male, later identified by CPD as Anderson, exited the rear passenger side of the Audi brandishing a Draco AK-47 pistol. The other male exited the Audi from the front passenger seat brandishing a Glock pistol. Both men opened fire on the Infiniti, firing dozens of rounds before re-entering the Audi and leaving the scene.”

Demond Goudy and Marion Lewis have also been charged in connection with the shooting. Prosecutors have said Lewis was the getaway driver but did not fire any of the shots.

The federal complaint says Chicago police identified Jaslyn’s father as a known gang member and began to scour social media accounts of rival gang members. It said they discovered an Instagram Live video which linked Anderson to the murder.

A separate public Facebook page connected to Anderson contained corroborating photos, the complaint said.

This is a developing story.

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Archdiocese of Chicago schools plan to return to “near-normal, pre-pandemic operations” when students, teachers and staff return for the school year.

School Masses, athletics, music programs and field trips will be restored for students, the archdiocese announced Tuesday. Masks will not be not mandated for vaccinated students, teachers and staff under the ease COVID-19 restrictions.

“These safety guidelines will be reassessed, as necessary, during the academic year to ensure safe operations,” Justin Lombardo, chief human resources officer and chair of the Archdiocesan COVID-19 Task Force, said in the announcement. “And, for the sake of everyone’s health and our collective ability to fully overcome the COVID-19 virus, we will continue to encourage vaccinations for faculty, staff and students over the age of 12.”

Proof of vaccination for eligible students will be encouraged come fall to aid contact tracing and determine if quarantine is necessary. Vaccinated students will not be required to quarantine if they come into close contact with a person who tests positive for COVID-19.

Remaining safety protocols for the 2021-2022 academic year require that students with COVID-19 symptoms stay home and classrooms maintain 3 feet of indoor physical distance when possible. This is in compliance with recent CDC guidance.

Safety guidelines for unvaccinated individuals will be released by early August.

The Archdiocese of Chicago serves about 45,000 students in 162 Catholic schools.

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Mom, I Think I’m Poignant!

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My Stone Mountain story, and how I became the most objective person Rita ever knew

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By Bonnie McGrath,
today at 11:59 am

Illinois Secretary of State Jesse White, who is black, told a story recently about a trip he made as a young man to Stone Mountain, near Atlanta.  Speaking to members of the Chicago Bar Association via zoom, he explained that while he was visiting the famous geological site, with its carvings in bas relief (the largest ever done) of three confederate generals on horses, Robert E. Lee, Jefferson Davis and Stonewall Jackson–he got into a bit of trouble.

In those days, segregation was rampant in the south.  At a public site like Stone Mountain, the restrooms and water fountains were clearly marked, “Colored Only” and “White Only.”  And that’s just how it was.

White said he walked up to the white drinking fountain–and a policeman came and told him he belonged at the other one.  White said, “No, I’m white.”  And the cop, as one would imagine, gave him an argument.  But White argued back and wouldn’t budge.  He stayed there, at the white fountain.  Maintaining he was white.

The cop didn’t know what to make of it.  So White pulled out his ID.  “You see,” he said, “I am ‘White.’”  Perplexed, and gotten the better of—because no one could dispute that White was White–the cop walked away.  Maybe even a little amused?

Jesse White went on to become a college graduate, a renowned athlete, a US army paratrooper, an Illinois State legislator, Cook County Recorder of Deeds and Illinois Secretary of State–for the last 22 years and counting, the first African American to hold the job.  And the longest serving secretary of state in Illinois history.

And in 1959 he also started a kids’ tumbling team that’s helped thousands of kids who may never have had the chance to shine if not for him. 

The cop?  We don’t know whatever happened to him.

I remembered my own Stone Mountain story after I heard White tell his, which I hadn’t thought of for years.  It was the early 1960s, and one of my best friends had moved to Atlanta.   We missed each other very much and my mom let me visit her over the summer.  On my first full day there, her parents took us to Stone Mountain, the magnitude of which was quite impressive.

And something happened that was even more impressive.

Pam and I went to get a drink of water.  And even though I’d never seen those signs, I knew about them.  I knew about segregation. And institutional cruelty in the south.  I studied it at school. And my mom, who spent a lot of time studying the history of everything (more on that in a minute) taught me a lot, too.

I read “Black Like Me,” a firsthand account of a journalist who darkened his skin temporarily with chemicals and found out what it was like to be a black man in the south firsthand.  And all my friends read it, too.

“What the hell does this mean?” I asked Pam about the signs.  I kept staring.  And getting madder and madder.

“That’s just how it is down here,” said her mother.

And suddenly I got this very bright idea!  Let’s go drink out of the “colored” one,” I said.  That’s why Pam and I were best friends and why we missed each other so much—because we loved pushing envelopes that needed pushing.  Even though we weren’t even teenagers yet.

Maybe it was because I was Jewish that I had a strong sense of justice—Jews do, according to Albert Einstein, no less.  And  maybe that’s why I so loved doing stuff like this.  

We marched right over and drank a lot of water out of the colored fountain.

And a cop came.  For all I know, it was the same one who hassled Jesse White a few years back.  He came up to us and  told us we were doing the wrong thing.  And to stop and go to the other fountain.

But we were steadfast, just like Jesse White was.  And we ignored him.  We were willing to be arrested if that’s what it took.  

But that was pretty much it.  We didn’t listen to him and he gave up and tsk-tsk-ed himself away.

While it was nothing like getting hit over the head with clubs or, God forbid, getting killed in some horrid way for standing up for the rights of humanity, we felt we did do something very important. 

I was a kid from Chicago, a city of big shoulders with lots of black people.  A lot of whom we knew.  (My parents were jazz buffs and they really knew a lot of black people.)  And in a city that’s known as the world’s melting pot, blacks were just another ethnic group with their own neighborhoods, who we had a lot in common with and with whom we had other things not in common with.

We knew and befriended people from every ethnic group in Chicago–which was fairly easy since we lived in Uptown. And from every walk of life. From the lowliest heroin addicts to the biggest real estate developers in town.   And that was what life was like.

My mother interpreted everything for us through the eyes of history.  She never stopped explaining why people were a certain way because of their history.  She was the Guns, Germs and Steel of our household.

A couple of years after the Stone Mountain incident, we took a family vacation to Washington, DC, and Senator Paul Douglas invited us in to hear a Dixiecrat filibuster of the 1964 civil rights bill.  My mom thinks it was Strom Thurmond we heard but I remember it being John Stennis.  Maybe it was both.   It was quite a show.

When my friend Elaine started a book club last year for the reading and discussion of all the new books about race that have come out recently, my fellow club members seemed surprised when I told them at one session that my mom talked about slavery a lot and its effects.  And that we learned a lot about it at school, too.  

My mom studied American history (and ancient Greek, philosophy and education, not too mention zither-playing and mosaics) and  lectured the family constantly.  When I was a little girl, she decided to go to college and take one class per semester.  Until she graduated.  She started at the University of Illinois at Navy Pier in the mid-50s.  And she graduated in 1969, from Chicago’s Mundelein College, two years before I graduated from the University of Illinois in Champaign.  

The nuns at Mundelein became her best friends.  And invited her to parties.  And she always took me.  

No matter what was happening anywhere or at anytime, my mom had a book or an article, a footnote or she knew of a documentary that was based on real research and real history.  And she’d supplement it all with her lectures if anyone said anything about anyone that was inaccurate or ill-advised.  

And that was my basic home education:  my mother learning, recommending and  passing knowledge down with facts.  Sometimes conflicting facts.  At which time we were on our own.  No judgment.

If she thought a good lecture or reference reading was in order because of a stupid crack my father or I made, we’d get it.  My brother, whose life was nothing but a bat and a ball, supplemented with a pool stick and billiard ball, never got any of that.  He and my mom were on pretty different wavelengths.  But my mom could also lecture about her two favorite sports, ice skating—and in more recent years, NASCAR, of which she knows everything. 

And so, this was my “racism” back then:  Once I darkened a grammar school friend’s yearbook picture with a light lead pencil to see what she’d look like black.   

Another time, when I was a prosecutor for the City of Chicago, I was upset with some of the young white male prosecutors who were overly  nasty to older black men, who were jitney drivers, and who drove “cabs” on the south side where real cabs wouldn’t go.  They were fined regularly by the City and added the fines into their cost of doing business.  But I never told the young guys to change their tune.  Which I regret.

One of my friends’ mothers took us on a vacation to Miami Beach and even took us to see the Supremes in one of the hotel nightclubs.  This was the big time, as far as we were concerned.  Until her mother got up and walked out in the middle, leaving us alone with the Supremes and the other nightclubbers.  

We were thrilled. But never figured out if she didn’t feel good, or if the music was too loud, if she had a date she didn’t want to tell us about or if she was a racist and decided she didn’t like the Supremes.  I should have asked.

Today, I probably couldn’t write stories, which I often did about the goings on in black churches on the South Side like this one.  

I also can’t say some of my best friends are black and always were.  My Goddaughter is half black.  Can’t say that either.  Nor could my best friend and college roommate and I develop crushes on the two black basketball stars at U of I, like we really did back then. In this crazy atmosphere today. we’d be asked to suspect ourselves of….  Of something.    

Once, my mom’s best friend Rita, who never said anything to anyone she didn’t mean, said to me, ”You are the most objective person I have ever known.”  

When times are tough intellectually and emotionally  and I don’t know what to think about something, I remember her saying that and I realize that the reason I don’t know what to think is because I know an awful lot about it and I really can’t make up my mind because I’m too objective. 

And then I call my 94-year-old mom to see how she is and ask her what she thinks.   Anything strike her on the subject?  What’s she thinking about whatever it is? 

She’ll tell me.  And all I know is….  I should listen.

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This year’s “Hard Knocks” series with the Dallas Cowboys will mark the first time one of its teams is in the Hall of Fame game. It is fitting because the creator of the series was enshrined into the hall earlier this year.

“Hard Knocks,” which started 20 years ago, is one of Steve Sabol’s many legacies at NFL Films that continue to live on. Sabol, who was 69 when he died from brain cancer in 2012, is one of three contributors part of the hall’s 2020 Centennial Class, which honors 20 former players, coaches and contributors across all eras of the NFL’s first 100 years.

“I would like to think it’s no coincidence that this is the year that ‘Hard Knocks’ will be at the Hall of Fame. I think Steve is still watching over us,” said NFL Films’ Ken Rodgers, the senior coordinating producer of “Hard Knocks.”

Sabol joins his father Ed, who was enshrined in 2011, as the third father/son duo in Canton. They join Tim and Wellington Mara, owners of the New York Giants, and Art and Dan Rooney, owners of the Pittsburgh Steelers.

Sabol was recognized in April by the hall and will be included in the induction festivities on Aug. 7-8.

The Sabols never played or coached a down in the National Football League. But you can’t tell the history of the league without NFL Films’ role in making it the juggernaut it is today.

While it was Ed Sabol who persuaded Pete Rozelle in 1964 that the league needed its own film company to promote and document the game, it was Steve Sabol who was the creative force at NFL Films. He made the game and players appear larger than life through cinematography, slow motion replays, orchestral music and putting microphones on players and coaches.

Rodgers said when Ed Sabol was inducted, Steve saw that as the entire existence of NFL Films, including his career, being recognized. But for Rodgers and those who grew up watching NFL Films shows over the years, Steve Sabol’s induction makes things whole.

“It’s a two-headed monster. Someone creating a company would have just created a company that wouldn’t have done anything without Steve’s creative genius next to it,” he said. “If they didn’t happen together, the NFL wouldn’t be where it is today.

“The business decision to create NFL Films and lead the league into the television space pretty much created sports television. But then the creative style also invented what sports television is creatively today.”

Sabol went to Colorado College, where he was an All-Rocky Mountain Conference running back, and majored in art history. He began working at NFL Films in 1964 as a cinematographer and rose to president before he passed away.

During Sabol’s tenure, NFL Films won more than 100 Emmy Awards. That included 35 won by Sabol in writing, cinematography, editing, directing and producing, the most by anyone.

Sabol was also recognizable in front of the camera. He hosted some of “NFL Films” weekly series during the season, introduced Super Bowl highlight films as well as other company projects which aired frequently on ESPN before NFL Network started in 2003.

ESPN’s Chris Berman said having NFL Films programming served as a springboard to the network eventually airing games starting in 1987.

“NFL Films enabled us to be the destination for pro football fans certainly the first 15-20 years,” Berman said. “It worked hand in hand with our growth because we had the best in pro football, which was Steve Sabol at NFL Films, and I will always believe that.”

If there is one creation that shows Sabol’s philosophy toward film making and NFL Films, it is 1978’s ” Super Sunday with NFL Films,” which shows the entire process of how the Super Bowl 12 highlight film was produced, from camera placement to narrator John Facenda going over the script.

The most interesting part is Sabol discussing how he learned cubism from Picasso’s paintings and that he approaches cinematography from looking at things from different points of view.

” Autumn Ritual, ” which was made in 1986, is a film that follows Sabol’s mandate that “maintain tradition by breaking tradition” because it shows how the NFL fits in with culture and other art forms. It might be the only time when the Reverend Jerry Falwell and rocker Ronnie James Dio appear in the same film and agree on something — their love of football.

“He never stopped loving football,” said Penny Ashman Sabol, Steve Sabol’s widow. “I think that apart from the influence he had on the way we watch football, I think the greatest thing about him is how much people loved him. He helped so many people start and build their careers that his legacy is all the people making great films and television shows.”

“Hard Knocks” ended up being one of Sabol’s proudest accomplishments because it showed how NFL Films adapted with the times. It could still tell a compelling story despite tight deadlines.

Sabol once described “Hard Knocks” as “building an airplane in flight. “We’re taking off, we’re not sure where it’s going to go and we hope we don’t crash. But that’s what makes it exciting.”

The series came along at the dawn of reality shows in 2001, but was more real life than “Survivor” because roster spots were at stake.

“You talk about reality shows – hell, this isn’t anyone getting voted off an island. This is careers at stake in the most highly competitive sports league in the world,” Sabol said in 2009 after the Cincinnati Bengals were selected as the featured team.

“What Hard Knocks proved more than any other program, maybe in our history, is that we are not one type of filmmaking company. We are filmmakers that can adapt to any style and format. On any network,” Rodgers said.

It will be an emotional trip when the “Hard Knocks” crew films at the hall and sees Sabol’s bust, but it will also be a celebration for those who continue to work at NFL Films and were impacted by him.

“Steve making it into the hall is for all of us who watched and worked at NFL films,” Rodgers said, “because Steve was the creative genius behind what we all fell in love with.”

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Chicago Bears: ESPN’s future rankings are pure, hot garbage by Ryan Heckman

Week 1 of the NFL season will see the Chicago Bears take on the Los Angeles Rams in a Sunday Night Football matchup.

While the Rams’ offense and defense are both equally scary, one particular side of the ball has taken a massive blow in L.A.

During workouts this week, starting running back Cam Akers tore his Achilles, per Tom Pelissero. He will now be out the remainder of 2021.

The Rams will now turn to Darrell Henderson as their fill-in starter, who has actually handled a lot of the workload for them over the last season and a half.

The Chicago Bears defense gets a huge boost not having to face Cam Akers in Week 1.

Over the last five games of the season last year, Akers came on in a big way. He rushed for 424 yards on 95 carries and also caught eight passes for 96 yards. While Malcolm Brown and Darrell Henderson still saw some work here and there, those numbers are quite impressive.

But, in the playoffs is where Akers really shined. He gave Rams fans plenty to be excited about in Year 2. In his two playoff games combined, Akers totaled 272 yards from scrimmage (221 on the ground) and a pair of touchdowns. Akers became the Rams’ workhorse down the stretch, and handled it exceptionally well.

For this reason, the Rams were thrilled to see what he could do in his second year as a pro. Now, it will be up to Henderson, who will get the bulk of the carries along with some youngsters battling it out for time, Xavier Jones, Jake Funk and Calais Raymond.

Henderson, though, should provide the Rams with at least a decent fill-in for the 2021 season. However, Sean McVay will likely have to resort to his committee approach as he did before Akers came along.

Last season in a timeshare, Henderson rushed for 624 yards on 138 carries, and scored five rushing touchdowns. He was good for 4.5 yards per carry, which isn’t too shabby by any means. Still, the Bears will get to miss Akers in their prime time matchup with the Rams, and that’s a huge advantage.

In last year’s matchup with Los Angeles, Henderson rushed for 63 yards on 15 carries. Brown also rushed for 57 yards on 10 carries, so the Rams did find success on the ground without Akers taking any touches. Looking back on last year’s tape of the game, the Bears will see one key difference: no Eddie Goldman. With Goldman likely back for 2021, the run defense should be much better.

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For now, it’s on to training camp and looking ahead to preseason action. But, just around the corner will be that Sunday Night Football matchup, and the Rams will have to take on Chicago without their top running back.

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The Chicago Police Department was unprepared to handle the mass protests, unrest, violence and looting that followed the murder of George Floyd last summer, according to a new report released Tuesday morning.

The report was put together by Maggie Hickey, a former federal prosecutor who’s in charge of overseeing court-ordered reforms to the Chicago Police Department.

The report details how officers rushed to stores and spent their own money to buy zip ties used in mass arrest situations, while other officers rushed to rent vehicles that would allow for proper transportation of cops to areas of potential unrest.

The 464-page report, compiled after numerous interviews with both police and protesters, isn’t even the first report to rip the city’s response to the George Floyd protests.

In February, Joe Ferguson, the city’s inspector general released a highly critical report on the city’s ill-prepared response. CPD also conducted its own “after action” report that laid out failures and how to improve.

Tuesday’s report adds to those.

Among its other findings is that for many officers who were deployed, it wasn’t clear who was in charge or what exactly they should be doing.

One communication failure left a police vehicle on a bridge that was being raised to stem the flow of looters and protesters downtown.

“Even if the city and the CPD had predicted the level of protests and unrest after the death of George Floyd on May 25, 2020, the city and the CPD did not have the policies, reporting practices, training, equipment, community engagement, or inter-agency coordination required to respond timely and efficiently,” the report states.

The city, Hickey noted, hadn’t dedicated sufficient resources toward responding to protests and potential unrest since it hosted the NATO summit in 2012.

The report states: “Some CPD leadership told us that they were sent to a location downtown, but there was no one there to provide further instruction when they arrived. In response, some supervisors and officers who responded downtown pushed crowds in various directions, and unsuccessfully, chased people who were looting from store to store. Others said that, without direction, they directed officers with them to not engage with crowds to avoid risking injuries to people in the crowd and themselves. As a result, they had their teams pull away from conflicts.”

It goes on: “Many city and CPD personnel told us that, once they received word of what was occurring downtown, they rushed to work and many officers self-deployed.”

The city’s standard approach of planning and preparing for large protests was inadequate for responding to quickly evolving mass protests that were often fueled by social media. As a result, the city was left “to improvise,” the report states.

Problems deploying the right number of properly equipped officers to the correct locations followed.

“Many officers were deployed without their equipment, including radios, body-worn cameras, or protective gear and also without provisions for their basic needs, such as transportation or access to rest periods, restrooms, food or water,” the report states.

The report said another consequence of being unprepared was the use of excessive force by officers.

“Some officers engaged in various levels of misconduct and excessive force, many instances of which are still under investigation,” it stated.

The report also detailed the response of community members who said they faced excessive force.

“We heard from many community members who expressed new fears, frustrations, confusion, pain, and anger regarding their experiences with officers during protests,” the report states.

“We heard from community members who participated in protests — some for the first time — who said that officers were verbally abusive toward them; pushed and shoved them; tackled them to the ground; pushed them down stairs; pulled their hair; struck them with batons, fists, or other nearby objects; hit them after they were ‘kettled’ with nowhere to go or after being handcuffed; and sprayed them with pepper spray without reason.”

The report hammers home the need for the city to implement reforms laid out in the consent decree, according to Nusrat Choudhury, legal director for the ACLU of Illinois.

“This includes desperately needed changes to ensure police accountability, respect for community members, unbiased policing, and a dramatic reduction in police use of force against people,” he said.

The city has been criticized for its slow pace of cementing consent decree reforms.

Ald. Chris Taliaferro (29th), the former Chicago Police officer now chairing the City Council’s Committee on Public Safety, said Tuesday that the monitor’s report covers the same ground already plowed by Ferguson in February.

Taliaferro said CPD already has “learned from its mistakes” and claimed “a lot of right things were done as well” during the two devastating rounds of looting that spread from downtown, River North and Lincoln Park into South and West Side commercial strips.

“We certainly could have had much more hysteria, much more looting and much more harm than we did. So there had to some things that were done right as well. But no one is going to highlight those because it doesn’t sell,” Taliaferro said.

“I’m really tired of it, … Look at how people are perceiving Chicago. That’s because you guys keep throwing this stuff in their throats. … Why isn’t anybody highlighting what we’re doing good as a city? I’m waiting for that. I’ve been waiting for that for years. To keep printing the same thing over and over and over again about the negative in this city — it just dogs people out. It just dogs this city and makes this city look like crap — and it’s not.”

Ferguson’s scathing 124-page report described mistakes at the highest levels of CPD that “failed the public” as well as rank-and-file police officers “left to high-stakes improvisation without adequate supervision or guidance.”

His report also concluded the mayor’s decision to raise the Chicago River bridges and stop CTA trains from entering downtown to keep out looters may have backfired by trapping protesters there.

Ferguson further accused Mayor Lori Lightfoot of rejecting Gov. J.B. Pritzker’s early offer to call out the National Guard to assist overwhelmed and exhausted Chicago police officers. Lightfoot denied the charge as “completely untrue.”

The mayor has said she waited until very late on Saturday, May 30 after widespread looting in the downtown area to request the Guard because, “I’m a kid who grew up in Ohio down the road from Kent State. My earliest memories are very seared by the then-Ohio governor calling in the National Guard to Kent State, and the result was four students dead.”

Lightfoot responded to the inspector general’s report with a claim that CPD has learned from its mistakes.

Taliaferro’s response to the monitor’s report was pretty much the same.

“We have a very smart superintendent. I’m quite sure that he didn’t look at the inspector general’s report and throw it in the trash. He and his command staff are smart enough to look at what needed to be changed and where they fell short,” the chairman said.

“This report is not a blanket disapproval or approval of the city’s and the CPD’s responses to recent protests and unrest,” the report released Tuesday states.

“We believe that the city and the CPD can and must make immediate, deliberate, and transparent efforts — in compliance with the consent decree — to better protect and serve and to be accountable to Chicago’s communities.”

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