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CHICAGO (CBS) — There was more stalling from the City of Chicago on Tuesday when it comes to making changes to how Chicago police execute search warrants.
In a hearing Tuesday in U.S. District Court, lawyers for the city asked for more time to respond to an enforcement action, demanding the department catch up on reforms required by the Chicago Police consent decree.
The enforcement action was issued nearly six months ago by the attorneys who won the consent decree.
“Chicago Police Department assaults the dignity of Chicagoans, violates their constitutional rights with these wrong raids, and the city has failed to hold anybody accountable or make the changes necessary to ensure that no other community members suffers that kind of harm,” said Sheila Bedi of the Northwestern Pritzker School of Law.
The city now has until Feb. 24 to file a response to the consent decree enforcement action.
Earlier this month, the attorneys who won the consent decree took legal action against the city, saying it failed to make critical changes to stop a pattern of unconstitutional raids.
In a motion filed in federal court, the attorneys asked a judge to intervene, saying the city never responded to the aforementioned enforcement action they sent last August in the required 90 days.
They also said the city failed to respond to a letter from the Illinois Attorney General (OAG) and a follow-up communication from the attorneys, again asking for a response.
“For over five months, the City has ignored multiple requests by the Coalition and OAG to collaborate on a resolution to home raid-related Consent Decree violations,” the attorneys wrote in the Wednesday, Jan. 13 filing. “…Given the City’s obfuscation and the on-going violations by CPD officers, the Coalition is left with no option but to seek the intervention of this Court.”
In their scathing, 14-page enforcement action sent in August, the attorneys said CPD is violating the consent decree through its pattern and practice of wrong raids uncovered by CBS 2. It also demanded an overhaul of the police department’s search warrant process.
The attorneys said they are “seeking to end CPD’s long-term failure to curtail the widespread violence that police have inflicted on Chicagoans, which especially impacts people of color and people with disabilities,” according to Wednesday’s filing.
The original enforcement action outlined these failures in detail. The attorneys requested city officials meet with them to discuss reforms, but in their filing Wednesday, they said “the City has refused to respond.”
That lack of response, they wrote, is yet another example of the city “shirking its Consent Decree obligations.”
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