On November 21st, Cook County State’s Attorney Eileen Burke gleefully announced the city-wide expansion of the Felony Review bypass program. Originally a pilot program launched in the predominantly Black Englewood and Calumet districts, the program allows CPD to directly file felony gun possession charges without the approval of the State’s Attorney’s office.
In a statement responding to the news, top-cop Larry Snelling thanked Burke and her office, claiming that the expansion of the program “strengthens safety.”
Burke’s announcement comes three days after the near-fatal shooting of 26-year-old Anthony Nelson by Chicago police on November 18th. In a scenario where police suspected that Anthony possessed a weapon, the pigs jumped on, chased, and aimed for Anthony’s head before directing their shots elsewhere. Had Anthony not covered his head in fear, he would have been executed by the CPD.
According to Anthony, police had no reason to stop him but felt empowered to harass him. They asked him, “What do you have in your pocket?” which Anthony showed was blunt wraps, before he got shot. CPD claims Anthony had a weapon, and that’s why they were forced to fire at him, but can’t seem to explain how they knew he had a gun when they first approached him, when his pockets were empty.
Neither Snelling nor Burke spoke of Anthony’s shooting and the implications of his near-fatal encounter with police as they celebrated the felony bypass programs’ expansion. This is despite Snelling himself acknowledging, on the day Anthony was shot, that police use of force and incidents of CPD pointing guns at people had nearly doubled in the last two years.
CPD has murdered eight people so far this year, including 57-year-old Timothy Glaze, shot 16 times while experiencing a mental health crisis, and 19-year-old Nate Fejerang, chased, pinned to the ground, and shot three times, once in the face, for looking suspicious. Anthony could have easily been CPD’s ninth victim.
Since Anthony’s shooting, Burke has paid him and his family back by charging him with assaulting a police officer and felony gun possession. After Friday’s announcement, she’s made it easier for trigger-happy pigs to stalk, pursue, and shoot at people who, like Anthony, resist their profiling and harassment.
Having a gun for safety is something we’ve heard from lots of people we talk to on the West and the Southside. In these neighborhoods, a lack of jobs, resources and youth looking for belonging and a way forward under these conditions has led many to turn to the streets to make ends meet, get street cred or carve out a sense of purpose on the block. The result is violence and competition as people fight over scraps, supported by the availability of more powerful weapons and an internet culture that celebrates violence. This happens while the rulers of Chicago and their pigs watch on, allowing these conditions to worsen and neighborhoods to fall further into violence. This continued violence has forced many people to take matters into their own hands and arm themselves despite the risk of police assault. So while Burke claims to want guns off the streets, by backing the police who do nothing to stop crime, she and the pigs add to the problem they claim to be solving.
In true cop fashion, however, Burke is happy to ignore people’s daily conditions and swell inmate numbers at CCJ. She boasted that 99% of police non-violent gun possession charges were upheld in the early stages of the bypass program. Similar to Mayor Brandon Johnson’s claims that crime rates are down because of the pigs, cases of gun violence continue, despite CCJ’s swelling numbers, with seven teens shot and injured and one other person dead downtown last night after the city’s annual tree lighting ceremony.
Burke, Snelling and Johnson want the public to trust their “tough on crime” stance. They would have us believe that we should fear people like Anthony, but ignore their killer and trigger-happy cops as they run rampant across the city; that police stop crime as gun violence continues. The truth is, the capitalist system Burke, Snelling and Johnson serve doesn’t care about stopping crime; it wants Black, Latino and other proletarian people to kill each other or rot for the rest of their lives behind bars. The pig’s sole purpose is to add to this chaos. They do this while politicians and other (sometimes) well-meaning people sell violence prevention as the solution, devoid of any real challenge to a system that won’t even arrest killer cops, and instead work to justify their brutality and increase their funding.
There’s nothing safe about pigs getting a free pass to shoot and kill or maim people in the streets. If Burke and Snelling want to protect public safety, they should arrest the cops responsible for nearly killing Anthony and murdering Timothy Glaze, Nate Ferejang and other victims of police brutality. Then they should arrest and prosecute themselves and Brandon Johnson for aiding and abetting the violence generated by this system. Alejandro Urbano Mateo, Salah Saleh, Oscar Asilis, and Nathaniel Hollis should be taken off the streets and charged for their crimes. Until that happens, we’ll continue to call bullshit on Burke and Snelling’s claims about the pigs keeping us safe or trying to stop crime.
We’re Dare to Struggle, we stand with the people under the gun of police brutality. With killer and trigger-happy cops on the loose and people forced to arm themselves for protection, we know crime and violence won’t stop until the pigs and the capitalist system that allows this to happen are overthrown. Hit us up to get involved!
Dare to Struggle 