5 CPD officers stripped of police powers, 2 reassigned
The biggest gang in Chicago are at it again, exposing themselves as the racist criminals they truly are. This time, it’s the Chicago Police Department’s precious 1863 tactical team, tasked with “guarding“ some of Chicago’s richest neighborhoods, hotels, and shopping centers by pulling over and harassing Black people, who are now costing the city hundreds of thousands of dollars in lawsuits.
Since 2023, complaints and lawsuits against CPD’s 18th District tactical team have been piling up, showing a clear pattern of racial bias and criminality. In just a few short years, members of the 1863 tactical team has made countless “pretextual traffic stops” (the new stop-and-frisk policy of CPD) on a number of Black drivers in the downtown area. In a recent report from February 18th, 4 of the 8 team members had been stripped of their police powers and quietly reshuffled into other departments, and the sergeant and one other officer were reassigned. Two days later, on February 20th, a 5th officer, Richard Rodriquez Jr., was stripped of his police powers and pulled by CPD leadership from a deposition hearing to avoid causing the department further embarrassment. The attorney representing a number of Black motorists suing the city called the pull out and abrupt end of the deposition “unprecedented,” and warned that CPD does not get to dictate when depositions are over.
CPD’s pretextual traffic stop policy continues to be one of the starkest examples of how the department targets and oppresses Black people in the city. Recent reports have shown how pretextual traffic stops—pulling people over for supposed minor infractions to launch further criminal investigations—disproportionately target Black drivers across the city and how they have effectively replaced the racist stop-and-frisk policy on the streets (though many residents would tell you this practice is alive and well today, too). Many of these stops are kept secret, with at least 200,000 of them going unreported in 2023 alone. We know that CPD’s pretextual stops have directly led to a number of additional disgusting crimes being committed by officers:
- Between 2018 and 2024, at least 230 traffic stops led to people being injured or hospitalized, like Byron Lamb, an unarmed Black man tased inside his car in-front of his two children in 2018.
- The 2023 revelation of 4 CPD pigs from the Calumet District who used stops to steal money, drugs, and guns from drivers they’d pull over.
- The arrest, jailing, and charging of Black gun owners with valid concealed carry permits, like Louis McWilliams and Lucy Washington.
- The police killing of Dexter Reed where a pretextual stop by a tactical team, never announcing themselves as police, led officers to fire 96 shots at Reed and his vehicle.
Pretextual traffic stops have become the primary tactic used by police to “lawfully” abuse their authority, harass Black and oppressed people, and meet a quota from superiors to get a pat on their pig head. These stops are used to steal people’s property for officers’ own personal gain or simply as an excuse for cops to get their licks in, sending countless people to the hospital or shooting people dead. Many of these cases remain in the shadows, but when they do get brought out into the light, the pigs get a slap on the wrist, reassigned to a new district, or moved to desk duty until the public pressure dies down. They’re rarely fired, and almost never jailed for their crimes.
What About the 1863 Gang?
The 8 person 1863 Tactical Team, operating in Chicago’s predominantly white and wealthy Near Northside neighborhoods, has become the most recent thorn in CPD’s side. In the last five years, the team racked up at least 100 misconduct complaints, costing the city $360,000 in just 8 out of the now 25 lawsuits (the rest are still ongoing). Although the 1863 team works in one of the whitest parts of the city, records show they almost exclusively pull over and harass Black drivers. In addition, 1863 members have also been recorded harassing Black patrons at nearby bars and restaurants.
Within the 18th District lies a small enclave of Black people who have remained in the Cabrini Row houses, blocks from where the Cabrini Green high-rises once stood before they were torn down to open the area to real estate speculation and gentrification. What the recent reporting on the 1863 gang has failed to highlight is the particular brutality they’ve inflicted on the Black residents in the row houses. In 2024, 1863 member Mike Donnelly and other 1863 members were caught on video viciously beating 32-year-old Lorenzo Williams at the row houses, with Donnelly pinning Lorenzo down, punching him in the face, and pressing his gun directly on Lorenzo’s head stating, “I’m gonna fucking shoot you.” Donnelly was later put on desk duty, but faced no real punishment for assaulting and attempting to kill Lorenzo.
Residents at the Row Houses are very familiar with the 1863 gang and have reported that the tactical team parks at the entrances of the homes, waiting to jump out on whoever they want to for whatever reason. Residents have also noted that 18th District officers will allow certain crimes to occur right in front of them, like drug deals, but will get off their ass and hop out of their cruisers to harass groups of kids walking around or riding scooters.
The abuses of the 1863 gang are just the most recent of CPD’s crimes against the people to make headlines. CPD is called the city’s biggest gang for a reason, with a long rap sheet of harassment, brutality, and murder, always targeting Black and other oppressed people. Brandon Johnson and Larry Snelling continue to try and pull cover for CPD, insisting the police are beloved by Chicagoans, while they remain silent on police killings (like the murder of Timothy Glaze, Nate Fejerang, and the many others killed on their watch) and re-shuffle killer and criminal cops out of the public eye, desperately attempting to conceal CPD’s ongoing crime spree.
If we want police crimes and brutality to end, it will take the masses of people getting politicians like Johnson and Snelling out of the way, exposing them as the guardians of the status quo. It will take masses of people in the street with a no-business-as-usual attitude to get the pigs off our back. It will take a fighting mass movement that sees the whole system—the system that continues to brutalize and murder oppressed people and calls it law and order—as the enemy. Time to move. You in?
Dare to Struggle 