Allegations of police misconduct are not new to Chicago. Recently, former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge was sentenced to four and a half years in prison for lying about his role in the torture of prisoners during the 1970s and 80s.
But some Chicagoans say they endure a more routine kind of mistreatment during their day-to-day interactions with police.
Muhammad Sankari, 22, says he’s met too many of these residents. He’s an organizer with the Arab American Action Network’s youth program in Chicago Lawn, a South Side neighborhood. Sankari says he routinely sees police mistreat teenagers and detain them during questioning. For him, the police presence sometimes makes the neighborhood feel like a militarized zone.
Sankari asks that Chicago’s next mayor and city council push the department to use less heavy-handed policing strategies.
*Editors note: A young person in this story makes a claim that he was mistreated by police. This claim has not been investigated, as neither he nor his family has filed an official report about the alleged incident.