Who's running for 2nd Police District Council

Editor's note: This guide was originally published by the Chicago Reader. 

A story on candidates in the 3rd Police District Council race, which includes parts of Woodlawn, South Shore and Greater Grand Crossing, will appear in the Herald's next issue.

Four candidates are running for three positions on the Chicago Police Department’s 2nd District Council, which represents parts of Bronzeville, Kenwood, Hyde Park and Washington Park.

Established by Chicago City Council in an ordinance last summer, District Councils are intended to create a new model for police oversight and accountability in the city by giving communities more control over local public safety issues.

Each of the city’s 22 police districts will have its own locally-elected body, referred to as a District Council, consisting of three elected members. District Councils will be tasked with holding monthly public meetings and building stronger relations between the police and community at the local level through gathering public input and developing restorative justice programs.

District Councils will also have the power to nominate candidates to serve on the seven-member citywide Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, which can institute department-wide reforms. Candidates will then be appointed by the mayor and approved by alderpersons.

Locally, CPD’s 2nd District Council area runs from roughly from 31st to 60th Street and the Dan Ryan Expressway to the lakefront.

Residents will be able to vote for three candidates to lead the District Council in the city’s municipal election on Feb. 28. More on the candidates below.

Julia Kline

A former CPS teacher, Kline is a community organizer, sales and marketing consultant, and voting rights activist. She is a cofounder along with Jocelyn McClelland and Morrow Cleveland of Neighbors Who Vote, which works on voter registration and turnout, cross-neighborhood organizing, and amplifying the work of other groups. In 2018 and 2018 Kline was on the marketing and communications team for Indivisible Chicago, helping to organize a number of street protests.

Candidate questionnaire responses:

• Do you have experience as an activist or community organizer? Yes

• Do you have experience interacting with CPD? No

• Do you have experience working or interacting with government? No

• Should the city hire more police officers? No

• Is CPD adequately funded? Yes: funding should be reduced.

• CPD reform: The police need significant reform.

• Mental health crises: Police should not be involved in mental health crisis calls at all.
  
  

• Establishing civilian control of the police department

• Other: “Policing is never going to be the path to real safety. Rather, we in this Council must work to create an entirely separate safety infrastructure: one based in restorative justice, mental health resources, violence interruption and outreach. For evidence of the effectiveness of this approach, look at Lawndale. They have seen a 40 percent drop in the incidence of violence since having invested heavily in these types of approaches just two years ago.”
  
  

Why are you running for Police District Council?

To look at me, many might assume I’ve never experienced police violence firsthand. But when I was 15 and got caught for smoking weed, I was almost raped by those two police officers. So I have a visceral understanding of the kind of reverberating trauma that is inflicted by abuse of power at the hands of police officers.

It infuriates me that MANY officers remain on CPD payroll despite multiple dozens of accusations of misconduct against them; and even officers still collecting either a paycheck or pension, despite having been convicted of criminal wrongdoing. Most recently, a whistleblower cop (yes, of course there are some good cops) named Sergeant Isaac Lambert was awarded $910,000 by a jury, after attempting to call out the wrongdoing of three fellow officers. Yet those three bad cops are all still employed by CPD!!!