Chicago City Wire

The president of the Chicago Fraternal Order of Police has demanded that Congressman Bobby Rush (D-Ill) retract a comment he made at a rally last weekend in support of Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx that the FOP “is the sworn enemy of black people.”

“This comment is wholly baseless and in fact a slanderous remark, which meets the textbook legal definition of defamation," the FOP’s Kevin Graham wrote in an April 10 letter to Rush.

Rush’s remarks about the FOP came in reaction to an NPR report that members of the Proud Boys, labelled a white nationalist group by the Southern Poverty Law Center, appeared at an April 1 FOP demonstration calling for Foxx to resign.

Congressman Bobby Rush

“We could not control who showed up for the April 1st protest just as you cannot control who has shown up to many of your protests throughout your career,” Graham wrote in his letter Rush.

Rush was a co-founder of the Black Panther Party's Illinois chapter in the 1960s.

“Your comments about the FOP,” Graham continued, “were intentionally hurtful to our members of which one-quarter is comprised of our African American brothers and sisters. Your comments show an amazing indifference to our city, a fundamental misunderstanding of the people who keep us safe, and disturbing mendacity. You owe us an apology.”

At an April 4 news conference, the FOP and suburban police chiefs said that they have lost confidence in Foxx after her office, despite overwhelming evidence compiled by police, refused to prosecute actor Jussie Smollett for allegedly staging a hate crime. The FOP says that Foxx is guilty of other "missteps" as well.

“…like the exonerations of once-convicted killers Gabriel Solache and Arturo Reyes and her willingness to vacate old drug convictions of a Spanish Cobra gang member that will allow him to stay in Chicago and potentially wreak havoc on its citizens,” FOP spokesman Martin Preib wrote in the April 8 issue of The Watch, an FOP blog.