Chicago City Wire

Mayor Lori Lightfoot has spent the last few days during the ongoing police brutality protests holed up with the Office of Emergency Management & Communication and Chicago Police Department command staff, watching videos and dictating where police resources should go based on what she's seeing on police cameras, according to Alderman Ray Lopez (15th).

However, Lopez says that isn’t enough to stop the progression of what started as peaceful protests on Wednesday, May 27. The 50 elected Alderman, including Lopez, want a short term plan for securing their neighborhoods

“We are on the verge of a full-blown race war right in the city of Chicago,” Lopez told Chicago City Wire. “There are videos of Latino gang bangers with bats, chasing African Americans out of their community, shooting at them, using expletives in English and Spanish against them because they were encouraged to do so in the name of protecting their neighborhood.”

The recent pandemonium is in response to eight days of non-stop national protests across the country by citizens who are outraged over the asphyxiation death of an unarmed black man by a Minnesota police officer named Derek Chauvin on May 25.  

The “No Justice No Peace” rallies resulted in the arrest of Chauvin who had pinned George Lloyd down to the ground with his knee and strangled him to death. The protests have turned into episodes of looting that President Trump and other government officials say have been incited by Antifa, a far-left, antifascist, unorganized network of activists who believe that if people had fought the Nazi party more aggressively in Germany during the 1920s and 1930s, Adolph Hitler would not have come into power, according to the Anti-Defamation League.

“The mayor is completely micromanaging the police department,” Lopez said.

Instead of attention to police department detail, Lopez said he would like Mayor Lightfoot to deal with the outbreak of rioters and looters that have emerged at night in neighborhoods after the protests.

“Gang bangers, being what they are, have turned this into ‘If we see anyone who doesn't look like us, we're going to get them,’” said Lopez. “I called Mayor Lightfoot this morning after a 49-year-old African American resident of mine was shot  at while driving home with his daughter by an underaged minor gang banger who saw him and yelled, ‘What are you doing in this neighborhood?’ That was at nine o'clock this morning. It took her five hours to respond.”

As previously reported in the Sun Times, Lopez and Mayor Lightfoot had an exchange last week which ended in expletives.

“We have never been able to have a working relationship,” Lopez said. “Even when I asked to sit down with her to bury the hatchet for the sake of our city and the stake of our communities, that lasted for about one day before her political instincts of pettiness and retribution kicked back in because of something I proposed that she disagreed with and was trying to find ulterior political motives for why I would even suggest anything and that pattern has been repeated, not just with myself, but with any alderman old or brand new.”

The Aldermen presented a plan to Mayor Lightfoot but it has been ignored so far, according to Lopez.

“We want an increased national guard presence to protect the neighborhoods,” said Lopez. “We want the additional presence of uniforms to send the message that we are bringing order to the chaos. We don't need the national guard to police but we absolutely need to show that we are not doing this alone. We need our police to be able to police again and right now they can't because they're constantly chasing looters. We want the curfew to be 8 pm not 9 pm to be in line with the rest of the suburbs and we want an expiration date to the curfew.”

Gov. J.B. Pritzker deployed the Illinois National Guard troops to the suburbs on Monday, June 1, 2020, according to media reports. 

Chicago Aldermen serve 50 wards for four years and are part of the legislative branch of the City.