Chicago City Wire

The left has gone off the deep end in its demand to defund the Chicago Police Department, according to Chicago's Republican Party chairman.

“Who would come if they call 911 to report a robbery, rape, or murder? A social justice educator?” Chris Cleveland told the Chicago City Wire.

Black Lives Matter (BLM) protestors have been gathering nationwide since Minneapolis police officer Derek Chauvin pinned George Floyd, an unarmed black man, to the ground with his knee and strangled him to death May 25. Rallying cries that started as "No justice, no peace" have since evolved into chants of "Defund the police." 

“You want to know who is responsible for the fact that bad cops are still on the job, Democrats? Look in the mirror,” Cleveland said in an interview. “Leftist hypocrisy is stunning.”

Calls to defund the police come at a time when Chicago public schools, students, teachers and other community members are rallying at Lincoln Park High School, requesting that the city allocate less money to the Chicago Police Department and, instead, replace it with a civilian police accountability council, according to media reports. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, however, dismissed the idea of lowering the police budget.

“The core problem is that public employee unions make it almost impossible to fire bad cops, bad teachers, or bad government employees of any kind,” Cleveland said. “But the left certainly isn't going to say that because public employee unions make political contributions almost exclusively to Democrats." 

Alderman Anthony Napolitano of the 41st Ward proposed an alternative to entirely defunding the police in the form of a resolution that would remove police personnel from districts that don’t want policing and reallocate them to those that do. Fifty alderman represent 50 wards within the city of Chicago.

Napolitano tweeted about the resolution from his @aBlueCanary Twitter account on June 10.

“Outstanding," he said. "If you don’t want police in your ward, agree to reallocate them to a ward that wants them.”

According to a copy of the Napolitano's resolution obtained by Chicago City Wire, the temporary initiative will be submitted to the city council next week and is positioned as an experiment.

The resolution states, “We, the members of the City Council of the city of Chicago ... do hereby call upon Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Police Department (CPD) Supt. David O. Brown to develop and submit for approval to the Committee on Public Safety a one-year CPD personnel and resource reallocation pilot program.”