After Black Lives Matter protestors clashed with Chicago police in front of the Grant Park statue of Christopher Columbus, a union chief sent a letter to President Donald Trump asking for help in establishing law and order, according to an ABC Chicago report.
Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) Lodge 7 President John Catanzara Jr. said in his July 25 letter to the president that he would be willing to sit down any time to discuss bringing civility back to the streets of Chicago.
“These politicians are failing the good men and women of this city and the police department,” Catanzara wrote.
Northwest Side GOP Club Chair Matthew Podgorski
| Photo courtesy of the NW Side GOP Club
Chicago's Democratic Mayor Lori Lightfoot called the letter a political stunt, according to media reports.
Under Operation Legend, Trump planned to send 150 federal agents to the city but on July 27, NBC Chicago reported that more than 60 elected officials were concerned that federal agents would antagonize protestors. A letter expressing those concerns was sent to Lightfoot and Cook County Sheriff Tom Dart.
“President Trump has repeatedly demonstrated both his callous disregard for Black, indigenous and immigrant lives and his increasing inclination toward fascism and authoritarianism,” the letter stated.
Lightfoot dismissed the concerns, telling journalists at a press conference that federal agents will not be deployed in the same fashion as in Portland, Oregon, where protestors allege they have been abducted by agents in unmarked cars.
Northwest Side GOP Club Chair Matthew Podgorski issued a statement expressing his organization's views of the ongoing controversy.
“The FOP president represents the rank-and-file police officer, and clearly they're not getting any support whatsoever from the vast majority of elected officials in Chicago and Cook County,” Podgorski said in the statement. “What is he going to do? He goes to wherever he can get help if he's not getting help from the leader of the city of Chicago, who's going to do nothing but vilify the police because that seems to be what's popular right now in a far-left big city. So he's gone to wherever he can to get help, regardless of political affiliation. He's just looking out for the people that he represents.”
As widely reported last week, Lightfoot had two Christopher Columbus statues quietly removed overnight due to public safety concerns.
“Is that constructive?” Podgorski said in an interview with the Chicago City Wire. “Does that help reduce one coronavirus case? Is that helping protect one innocent person from catching a stray bullet in street gang violence? Is that helping anything in Chicago? Mayor Lightfoot is absolutely posturing. She is exactly what the people elected. She's a far left-wing plutocrat. She's exactly what she said she was going to be and she's simply a reflection of a plurality, if not a majority of Chicago voters.”
Podgorski further noted that he would like to see a tremendous effort toward crushing the root cause of the city's violence, which he believes is a deterioration of values and a cultural conflict.
“If we're not going to get family values back, let's at least get some values back into the schools,” he said. “The only way to do that is a school-choice program, plain and simple, and until they're willing to admit that there’s a cultural problem in Chicago, things are not going to get better.”
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