Chicago Justice Podcast

What really happened on New Year’s Day 2019 when North Carolina State Highway Patrol troopers shot and killed Brandon Webster? For years, the official account of the shooting was accepted by law enforcement leaders, government officials, and the media. But behind the scenes, an internal investigation uncovered evidence showing that the trooper’s version of events could not have happened as reporte...

In this episode, we sit down with Joanna C. Schwartz , UCLA law professor and author of Shielded: How the Police Became Untouchable , to unpack the hidden systems that protect police from consequences. We go beyond the headlines about qualified immunity to explore what really blocks accountability: Why most police misconduct lawsuits fail before trial How courts, police departments, and legal rule...

This week, we break down the controversial 2022 raid of Grammy-nominated rapper Afroman’s home by Adams County Sheriff’s deputies and the legal fallout that followed. Acting on claims from a confidential informant alleging kidnapped women, a “sex dungeon,” and large quantities of marijuana, officers executed a warrant that ultimately uncovered none of it. In fact, there wasn’t even a basement. Joi...

How politics, media, and institutions distort crime narratives across America Fear has become the dominant framework for how Americans understand crime—and it is often deliberately manufactured. In this episode of the Chicago Justice Podcast , host Tracy Siska , Executive Director of the Chicago Justice Project, introduces a new national focus for the show. We examine how crime and violence are ex...

In a first-of-its-kind independent analysis of the effectiveness of ShotSpotter, the science says the technology does not lead to more arrests and convictions for gun crimes and does not reduce these crimes in the areas where it is deployed. The study examined the impact of ShotSpotter in Chicago and Kansas City. To understand the science more deeply, we sat down with the study’s first autho...

We open season four with a discussion of Karina’s bill, which hopes to formalize a process for the courts & police departments throughout Illinois to seize guns from individuals who have an order of protection entered against them. Our guest today is Danielle Parisi Ruffatto, Managing Director of the Family Law and Protective Orders Division at Ascend Justice . We discuss the horrific murder...

On today’s show, we discuss the connection between racialized policing in the US and the efforts by the right-wing to erase slavery from America’s history. We discuss this with Joseph Flynn, the Executive Director for Equity and Inclusion in the Division of Academic Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, and an associate professor of curriculum and instruction at Northern Illinois University. The effort...

On today’s episode, we feature an interview with Alexandra Block from the ACLU of Illinois about their lawsuit against the Chicago Police Department’s highly questionable traffic stop practices. The ACLU alleges that the CPD pulls people over exclusively to search them and their care for drugs and guns. According to their statistics, the CPD’s rate of finding guns, drugs, or caus...

Today’s episode discusses the long history of abuse and mismanagement at the Cook County Juvenile Temporary Detention Center (JTDC) with Injustice Watch reporters Kelly Garcia and Carlos Ballesteros. The JTDC has long been a dumping ground for clouted workers in Cook County government who were too incompetent for any other job in the county. This, combined with a seeming refusal of half of t...

Despite promises to the contrary by the Chicago Police Department and the agencies that make up the police accountability system in Chicago, lying while undertaking your official duties as an officer isn’t taken all that seriously. The CPD’s rule 14 bars any officer from knowingly submitting a written or oral false report. In other words, they are not supposed to lie. A recent report i...

On today’s show we attempt to bring facts and science to the discuss around the Pre-Trail Fairness Act (PTFA) and the state of electronic monitoring (EM) in the Cook County criminal justice system. We were honored to sit down with Kareem Butler, a pretrial justice fellow at the Chicago Appleseed Center for Fair Courts, to discuss these vital issues. The hyperbolic response to bail reform in...

On the show today we sit down with Raina Lipsitz to discuss America’s problem with justice reform and how cities like Chicago are caught in endless cycle of failure when it comes to passing meaningful justice reform. A meaningful conversation to engage in now as Mayor Lightfoot’s time in office has ended with a pretty dismal record on justice reform including endlessly scapegoating jud...

The Adam Toledo shooting while a massive tragedy was not out of line with Chicago Police Department guidelines and so the firing of Eric Stillman smells like politics. Despite how the video of this shooting has been exploiting repeatedly for political purposes the reality is that tragic police shootings can occur and those shootings can also be inline with CPD guidelines. The fervor over the shoot...

Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx has announced that after two terms in office she will not be running for re-election in the fall of 2024. On today’s show we will provide our quick response to Foxx deciding to end her political career and provide some insight on what brought us to this point. It is very hard for progressive politicians to bring in the changes they campaign on beca...

On today’s show we discuss the new process for how a new superintendent (supt) for the Chicago Police Department gets selected. With the creation of the new Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability the process is slightly different from the last time a new supt was selected. In years past the Chicago Police Board would select 3 candidates for the job of supt and send that li...

On today’s episode I am going to give you my very initial thoughts on the Brandon Johnson victory in the Chicago mayoral runoff election as it pertains to police reform issues. The majority of the mayoral field ran primarily on the issue of crime and violence being out of control in Chicago. If you are thinking that black “progressive” alderpeople who jumped in the race wouldn&#8...

On today’s pod we discuss the alleged reasoning behind Chicago CRED’s founder & leader Arne Duncan’s endorsement of Paul Vallas for mayor. Later we also discuss the Chicago Tribune’s editorial comparing Donald Trump & Jussie Smollett. We know about Duncan’s endorsement because Duncan authored an OpEd in the Chicago Tribune announcing it. While we are not going to judge the endorsement itse...

The coverage of the runoff in the race for mayor and the intense focus on crime and criminal justice matters exposes bias in the Chicago Tribune and the reporters. In the article we discuss today there are massive assumptions embedded in the article that are presented as facts by the two authors. Also embedded in the article if you look closely are topics for which Chicago journalists continue to...

This week we take the first of what will be many looks at soon to be former Chicago Police Department Superintendent David Brown and his time in Chicago. Unfortunately for Chicago despite the Mayor’s glowing endorsement and hiring of Brown the reality is that the Lightfoot administration was engaged in a conspiracy with Brown to hide his misconduct while a member of the Dallas Police Departm...

Mayor Lightfoot just lost re-election and now stands as the first mayor in forty years to fail to lose re-election after their first term in office. Her is our quick reaction to her loss. There is little doubt that the reaction to to Mayor Lightfoot from the beginning was based partially on her race, gender, and sexuality. There is also little doubt that her style of governance and lack of relatio...

An interesting piece of research documenting in their own words how some practitioners in Illinois’ justice system use jail. While the research on the uses of jail throughout Illinois vary there seems to be a thread that the use is regularly extrajudicial and goes well beyond the legal purposes of jail and bail. The goal of the report was to seek out how practitioners use jail and why they s...

The police accountability system in Chicago just provided all of us more examples of just how broken the system really is. It is a system I have spent over 25 years trying to reform but unfortunately the system cannot seem to provide the Chicago Police Department the oversight and accountability that has been so desperately needed in Chicago. On today’s show we take a look at a recent exampl...

On today’s show we feature a interview with Chicago Inspector General Deborah Witzburg discussing the case of Chicago’s Proud Boys cop. As it has been reported in Chicago the Bureau of Internal Affairs had two chances to fire a Chicago Police officer who was associating both in person and online with the white supremacist organization known as the Proud Boys. Officer Robert Bakker fail...

On today’s show we sit down with 33rd Ward Alderwoman Rossana Rodriguez Sanchez to discuss her efforts to get Chicago to implement true crisis response that doesn’t involve the Chicago Police Department. While focusing mainly on her ordinance we also get a little politics in given it is the season as Chicago’s elections will be held in just a few weeks. In response to protests st...

On today’s episode we sit down with Susan Lee who is currently Chief of Strategy and Policy at Chicago CRED but was previously Deputy Mayor for Public Safety under the Lightfoot administration. Lee is known as an expert on violence prevention and was doing this same work in Los Angeles before coming to Chicago. Lee was brought in to city government to try to help build a more robust and coor...