Tuesday, July 23, 2019

Chicago Police Executed More Than 11,000 Search Warrants in Mostly Poor Neighborhoods Over 5-Year Period

New public records show Chicago police executed more than 11,000 search warrants over a five-year period, predominantly in the city's low-income and minority neighborhoods, and nearly half of them did not result in an arrest.

Obtained through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by Lucy Parson Labs, a police accountability and transparency nonprofit in Chicago, shows that Chicago police executed 11,247 search warrants between 2012 and 2017, most of them heavily concentrated in the South and West Side of the city.

His office is investigating how Chicago police vet information and execute search warrants.

Sloppy, unverified search warrants led heavily armed Chicago police and SWAT officers to ransack houses; hold families, including children, at gunpoint; and handcuff an eight-year-old child.

Lucy Parsons Labs struggled for a year to get the data from the Chicago Police Department, which originally claimed the records did not exist.

In nearly 800 of the search warrants, the address was listed on or near Homan Square, where the Chicago Police Department's Evidence and Recovered Property Section is located.

In the Near West Side neighborhood, there were 160 search warrants executed over the five-year period that did not result in an arrest, compared to just 56 that did.

https://reason.com/2019/07/23/chicago-police-executed-more-than-11000-search-warrants-in-mostly-poor-neighborhoods-over-5-year-period/

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