Welcome back to #Fuck12Friday!! We're proud to see Chicagoans keeping up the energy and continuing to come out to the streets. We're in this for the long haul!
Lori Lightfoot's increased CPDs budget by $100 million dollars, but now she's using our voices speaking out against police to say that's not enough. She's calling for more increases as part of her reform. #Fuck12Friday #LiarLightfoot
We aren't here for the political glad-handing that claims to listen to our demands, and then works to increase the stranglehold police have over our communities. #Fuck12Friday #LiarLightfoot
Last weekend, while thousands marched in the streets demanding police abolition, Lori Lightfoot awarded a $1.2 million contract to private police forces (Illinois Security Professionals, AGB Investigative Services Inc. and Monterrey Security) to patrol our city #Fuck12Friday
It's possible Lori didn't understand us the first time, but when we said #DefundThePolice, we meant ALL police. That means ICE, CBP, the military, and ESPECIALLY private police. It's like AllLivesMatter, but we actually mean it #Fuck12Friday
So let's talk about private police #Fuck12Friday
When public sectors are defunded, we know private industry fills in to turn a profit. When (yes, WHEN, hunny) police are defunded, the multibillion-dollar private security industry will try to fill the void, and we need to get rid of them too #Fuck12Friday
Private police aren't new. In fact, the first police this country ever had were private forces, formed by wealthy citizens #Fuck12Friday
The private police that our police are descended from existed to fight threats to the wealthy white colonizers like sharing the land, a free black person, or a breathing indigenous person #Fuck12Friday
Of course, Chicago is no stranger to the whims of private police forces. They were the footsoldiers of Chicago's union busters. #Fuck12Friday
Private police were hired by corporations to break up unions, protecting corporations' profits, while also cracking skulls. #Fuck12Friday
If those corporations and their private police had their way, we would have never had the 5-day work week, the 8-hour work way day, or any of the other worker protections that often get taken for granted. #Fuck12Friday
Those unions persevered, but those corporations still liked having their private police forces that protected their property and profit, only having a private force of skull crackers is not a good look. #Fuck12Friday
So they opted for the legitimacy of the state and lobbied for private police forces. The same job, protecting corporations' property and profits over community livelihood, gussied up in the clothes of the common good. #Fuck12Friday
As we refuse to back down from our demand of defunding the police, we have to prepare for the police to take off the dress up and get back to their roots of no holds barred private policing. #Fuck12Friday
We're already seeing it with Lori's Monterey contract, and the University of Chicago Police Department, the biggest University Police Department in the US and one of the largest private security forces in America. #Fuck12Friday
In fact, 65,000 Chicagoans are already under the jurisdiction of just one private police force: the University of Chicago Police Department. 50,000 of them are not students #Fuck12Friday
UCPD is one of the largest private security forces in the country. Students have been calling for the abolition of this force for years. #CareNotCops #Fuck12Friday
This is yet another example of how Chicago is OVERRUN with cops. And UCPD is not required to release their budget or their stats and they are not subject to FOIA. As a private institution, they are even less accountable than CPD. #Fuck12Friday
What we do know about UCPD is that in 2017 and 2018 about 95% of their traffic stops were black people, in an area where black people are less than a third of the population #Fuck12Friday
All of this is not a coincidence -- it's capitalism. As one of the largest landlords in Hyde Park, the University has intentionally used its police against black people to forcibly gentrify the area and raise its property values #Fuck12Friday
The UCPD jurisdiction covers six square miles of the south side with a private, unaccountable, racist police force. And the Obama Center will expand their jurisdiction further into poorer, black neighborhoods.
We won't have that. UCPD we're coming for you too. #Fuck12Friday
We won't have that. UCPD we're coming for you too. #Fuck12Friday
The UCPD jurisdiction covers six square miles of the south side with a private, unaccountable, racist police force. And the Obama Center will expand their jurisdiction further into poorer, Black neighborhoods.
We won't have that. UCPD we're coming for you too. #Fuck12Friday
We won't have that. UCPD we're coming for you too. #Fuck12Friday
As Chicagoans, we need to recognize UCPD's overt racism as emblematic of the broader issue of privatized policing #Fuck12Friday
By most estimates, there are approximately 1 MILLION private police officers nationwide. This already exceeds the number of public cops #Fuck12Friday
Private police officers generally have similar powers to arrest, interrogate, and search people, and courts have ruled that illegally obtained evidence by private officers is admissible in court #Fuck12Friday
Along with these broad powers, there is less regulation around who can become a private police officer than even a public cop. In several states, there is no licensing process at all, and most states don't regulate internal corporate security #Fuck12Friday
And while we're trusting corporations to hire police with little to no regulation, we the public are powerless to complain. Just read this article written by private police advocates about how easy it is to avoid a civil rights lawsuit: asisonline.org/security-manag… #Fuck12Friday
#Fuck12Friday every Friday at 1 PM CST because #Fuck12
