The president of the largest Chicago police union on Thursday blasted a new report that recommends broad reforms within the department, calling the report one-sided and unfair to officers.
Dean Angelo Sr., president of the Fraternal Order of Police, said he thinks members of Mayor Rahm Emanuel's hand-picked Police Accountability Task Force made up their minds about police before studying the issues. The report, written in occasionally scalding language, cites statistics and historic events as it calls out the department for alleged racial bias and indifference to the problems of residents.
The nearly 200-page report, released Wednesday, faults the city and the police union for allowing officers to escape accountability for misconduct. The report comes amid a U.S. Department of Justice civil rights investigation spurred by the release of video of a police officer fatally shooting African-American 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. The task force report called the release of the video a "tipping point" in police-community relations.
"I believe they had an agenda or a built-in bias going in," Angelo told the Chicago Tribune. "And I don't see the need to do that when the Department of Justice are the subject matter experts, not the task force."
