A strategy session for the pro-police backlash

CHICAGO MAYOR Rahm Emanuel has an explanation for the high murder rate in his city: protests against police murders.

According to CNN, Emanuel is "laying blame on what he sees as the chilling effects of high-profile protests against police brutality and officers' fear of cell phone videos of their actions going viral."

"Officers themselves were telling me," he said, "about how the news over the last 15 months have impacted their instincts--do they stop, or do they keep driving? When I stop here, is it going to be my career on the line?"

In what was supposed to be a private gathering with U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, Emanuel complained that because of the climate of increased scrutiny on police behavior, "we have allowed our police department to get fetal, and it is having a direct consequence. They have pulled back from the ability to interdict."

Of course, Chicago was nationally notorious for its homicide rate on Emanuel's watch long before the emergence of the Black Lives Matter movement last year. And the idea that Chicago cops--members of a department that produced torturer Jon Burge, serial brutalizer Glenn Evans and Dante Servin, who killed Rekia Boyd when he fired wildly into a crowd of unarmed youth--are hesitating to use violence is stomach-turning.

Emanuel would rather vilify activists and ordinary people for holding murderous cops accountable--and at the same time try to rebuild support for the hard-charging homicidal tactics of the Chicago Police Department and justify his plan to flood the streets with 319 more cops.

IT MAKES perfect sense then that Emanuel's Chicago will host the International Association for Chiefs of Police (IACP) Annual Conference and Exposition on October 24-27 at McCormick Place near downtown.

According to its website, the IACP is the largest and most important law enforcement event of the year, drawing more than 14,000 "public safety professionals" to network and browse the over 200 workshops and more than 650 exhibitors showcasing equipment and new technology.

There are a wide range of exhibitors, from Booz Allen Hamilton, Edward Snowden's former employer when he was a contract employee for the national security state; to universities; to well-known corporations not typically associated with law enforcement like 3M and Dell. Naturally, the exhibit hall will showcase the latest in military-grade weapons from companies responsible for arming the U.S. military.

Workshop titles include "Pathways to Violent Extremism: Understanding the Radicalization Process and How Best to Prevent Violence in Your Community" and "Use of Force By and Against the Police: Perspectives from the Local, State, and National Level."

There is even a session about the school-to-prison pipeline--from a pro-pipeline perspective: "Law Enforcement's Role in Supportive School Discipline."

Barack Obama will address the conference on its final day. "The address is part of the President's travel across the country to meet with Americans who are working to fix the criminal justice system," a White House official told the Chicago Sun-Times, "from law enforcement officials working to lower the crime and incarceration rates, to former prisoners who are earning their second chance."

THIS YEAR'S IACP conference takes place in the context of the rise of the Movement for Black Lives--and the smear campaign against it from conservative quarters.

On Fox News, Elizabeth Hasselbeck and Bill O'Reilly called Black Lives Matter a hate group. Police have tried to scapegoat protests for isolated incidents of violence against officers that have had no connection to any movement activists.

In an article appropriately titled "Here's Proof That Black Lives Matter Protests are Working," Gawker gave the results of a Washington Post poll showing that 60 percent of Americans "now affirm that the fight for equal rights is not over"--up 14 percent the year before. The poll also found that 53 percent of whites believe changes still need to be made, compared to just 39 percent in 2014.

This is the reason for the conservative backlash: Protests have been working. But while our side continues to organize, their side does as well. The IACP conference will be a three-day strategy session about how to push back against the growing movement against police racism, violence and impunity.

There will be a series of talks organized by the Chicago Police Department (CPD) on various themes, including something called "police legitimacy." Among the CPD workshops is "The Chicago NATO Model: Bringing Order to Disorder While Ensuring First Amendment Rights--a laughable title given the CPD's use of informants to entrap protesters on bogus terrorism charges.

It's worth wondering if the CPD will use any of its workshops to tell attendees how to run a "black site" as it did for years at Homan Square, a secret West Side warehouse, where according to an investigation by the Guardian, thousands of mostly Black Chicagoans were illegally detained and often brutally abused.

It is a certainty that there will be no discussions at the IACP of how to stop the epidemic of murders of Black people at the hands of the police. According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the CPD killed 70 people over the past five years--the fourth-highest police murder rate in the country. Most of those murdered were Black.

HORRORS LIKE these are why we must protest the IACP conference--this year in Chicago and every year after. Many activists see the conference as an opportunity for Chicago Police Chief Garry McCarthy to push the idea that he and Emanuel have been promoting for weeks--that the city needs to get tougher on violent criminals.

This conference reflects everything that thousands of ordinary people have poured into the streets since Ferguson to raise their voices against. We need a bigger grassroots movement against police violence that includes seasoned activists and brand new protesters. Everybody who is interested should come to the I Shocked the Sherriff Counter-Conference, which will feature a two-day people's assembly and a protest on Saturday, October 24.

The counter-conference will demand "justice reinvestment"--a direct and immediate divestment from police forces like the CPD and reallocation of those funds to initiatives proposed by and benefitting the communities most devastated by economic crises and historic disinvestment.

Let's demand that the money our cities spend on the weaponry being peddled at the IACP conference be put instead into mental health clinics, women's shelters and public schools.