In a stunning yet utterly predictable act, Chicago’s “cop academy” has officially opened on the West Side complete with a ribbon-cutting in front of fake street signs and fake housing.
In a city reeling from extreme poverty, a lack of affordable housing, myriad environmental injustices, food apartheid, an epidemic of gun violence—including that of police violence and murder—and in a city where at least 65,000 people are experiencing homelessness, the leadership of the city of Chicago spent $128 million to build fake homes on the city’s resource-starved West Side where officers can practice the violence and brutality that they will mete out to Chicago residents.
In a disturbing photo, Mayor Lightfoot, Alderman Mitts, Fire Commissioner Nance-Holt and others smile while cutting a red ribbon, proud to have brought this into being.1The photo of the ribbon cutting is accompanied by dystopian PR speak which refers to the cop academy as a “Public Safety Training Facility,” as though what will take place there will “train” safety, rather than violence. Adding insult to injury, the thirty-two-acre cop academy was built on the city’s West Side, where decades of racist policy (such as redlining and other housing discrimination and disinvestment) by the city government in this majority-nonwhite community have already given way to poverty and population loss. (In just one example, the Rahm Emanuel administration closed half of the West Side’s mental health clinics in 2012, then shuttered numerous West Side schools in his historic closure of fifty schools in 2013.) Lightfoot herself opposed the academy’s construction as a candidate for mayor but, as with many other campaign promises, flip-flopped upon taking office.
The facility is being installed in a community against the wishes of its residents, utilizing funds never made available to support their actual needs.
Lest there be any doubt as to whether or not West Siders actually want this cop academy, in 2018 the organizers of the No Cop Academy campaign polled West Garfield Park residents and, unsurprisingly, found that residents vastly preferred investments in “something else—beyond the Chicago Police Department.” They compiled the following statistics:
- 72 percent had never heard about the Cop Academy until approached by one of our canvassers.
- 72 percent did not want the Cop Academy built in their neighborhood, and a further 10 percent either declined to respond or said they needed more information.
- 86 percent said they did not believe the Cop Academy is the best use on the West Side of $95 million.
- 95 percent recommended that the city invest in something else—beyond the Chicago Police Department.
- “In total, we collected 1,103 community recommendations for West Side investments in public health and safety. None of those recommendations included the Cop Academy, and nearly 50% prioritized youth & school spending.”
Such opposition gives lie to the idea that this facility is being welcomed by the community. Instead, it is being installed in a community against the wishes of its residents, utilizing funds which never seem to be available when it comes to supporting their actual needs. Moreover, the initial figure floated for what construction of the academy would cost, $95 million, has now mushroomed to $128 million, meaning an additional $33 million was appropriated to support the project without any community input.
One could make an earnest argument here about our current political-economic conjuncture—how decades of neoliberal policies and the decline of whole economic sectors have left working people out in the cold, how social services have been starved, how the prison-industrial complex has grown by massive proportions, and how cop budgets have ballooned in the place of jobs. Countless activists and scholars have made these arguments. The No Cop Academy campaign itself, at the 2019 city council vote which ultimately awarded the contract to AECOM to build the facility, held protest banners which read: “Fund Communities. Defund Police.” But those in power know what they are doing, and in fact, the construction of this cop academy marks but the latest escalation of their war on poor and working-class Chicagoans.
Policing is not a “rational” response to something called “crime.” Instead, it is a war on poor people.
What kind of society eagerly spends millions of dollars to build fake neighborhoods, but cannot muster the funds to provide actual housing for the unhoused? What kind of society would rather stage and practice violence than provide mental health resources or violence interruption to communities reeling from it everyday? Unfortunately, such questions arise on a routine basis in this city.
And it is not only in this city. Today, people the world over are still reeling from the January 18th murder of activist and forest-protector Tortuguita. Tortuguita was killed by Atlanta police for protesting the construction of “Cop City,” a similar facility that has been proposed to be built on 100 acres of razed forest. Forest protectors continue to face off against the construction of this training ground for violence which threatens human and nonhuman lives alike.
For Chicago, like so many cities across the US, we must remember that policing is not a “rational” response to something called “crime.” Instead, it is a war on poor people (particularly Black and Brown poor people). As Ruth Wilson Gilmore argues, this war treats incarceration as a solution to social and economic ills while conveniently stripping poor and working-class people of color of their political rights and autonomy.
Again and again, our city leadership chooses violence over safety, manufactured scarcity over abundance, and death over life.
Additionally, in a cynical move decried by Chicago youth organizers, a chapter of the Boys and Girls Club is set to open at the facility. This is despite Chicago having the second most killings by police of youth under eighteen in the country,2Columbus, Ohio and Los Angeles are tied for first with Chicago and Jacksonville, Florida is tied as the second most. and despite several high-profile CPD murders of youth such as thirteen-year-old Adam Toledo and twenty-two-year-old Anthony Alvarez just in the last few years. In an open letter opposing this, No Cop Academy organizers write:
For Lightfoot and the CPD, this move is a PR strategy to ease those rising tensions between the general public and police. Black and Brown youth are being used as props that are dangled in front of the media, and it’s sad that the Boys & Girls club is a willing participant. Now the mayor can paint any opposition as the antagonistic individuals trying to stop progress by opposing the cop academy and its new ornaments, without actually addressing our concerns for how to achieve meaningful safety. We know that police are reactionary, not preventive. Community centers with after-school programs are preventative and restorative. Young people need after school programs that nurture our passions, without becoming photo ops for the police state.
As this open letter cautions, the leaders of this city are not answering the question of how to keep Chicagoans safe from violence. To answer such a question—even to ask it in earnest—would cast doubt on the fundamental structures of the city: its continuing racist segregation and privileging of wealthy neighborhoods, its disturbing obsession with courting corporations to the Loop at all costs, its tax laws that fuel gentrification, its lack of stable jobs, and so much more. Indeed, our city leadership is one that, again and again, chooses violence over safety, manufactured scarcity over abundance, and death over life.
The difference between these two philosophies could not be more stark. They want a fake village where no one lives or thrives. They spend millions on a theme park to practice surveilling, policing, and controlling people. This vision can never be a home for anyone, and thus the Cop Academy should have no place in our city if we are to make Chicago, someday, a true home for its residents.
We must transform every fake cop neighborhood into real, affordable housing and vibrant neighborhoods where every person has what they need to thrive.
We may ask what kind of social sadism might allow for the construction of fake homes for the purpose of practicing violence that will soon visit real people (whether in their real homes or on the streets). To this question, there are explanations, but no answers. We must refuse to allow such sadism to become normalized, and continue to make clear in the face of a city leadership which laughs, that, as Ruth Wilson Gilmore says, “where life is precious, life is precious.”
At a vigil for Tortuguita in the Rogers Park neighborhood on January 20th, one sign particularly summed up the stakes of this fight:
COPS TAKE LIVES
TREES MAKE LIFE
Like the brave protesters facing off against the horrific violence of Atlanta’s proposed Cop City, organizers in Chicago have fought a valiant campaign against the cop academy since it was first proposed during the Emanuel administration. The No Cop Academy campaign, led by Black youth across the city, has led countless protests and actions and was endorsed by more than 100 organizations. The work of No Cop Academy even helped inspire organizers in Atlanta fighting to oppose cop city.
Though the structures have been built, the fight against the cop academy (as well as similar projects in Atlanta and elsewhere) must continue: we must transform every fake cop neighborhood into real, affordable housing and vibrant neighborhoods where every person has what they need to thrive. To do that, the city budget must fund life instead of death. From Atlanta to Chicago, it’s past time to defund and abolish the police.