Shortly after I began my tenure as the Executive Director at Community Renewal Society (CRS) in June 2014, part-time staff member Ojo Paterson was stopped, frisked, and arrested without cause. CRS bailed him out. CRS member congregations were outraged and called for CRS to address police accountability in the City of Chicago. So police accountability was added to the CRS Platform for Renewal.
With the killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, in August 2014 and the killing of Laquan McDonald in October of 2014 in Chicago, police accountability became central to the organizing efforts of many grassroots organizations nationally, and certainly in Chicago.
During my tenure at CRS, police accountability was a central concern. Then Senior Organizer Ciera Walker took the lead for CRS in our work and on the FAIR COPS Ordinance. She and other CRS staff and leaders were instrumental in actions and press conferences, as well as ongoing education on the issues. Through the FAIR COPS Campaign, CRS was the major force in the passage of an ordinance for a new Deputy Inspector General for Public Safety position in the City of Chicago in 2016.
Simultaneously, CRS worked on establishing a community oversight commission and reforming the police union contract. CRS joined a group of eleven community organizing entities originally convened by the Woods Fund Chicago, which formalized their coalition under the name Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA). This group focused on ensuring that the political process for police accountability was undergirded by a rigorous community engagement effort.
Ten years later, I am delighted that what was launched during my years at CRS has resulted in the convening of hundreds of neighborhood residents and the 2021 approval of the Empowering Communities for Public Safety Ordinance through a historic partnership with Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression and the Chicago City Council. Ten years of GAPA is just the prelude to even more comprehensive transformation of policing in Chicago.
Some of those who were active in CRS on police reform efforts are in positions where they can exercise even greater power for change. Three examples come to mind. Former Senior Organizer Rev. Ceira (Walker) Bates-Chamberlain has become a significant faith community leader through her role with LIVE FREE Illinois; former Deputy Director Delia Ramirez is now the United States Representative for Illinois’s 3rd district; and former CRS Southside clergy leader, Rev. Yehiel Curry, is currently the national presiding bishop of the Chicago-based Evangelical Lutheran Church of America.
In Peace,
Rev. Dr. Curtiss Paul DeYoung
CRS Executive Director (2014-2017)