Attorney General Jeff Sessions blamed critics of heavy-handed policing for a spike in homicides in Chicago two years ago.
Sessions claimed Tuesday that the increase in violence was caused by litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union in response to “stop-and-frisk” searches by the Chicago Police Department.
The Attorney General made the allegations at a law enforcement training conference in Gatlinburg, Tenn., according to prepared remarks released by the Justice Department.
He cited recently published research on Chicago violence by two scholars at the University of Utah, Paul Cassel and Richard Fowles.
“They concluded the 58 percent increase [in homicides] was caused by the abrupt decline in ‘stop and frisks’ in 2015,” Sessions said. “There had been a horrific police shooting, protests, and an ACLU lawsuit.”
The ACLU never actually sued the police department, but the organization did threaten litigation, leading to a change in department practices and state-wide reforms.
Sessions then said the two researchers “conservatively calculated” that the changes led to an additional 236 killings and 1,100 shootings in 2016.
“The scholars call it the ‘ACLU effect,’” he added.
According to a lengthy study published in January by The Chicago Tribune, the 2016 spike in homicides can be attributed to “access to guns, the fracturing and factioning of street gangs, and poverty and disinvestment in the most effected communities.”
At no point, does the paper’s analysis mention the decline in “stop-and-frisk” searches caused by the ACLU’s litigation threat.
It does, however, note that in late 2015, there was a sharp decline in minority communities’ confidence in city police. Already low levels of trust eroded after the release of a video showing, in the words of the Tribune: “white police Officer Jason Van Dyke repeatedly shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald as he lay motionless in the street in October 2014.”
In 2017, the homicide rate in Chicago also fell by 15 percent, with no change in “stop-and-frisk” policies by Chicago PD. That did, not, however, deter Sessions on Tuesday.
“If you want crime to go up, let the ACLU run the police department,” he said.
