Attorney General Sessions To Address Chicago Crime Commission Today
CHICAGO (CBS) -- U.S. Attorney General Jeff Sessions, a frequent critic of the ongoing effort to reform the Chicago Police Department, is set to speak to the Chicago Crime Commission on Friday.
Sessions was scheduled to speak at 12:15 p.m. at the Union League Club. There's no official word on what he'll say, but the speech comes little more than a week after he vowed to fight a proposed court order that would govern massive changes at the Chicago Police Department.
The consent decree negotiated between the Emanuel administration and Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan spells out new rules for police training, discipline, oversight, and use of force.
A federal judge must sign off on the consent decree, after allowing the public to weigh in during two days of hearings next week at the Dirksen Federal Building.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel and legal experts have said the Justice Department can't throw a wrench in the consent decree plans, so long as Emanuel and Madigan remain committed to them.
Sessions has repeatedly criticized Chicago's crime-fighting tactics and policies. During a visit to Waukegan last month, he criticized a 2015 agreement between the Chicago Police Department and the ACLU to change the city's stop-and-frisk policy.
He said city leaders and groups like the ACLU and the "Black Lives Matter" movement don't understand the reality of policing.
"Policing went down, crime went up," Sessions said. "As a result, hundreds of Chicagoans are now dead--almost all of them African American or Latino."