Chicago FOP Boss To Meet With Trump Administration On Chicago Crime
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Chicago Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo Sr. will be meeting Trump administration officials later this week to discuss the city's problems with gun violence.
Angelo said he'll be joining national FOP leaders in talks in Washington, D.C., at a meeting with top Trump administration officials, possibly with Attorney General Jeff Sessions or President Donald Trump himself.
"I'm not sure exactly what the administration is prepared to do at this stage. You know, there's so much politics involved, but what I want to do is put the police officers in the light that they deserve," Angelo said.
Trump has frequently criticized Chicago's violence before and after his election, and once threatened to "send in the feds" if the city can't solve its crime issues.
For his part, Angelo said his mission is to push the point that police officers need to be able to be more proactive in stopping people, even if good guys sometimes wind up being stopped and frisked.
"You need to allow police officers to be police officers," he said. "If you lose your corner, you lose your block. If you lose your block, you lose your community."
The head of the union representing rank-and-file Chicago police officers also said he'd like to get across the message that police get too much blame for rising violence numbers.
"You need to let them go back to work," Angelo said. "People call it stop and frisk, or people call it contact cards, or whatever they want to call it. You need to find out who these guys are on that corner."
Angelo said more young African American and Latino men get stopped on the streets of Chicago because their communities have more crime, and more police are assigned to those neighborhoods.
"It's not racial profiling, it is criminal profiling, and it's the way the department deploys," he said.
He said it's a safety issue, as police need to know who is illegally carrying a weapon, so officers can go home at the end of their shifts.
Angelo is in the middle of a runoff election for Chicago FOP president, running against officer and former FOP trustee Kevin Graham.
