Did you know that African-Americans are around one quarter of the Chicago Police Force. That’s a huge percentage of men and women working in the system that also clearly represses them and an article in the Christian Science Monitor has spoken to some of those cops about the issue.

An off-duty or plain clothed cop is a black man or woman like any other, their kids and family are black kids! As we have seen recently, that seems to be a crime in itself.

The articles wrote:

Vanessa Westley is a 25-year veteran of the Chicago Police Department. She is also a single, black mother with an 18-year-old son. And with the recent police shootings of young, black men like Laquan McDonald in Chicago and elsewhere, she worries about her son’s day-to-day activities.

“Do I have to walk the same course as any other mother who has a black son?

Yes, I do,” Ms. Westley says. “And it’s a little harder for me because I go to work in the same system that we’re concerned about.

”

She also said in the article:

“The reality is that race is an issue, not just in Chicago’s police department but in all law enforcement,” Westley says. “I think with all of this chaos, there’s an opportunity to right some of those wrongs, but the roots are still deep.”

Then speaking to Richard Wooten who served for 23 years, and leads a group of retired African-American police officers that has been calling for reforms in the Chicago Police Department he said:

“You have an African-American sergeant who slaps a kid that’s handcuffed for spitting in his face and he immediately got stripped of his powers and he got charged, convicted, and terminated all within a year’s time,” Mr. Wooten says, referring to the 2012 case of Edward Howard Jr. In contrast, Wooten points to the case of Jason Van Dyke, the white officer accused of killing 17-year-old Laquan in 2014.

Any police genuinely at risk and genuinely fighting for change should get our support, I think…. Do you?

Read more in the Christian Science Monitor here.