Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot has appointed the city’s seven-member commission tasked with overseeing the city’s police department.
The newly selected members, who will only serve until district council members are elected on Feb. 28, 2023, consist of Rev. Dr. Beth Brown, Anthony Driver, Oswaldo Gomez, Yvette Loizon, Cliff Nellis, Remel Terry, and CityBase CEO Isaac Troncoso. The commission will be tasked with reviewing and commenting on the budget of the state’s police department before a city council vote on the mayor’s 2023 budget, in addition to finding a new police superintendent for the city if the current one is fired or resigns, according to the Chicago Sun-Times.
The commission will also be tasked with establishing annual goals for both the Chicago Police Department and the Civilian Office of Police Accountability and showing progress in completing said goals, according to the outlet.
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In July 2021, Lightfoot and Chicago’s city council approved the creation of the civilian police oversight board. Lightfoot was supposed to appoint the commission by Jan. 1, but she delayed the appointment, saying her selection was a “very big deal” that would take time.
Several other left-leaning localities throughout the United States took similar steps as the “defund the police” movement swept the nation last summer. Former New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo vowed his state would offer more “community-based services” to improve the relationship between civilians and police when he declared a disaster emergency on gun violence, and Minneapolis’s city council also voted to strip its police department of $8 million in funding, though it apparently reversed course last February.
Chicago reported over 800 homicides in 2021, a slight increase from 2020, which saw over 770 reported homicides. The city has also experienced plummeting arrest rates, continuing a trend of numbers dropping for 17 years, according to statistics reported by the outlet in July.
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The Washington Examiner has contacted Lightfoot’s office for comment.
