CAIR-Chicago Meets with the Chicago Police Department on Bias-Based Policing

On July 26, 2005, CAIR-Chicago Governmental Relations Director Fadi Farhan and Civil Rights Coordinator Christina Abraham met with the Chicago Police Department (CPD) Deputy Superintendent Ellen Scrivner and Dr. Lorie Fridell to discuss issues of racial profiling in light of a new report issued by the CPD. CAIR-Chicago expressed the need for a separate category for Middle Easterners/North Africans/South Asians in order to more accurately determine the profiling of Muslims by police departments. In addition, the term, “racial-profiling”, has proven to be outdated in a post 9-11 society in which religious identity has become a major cause of discrimination for many American Muslims. CAIR-Chicago advised using the term “bias-based policing” to more accurately reflect the issue. In addition to addressing concerns over the study’s language and methodology, CAIR-Chicago agreed to work with the CPD on programs that would combat and prevent future bias-based policing. Such programs include the recruiting of Muslim police officers, participating in focus group meetings with the superintendent that would specifically address the concerns of the Muslim community, working with the CPD on sensitivity trainings, as well as encouraging performance evaluations of police officers that would include analysis of statistics of each officer’s traffic stop history.

Please direct any questions or comments regarding this meeting with the Chicago Police Department to Fadi Farhan, Director of Governmental Relations, at gov.relations@cairchicago.org.

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