The recent email hack in the Mayor’s office was released to the public and has shown that Lightfoot is failing at her job. We have learned that Mayor Lightfoot does not seem to be on the citizens’ side.

Lightfoot has repeatedly released misleading and outright false information to keep the citizens of Chicago in the dark about the true circumstances surrounding the Mayor’s office, the Chicago Police Department (CPD), and other city offices. The first major offense is that Lightfoot created a subpar police oversight proposal after months of promising to create her own oversight proposal, although she had a surplus of time to create it.

While Mayor Lightfoot previously supported Grassroots Alliance for Police Accountability (GAPA) in its pursuit of the oversight proposal, Lightfoot decides that she would create her own version and has only just announced that she would be releasing it soon. Because of this, the Civilian Police Accountability Council (CPAC) and GAPA have joined forces to continue to work on a more beneficial proposal called the Compromised Proposal.

The second offense to come to light from the email hack is that Lightfoot has purposely contributed to stalling the Police Misconduct Database. The vote on the database was pushed back because of last-minute changes. Charles Green sued for access to every complaint against Chicago police officers since the 1960s but the mayor’s and city council offices appealed to overturn the decision while proposing a watered-down version of the plan.

Instead of disclosing data from the 1960s, the new version would only disclose data from 2000 to the present. The revision would also limit what information would be included in the released files. Lightfoot previously held the positions of President of the Chicago Police Board and the Chair of the Police Accountability Task Force. Considering that both of these roles are meant to ensure that the police are held accountable for their actions, Lightfoot now stands against everything she stood for before taking office as Mayor. This watered-down proposal gives the police no reason to fear being held accountable for their past actions.

The third, but certainly not last, offense that was unearthed due to the email hack was that the CPD and Clearview AI, a facial recognition company, were in a contract together. This contract violated the Illinois biometric laws. Not only did the CPD have a contract with Clearview AI, but they previously entered into a contract with Data Works as well.

Data Works is also a facial recognition AI company. To add to that, the CPD paid for this Clearview AI contract with Chicago’s counter-terrorism funds. Not only did the Clearview facial recognition give false positives mostly for Black people, Mayor Lightfoot later released a statement saying that the CPD was not in any way involved in using facial recognition software.

There are many suspicions as to why she would release such a statement even after the big email hack. Did she know about the contracts with Clearview and Data Works and tried to cover it up? Was she lied to about these contracts? If so, who is responsible for relaying this information to her? Or did she simply not know at all? Does Mayor Lightfoot have any clue as to what goes on in her office? Despite the suspicions surrounding the email hack, what we do know is that it was Clearview that canceled the contract with CPD. Clearview even pulled out of Illinois altogether to avoid a lawsuit.

There is much that Mayor Lightfoot has failed to take accountability for. Be sure to listen to the entire podcast to become more informed about what the Chicago legislation truly believes in the face of the recent email hacks.