WBEZ has an in-depth piece on stop-and-frisk, a practice used by police departments that has been ruled unconstitutional in New York City, and has just recently come under scrutiny in Chicago. A stop-and-frisk is a random encounter initiated by a police officer that escalates to a pat down for weapons. The ruling in the New York City case found that the NYPD's stop-and-frisk program disproportionately targeted minorities.  The process of investigating stop-and-frisk practices in Chicago has proven to be fraught with obstacles. In 2011, the ACLU of Illinois filed a FOIA to look at the nature and number of stop-and-frisks performed by the Chicago Police Department. Unfortunately, stop-and-frisk encounters are not being recorded in the system implemented by the CPD, and the documentation gathered as a result of the FOIA request was subject to extensive redaction.

The ACLU wants the police to do better documentation, which they say would allow for better review.
“This is the most powerful tool the police department has and it is not reviewed by another branch of government,” Grossman said.

Read the entire article.

The Chicago Tribune wrote an obituary on life long civil libertarian and ACLU attorney Barbara O'Toole, who passed away suddenly this week. Barbara began her career with the ACLU of Illinois in 1970, working to defend free speech in numerous cases including the First Amendment case involving Neo-Nazis marching in Skokie in 1977. In more recent years and up until her death, Barbara served as a full-time volunteer, overseeing the organizations intake department. She is truly missed by the entire staff and board of the ACLU of Illinois.

Mrs. O'Toole also argued for the rights of artists to access public spaces, the rights of street musicians and others to perform on Chicago streets and the protection of controversial art, according to the Illinois ACLU.

"Barbara's quiet personality belied the tenacity with which she defended freedom of speech and expression," Harvey Grossman, legal director for the American Civil Liberties Union of Illinois, said in a statement. "Her achievements in many groundbreaking cases as well as the enduring values she inculcated in young lawyers and student interns over the decades are a tribute to her life commitment to individual liberty."

Read the obituary.

Mark Brown wrote a heartbreaking piece for The Chicago Sun-Times profiling an Illinois couple, Robb Smith and Steven Rynes, who had hoped to get married before Rynes passed away from cancer on Tuesday.

Senate Bill 10 would make it possible for same-sex couples like Robb and Steven to marry in Illinois and receive the numerous federal benefits that come with civil marriage. The bill was not called for a vote on the House floor this spring. It may be called this fall during "veto" session. The U.S. Supreme Court’s recent ruling striking down Section 3 of the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) ensured that same-sex couples in states with the freedom to marry will receive all the federal benefits attached to marriage. However, same-sex couples in Illinois with civil unions generally do not qualify.

Robb Smith and Steven Rynes would have liked to be married, but the State of Illinois never afforded them the opportunity.

Now, it’s too late.

While Illinois legislators continue to delay a vote on legalizing marriage for gay and lesbian couples so as not to draw opposition in the March primary, real life sets it own deadlines.

Rynes died early Tuesday morning from the effects of metatastic melanoma, a particularly lethal form of cancer.

“It’s fine while [legislators] waffle over it, but I think they forget that we’re really out here,” Smith told me later Tuesday. “It’s not just me and Steve. How many thousands of people have missed this chance?”

Read the rest.