- Credibility:
IRVING PARK — Chicago Police held what was believed to be its first online community policing meeting Thursday, and it was marred by racial slurs, porn, cursing and middle fingers.
A serious community discussion on Zoom about how gang members continue to terrorize the Northwest Side also devolved into people throwing gang signs, hula hooping and getting their cat into their Zoom square.
After participants filled the comment section with racial slurs and profanities, organizers of the call had to shut down the chat portion of the meeting and apologize.
“I’m sorry about all the idiots,” State Rep. Jaime Andrade, who helped organize the Zoom meeting, told participants.
The meeting was another example of the pitfalls public officials, schools and companies face when transitioning meetings online during the coronavirus pandemic, with participants taking advantage of the forum to serve up mischief.
Last month, several aldermen hosted a Zoom video conference about pollution caused by General Iron and Sims Metal Management in Pilsen. It abruptly ended when someone “Zoom-bombed” it with porn.
Thursday afternoon’s video conference was scheduled in response to the shooting of a woman in the Irving Park neighborhood last week.
State Rep. Andrade, Ald. Rossana Rodriguez (33rd), Ald. Carlos Ramírez Rosa (35th), Ald. Samantha Nugent (39th) and the Albany Park (17th) Police District participated.
Albany Park Police Cmdr. Ronald A. Pontecore Jr. said it was apparently the first time the city had hosted an online community policing meeting, which is known as a Chicago Alternative Policing Strategy, or CAPS, meeting.
At its peak, 145 people were on the Zoom call. The free-for-all developed both in the chat and in the video. One person continuously flipped his middle finger at the camera before changing his avatar to porn.
One man on the call wore a red bandana over his face and kept throwing what appeared to be gang signs.
State Rep. Andrade was participating from his phone and unaware of the group chat mayhem until someone texted him on his other phone to complain.
“This is the funny part, I have my assistant in my right ear’s air pod while I’m on the meeting and I’m telling her to call CAPS and let them know they need to mute the mics and they need to cut the chat off. I was like, ‘Oh my god, I can’t believe what’s happening,’ ” Andrade said.
He asked Chicago Police how many meetings they’d done like this before. When he found out this was the first, he knew it may have a rough start.
“I knew it wasn’t going to be perfect but our number one priority was making sure people heard from the commander and got their questions answered, which they did,” Andrade said.
“People talking to me after were appreciative of the meeting,” he said. “Some thought the stuff happening on the sidelines was funny, but many didn’t.”
