- Credibility:
CHICAGO — The city’s 9 p.m. daily curfew will remain at least through this weekend, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said.
The mayor created the 9 p.m.-6 a.m. curfew Saturday, when there was widespread looting and vandalism Downtown. It’s been heavily criticized by people who said it was an overreach and is being used to keep peaceful protesters indoors.
But Lightfoot said she’s talked with officials every day about the curfew and it will continue this weekend.
“Yesterday was one of the first days where we had just purely peaceful protests,” Lightfoot said during a Friday press conference. “We’ll look and see what the weekend brings, and if we continue to see this then I’ll be the first one to embrace eliminating a curfew. But we’re not there yet.”
The American Civil Liberties Union called for an end to curfews throughout the state in a Friday press release.
“These protests — and the ability of people to be outdoors for other permissible activities — should not be limited by indefinite curfews,” the organization said. “Curfews are a blunt tool that invite unnecessary police interactions and often result in arbitrary and selective enforcement aimed at Black people and people of color, the type of biased policing challenged by many protesters.”
The ACLU and Black Lives Matter-L.A. sued over a curfew in Los Angeles Thursday, leading the city to abandon its curfew.
Lightfoot said it wasn’t easy to impose the curfew, but she did so after talking with Police Supt. David Brown, “with other leaders and prayer.”
“No mayor should ever impose a curfew unless there’s an absolute necessity of doing so and after a lot of consultation, which is precisely what I did,” Lightfoot said. “Every single day since I’ve spent time consulting with those same folks, in particular our superintendent, [asking]: ‘Is this necessary? Is this needed?’ Every single day.”
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