Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot is making no apologies for the police presence around her home that has also been blocking protesters from her street, citing threats against herself, her home and her family, WGN-TV reports.
“I make no apologies whatsoever for that. We are living in a very different time. I have seen the threats that have come in. I have an obligation to keep my home, my wife, my 12-year-old and my neighbors safe,” Lightfoot said, according to the news station.
The move has irritated some neighbors in Chicago’s Logan Square, who told the news station that sometimes the stretch around the mayor’s home is blocked even when there are no protests. Some have begun to call the block “Fort Lori.”
Currently, police in Chicago are enforcing a mandate that prevents residential demonstrations, even if they are peaceful.
According to the Chicago Sun-Times, the mandate gives officers the order to block the mayor’s home from protesters, as well as arrest anyone who refuses to disperse. Police Superintendent David Brown, however, acknowledged that despite the fact that protesting in neighborhoods is illegal, he has told his officers to “err on the side of First Amendment Rights” and “give a little bit of wiggle room” to those demonstrating.
“We compromise, except for the embedded violence that we’ve seen,” Brown told the Sun-Times. “That’s a reality today. It’s unprecedented that you would embed violent offenders in a peaceful protest, but that’s what’s happened.”
