Several Chicago police officers were captured on video relaxing inside the recently-burglarized office of Congressman Bobby Rush while nearby businesses were looted, Mayor Lori Lightfoot said Thursday.
Surveillance video taken inside the longtime congressman’s South Side campaign office in the early hours of June 1 shows a group of officers sitting, making popcorn and in one case napping, “while small businesses on the South Side were looted and burned,” Lightfoot said.
“Officers were on the front lines truly taking a beating, and these guys were lounging, in a congressman’s office,” Lightfoot said.
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Police union President John Catanzara called Thursday’s press conference “ridiculous,” saying he heard officers wanted to protect Rush’s office from further damage and the looting was over by the time officers were caught relaxing on camera early Monday.
“This was at worst, misconduct. This wasn’t police shooting somebody,” Catanzara said. They made it sound like when they called the press conference they were going to have police on video stealing stuff and graffitiing the building and tearing apart his office. They were sitting there protecting it.”
Rush’s office in the Grand Boulevard Plaza at 55th Street and South Wentworth Avenue was burglarized on Sunday, May 31. Afterwards, he said staff members notified him that surveillance footage showed officers “lounging” inside the office as looters were targeting nearby stores.
“While looters were tearing apart businesses within their sight, within their reach, they were in a mode of relaxation and they did not care about what was happening to business people, to this city,” Rush said.
Rush said the cops made coffee and popped popcorn in the microwave while they were there...
