Happy Friday, Chicago. Enter your weekend with these stories from WTTW News.
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(Pixabay)
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Patty Wetli: In a case of the worst timing ever, Illinois environmentalists were poised to make serious headway in the battle against single-use plastics just as the COVID-19 pandemic hit.
Proposed legislation to ban certain types of takeout containers fell by the wayside. Plastic bag usage ramped back up, in spite of Chicago’s 7-cent bag tax, in large part because reusable bags were (wrongly) thought to be a potential source of virus transmission.
Well, now efforts are restarting. On Wednesday, two City Council committees — Environmental Protection and Energy, and Health and Human Relations — held a joint hearing on the impacts of single-use plastics in Chicago. Those impacts are alarming.
A panel of researchers, including researchers from Loyola University and University of Illinois-Chicago, shared sobering information on the ubiquity of single-use plastic in the waste stream: Items are used for a few minutes and then tossed away, almost none of it recycled or reused.
“We find it everywhere” — from the depths of the ocean to the tops of mountains, said Timothy Hoellein, assistant professor of biology in Loyola’s School of Environmental Sustainability. As items fragment into micro-plastics and the even smaller nano-plastics, they’ve effectively turned humans into walking science experiments, panelists said, with plastics now present in humans at birth.
Even as plastics have been linked to diseases, infertility and mental health disorders, production is accelerating. Personal actions only go so far, Hoellein said. “We need to turn off the source.”
Illinois was poised to become one of a handful of states to do just that. Extended producer responsibility legislation had been proposed, which would have placed the onus of reducing plastics on corporations, not consumers.
That legislation faced “a lot of opposition,” said Christina Seibert, executive director at Solid Waste Agency of Northern Cook County. Seibert is a member of an advisory council charged with developing an achievable policy. A report is due to be delivered to the governor by December 2026 and new legislation could be proposed in 2027. Which means, for the time being, plastics reduction still depends on individual actions.
Tell us: What’s one thing you do to reduce plastic waste?
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(WTTW News)
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Chicago police officers would not be banned from making traffic stops based on minor registration or equipment violations that are designed to find evidence of “unrelated” crimes, under a new policy unveiled Thursday by Chicago Police Department leaders.
The proposed policy “acknowledges” that what the department calls “Pretextual Traffic Stops can be perceived by some members of the community as negative, biased or unlawful. Therefore, any such use of lawful Pretextual Traffic Stops as a law enforcement or crime prevention strategy must strike a balance between identifying those engaged in criminal conduct and the community’s sense of fairness.”
Officers who stop drivers for improper or expired registration plates or stickers and headlight, taillight and license plate light offenses “must strike a balance between promoting public safety and building and maintaining community trust,” according to the draft policy.
Advocates for police reform have long urged the department to ban pretextual stops, saying their use does not make Chicagoans safer and have been used by CPD officers to target Black and Latino Chicagoans.
However, Chicago’s police oversight board, the Community Commission for Public Safety and Accountability, which held a series of public hearings to gather feedback on what new rules for CPD’s ability to make traffic stops should look like, said it had “significant and consequential” objections to the proposed policy, according to a letter from the board known as the CCPSA that accompanied the release of the draft policy.
“A majority of commissioners think that certain traffic stops for vehicle equipment or license compliance violations do more harm than good and should therefore be prohibited, with some exceptions,” according to the letter from the CCPSA, which has the authority to approve new CPD policies.
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The Chicago skyline. (Michael Izquierdo / WTTW News)
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A federal judge on Thursday blocked the Trump administration from yanking funding from 16 cities and counties across the country because they have laws designed to protect undocumented immigrants by prohibiting state local law enforcement officials from helping federal agents. The injunction issued by U.S. District Judge William Orrick does not apply to Chicago or Cook County but is likely to bolster efforts by city officials to prevent President Donald Trump from blowing a $3 billion hole in Chicago’s budget.
San Francisco officials filed the lawsuit on behalf of nine California cities and counties, including Oakland and San Diego, as well as Seattle, Minneapolis, St. Paul and Santa Fe that argued the administration was unlawfully trying to force local officials to aide federal immigration arrests conducting deportation efforts. Orrick’s order blocks the enforcement of an executive order designed to strip self-proclaimed sanctuary cities of all federal funding.
Why it matters for Chicago:
Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson and Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker have repeatedly said Chicago and Illinois will continue to prohibit local and state law enforcement agents from helping Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents deport undocumented residents unless they have been convicted of a crime.
Chicago expects to receive approximately $3.5 billion in new and existing federal grant dollars in 2025, officials said. The city’s 2025 budget is $17.1 billion.
In addition, the CTA expects to receive $1.9 billion from the federal government to extend the Red Line south to 130th Street and CPS received $1.3 billion from the federal government during the 2024-25 academic year.
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Back in the Day: April 25, 2015 - Tribune Reports Jason Van Dyke As Cop Who Killed Laquan McDonald
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In October 2014, a 17-year-old Chicagoan named Laquan McDonald was killed by a Chicago Police Department officer after he was shot 16 times. Police initially reported that McDonald was behaving erratically while walking down the street, refusing to put down a knife he was carrying. The case rocked Chicago and the following April, the City Council unanimously approved a $5 million settlement for his family and the FBI and federal prosecutors were investigating the case. On this day 10 years ago, the Chicago Tribune reported that officer Jason Van Dyke was the CPD officer who shot McDonald. According to the report, “Over the years, Van Dyke, who has been assigned mostly to high-crime neighborhoods, has been accused by citizens of a number of abuses, from hurling racial epithets to manhandling suspects and, in one complaint, pointing his gun at an arrestee without justification.” On Oct. 5, 2018, Van Dyke was found guilty of second-degree murder, as well as 16 counts of aggravated battery with a firearm. He served time in prison from 2019 to 2022, when he was released on good behavior.
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Nature Calls: This Week’s Outdoorsy Events and Activities |
Every Friday, WTTW News science and nature reporter Patty Wetli highlights the best ways to get outside.
Today is Arbor Day. You have permission to go hug a tree. Friends of the Parks 40th annual Earth Day cleanup is happening Saturday and there’s still time to sign up to volunteer at one of 150 sites across Chicago.
The last couple of weeks have been all about the cherry trees in Jackson Park. Now it’s tulip time. Local farms have planted fields of Instagram-able flowers, and the recent run of warm weather has done wonders for the blooms. Kuipers Family Farm and Richardson Adventure Farm are both open for tulip season.
For a free flower walk, head to Lincoln Park Zoo, which also happens to be a certified botanic garden. Before you go, check out the zoo’s Garden Explorer web page, where you’ll find a bunch of options for self-guided botanical tours, including one for Earth Day featuring eco-friendly plantings such as native gardens and rain gardens.
Gather up your hard-to-recycle and hard-to-dispose-of items and take them to Saturday’s Trash Bash at Dan Ryan Woods, 9 a.m. to noon. The Forest Preserve District of Cook County is partnering with various organizations to collect electronics, bikes, clothing, books, prescription drugs and more.
Bluebells are one of the most popular spring wildflowers, thanks to their profusion and bright color (which, surprisingly, isn’t always true blue). Join a walk through the bluebells at O’Hara
Woods in Romeoville, Sunday, 8:15-9:15 a.m. Free, no registration required.
Looking ahead to next week: Enjoy a dark sky walk on Monday, 8:30 p.m., at the Little Red Schoolhouse Nature Center in Willow Springs.
Meet up at Lincoln Park Zoo on Tuesday, 5 p.m. til dusk, to learn all about the zoo’s colony of wild black-crowned night herons.
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The trees are blooming, and the city is getting green again. What's your favorite thing about
spring in Chicago?
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Email DailyChicagoan@wttw.com with your responses and your answers might be published. Here's what you had to
say:
"Plovers!" — Brittany B.
"How the city seems to come out of hibernation." — Matt R.
"Early flowers and flowering bushes."—@kathleenreads.bsky.social
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Newsletter Producer: Josh Terry
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