Jamie Kalven

Jamie Kalven: My wife and I were robbed at gunpoint. I understand the ugly aims of the ‘Lakeview Scream’ ad.

September 16, 2022 at 8:44 p.m.

The political attack ad opens with text on the screen: "On a Sunday afternoon in Chicago's Lakeview neighborhood ..." We hear birds chirping and a dog barking. Then, in grainy...

Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts ducks into a vehicle after appearing at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse in Chicago in 2012.

Andrew Papachristos, Jamie Kalven and Rajiv Sinclair: Early detection of corrupt police may stop the next Watts crew

March 26, 2025 at 2:44 p.m.

Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts and a group of more than 10 officers terrorized residents of the Ida B. Wells public housing complex for over a decade, operating more like...

Copies of the Chicago Reader at the Reader offices on July 8, 2020.

Jamie Kalven: Chicago Reader controversy brings to light the many questions surrounding nonprofit journalism

February 22, 2022 at 10:54 p.m.

In 2010, as the age of nonprofit journalism was dawning, I published an essay in the Columbia Journalism Review on the hazards and promise of philanthropic support for struggling news...

Former Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts arrives at the Dirksen U.S. Courthouse for sentencing in 2013.

Op-ed: Sadly, Chicago’s police accountability problem endures

December 6, 2021 at 4:37 a.m.

On Nov. 16, 2017, the convictions of 15 individuals who had been framed more than a decade earlier by disgraced Chicago police Sgt. Ronald Watts and officers under his command...

An aerial view of the proposed site for the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park on May 13, 2020.

Op-ed: Obama Presidential Center. Right project, wrong location.

July 20, 2021 at 1:45 p.m.

The Chicago Tribune recently published an op-ed by Valerie Jarrett, president of the Obama Foundation, in which she described those who oppose locating the Obama Presidential Center in Jackson Park...

Chicago police Superintendent David Brown picks up his hat after speaking on April 5, 2021, at New Life Church in Little Village about the shooting death of 13-year-old Adam Toledo by a Chicago police officer.

Op-ed: Lightfoot’s deal for a police misconduct database is worse than nothing

May 20, 2021 at 5:54 p.m.

With a flourish of trumpets, Mayor Lori Lightfoot on Wednesday announced the introduction of a "historic ordinance" that "will create an unprecedented publicly available data set of all police disciplinary...

Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot speaks to the media at the South Shore Cultural Center, Feb. 8, 2021, after attending the groundbreaking ceremony.

Op-ed: Lightfoot promised transparency. Once again, she’s missing a crucial opportunity.

February 22, 2021 at 10:05 p.m.

Having been elected by a landslide in 2019 that gave her a mandate to enact sweeping police reform, Mayor Lori Lightfoot has largely squandered the opportunity and now faces a...

Charles Green, right, walks with his mother, Viola, and brother, Terry, after his release from Stateville Correctional Center in 2009. Green was convicted in a 1985 quadruple-homicide and sentenced to life in prison.

Commentary: A proposed settlement would broadside police accountability. That should never happen.

July 17, 2020 at 10:10 p.m.

I was in the City Council chamber on April 13, 2015, when former Mayor Rahm Emanuel's corporation counsel, Steve Patton, presented to the Finance Committee the city's proposed settlement with...

Lori Lightfoot, who moves into the mayor's office on Monday, has an opportunity to bring more transparency to City Hall.

Jamie Kalven: New mayor should open up police misconduct files

May 31, 2019 at 9:25 p.m.

Three days after being swept into the presidency of Czechoslovakia by the Velvet Revolution of 1989, Václav Havel gave a televised speech to his countrymen. "I assume you did not...

Mayor Rahm Emanuel listens as aldermen speak in favor of the resolution to create a task force looking into police misconduct, at the Chicago City Council on Dec. 9, 2015.

Chicago’s police crisis falls on all of us

May 11, 2019 at 7:51 a.m.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel stands at the center of a crisis that threatens his administration, his political viability and his legacy. Revelations about the city's handling of the 2014 fatal...

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