Chicago pastor uses community center to rebuild police trust after defund era

Pastor Corey Brooks, director of Project H.O.O.D. on Chicago's South Side, is inviting police officers into his community center to counter the fear of law enforcement that he says took root among local youth during the defund the police movement. Brooks stated that residents, particularly children, have been taught to view officers as enemies rather than protectors, a perception he argues has led to fatal consequences for the neighborhood. The initiative involves officers visiting the center in full Chicago blue uniforms, including visor caps and firearms, to engage directly with the community. Brooks noted that initial visits produced visible tension, with some children hiding behind adults and others standing defiantly, reflecting a profound divide that he seeks to narrow through repeated personal encounters.

Brooks attributes this alienation to a decade of messaging from Black Lives Matter and its allies, which he claims conditioned a generation to treat the police as the primary problem. He traces this shift to events following the death of Trayvon Martin in 2012 and the acquittal of George Zimmerman, noting that while Zimmerman was not a police officer, he was used as a stand-in for broader narratives of police aggression. The death of Michael Brown in Ferguson in 2014 reinforced these dynamics, according to Brooks, who disputed the accuracy of the "hands up, don't shoot" slogan, stating Brown charged at the officer. By the time George Floyd died in Minneapolis in 2020, Brooks said the groundwork for police abolition had been laid, culminating in a New York Times opinion piece titled "No More Money for the Police" and pledges by Minneapolis City Council members to dismantle their local department.

The author argues that the immediate impact of this rhetoric was a withdrawal of police presence and a decline in proactive policing. Chicago homicide data cited in the piece show a rise from roughly 500 deaths in 2019 to 781 in 2020, reaching 804 in 2021, which Brooks identifies as the city's deadliest year in a quarter-century. He references FBI data indicating murders rose nearly 30 percent in 2020, the largest single-year increase on record, with Black Americans affected disproportionately. Brooks states that police staffing fell due to surging retirements and resignations, while morale collapsed under canceled days off and forced overtime. He asserts that arrests dropped and that the resulting lack of accountability for activists who promoted abolitionist rhetoric contributed to the loss of life in his community.

At Project H.O.O.D., Brooks focuses on repairing relationships with living residents rather than addressing past deaths. Officers sit with children, teenagers, and adults to answer questions and listen to their stories, demonstrating that the uniform represents individuals who chose law enforcement to keep the community safe. Brooks reports that some children who previously froze at the sight of squad cars now stay after sessions to continue talking, and a few have begun asking what it takes to become officers themselves. He describes this gradual shift as cracking the wall of fear built over the last decade. Brooks maintains that treating police as enemies has cost too many lives on Chicago's streets and that his organization is committed to rejecting that narrative for future generations.