Chicago Police are under fire after allegedly parking a ‘bait truck’ full of designer shoes in an impoverished neighborhood, two days in a row.
Activists allege on at least one occasion last week, police parked the partially open truck near a group of children playing basketball in Englewood, southwest Chicago, in an attempt to lure them into committing a crime.
On both occasions, police are seen surrounded by furious residents, with marked and undercover police cars parked nearby.
While locals argue to police the trucks are a ‘dirty’ tactic, and officers are ‘setting up’ the community, law enforcement was seen arguing back anyone who engaged with the trucks was making a conscious decision.

Police were seen making arrests (left) after allegedly parking a ‘bait truck’ full of expensive designer shoes in an impoverished neighborhood and leaving it unlocked and unattended

Angry locals came and told off officers, who they claimed had set the situation up to turn local kids into thieves last week
‘Instead of stopping crime, they’re trying to create it,’ Martin Johnson, who spent an hour filming the second truck on Friday, said.
He was joined by another local woman, Helen, who said police were forcing an already at-risk group of people behind bars.
‘When you live in the conditions that we live in, communities that are starving, and you’re hungry, your conditions and your situations make choices for you,’ she said, referencing the policeman who just a day before had claimed those arrested had made a ‘conscious choice’.
‘Whoever acted and went to jail yesterday, they didn’t make a conscious decision, their conditions made a decision for them.’
Fellow activist Charles McKenzie, who works with anti-violence and crime prevention group God’s Gorillas, told Vox he believed tactics like bait trucks would damage trust between the community and its local police force.
McKenzie said the alleged bait truck projected the idea police were focused on hurting members of the community, not protecting them.
‘How do we supposed to trust [police] if they setting us up like this?’ Mckenzie said. ‘How can we trust them?’
Local politician Roderick Sawyer, who serves as chair of the Chicago City Council Black Caucus said the police presence was ‘a Norfolk Southern Railroad Police/Chicago Police Department joint sting operation targeting young people in Englewood’, and that it was an inappropriate use of resources.
‘This bait truck operation is an unacceptable and inappropriate use of police resources,’ he said in a statement.
‘In a moment where police capacity is clearly under extreme strain, these sort of tactics are the last thing we should be spending manpower and energy on.
‘This initiative serves only to undermine already fragile efforts to build trust between law enforcement and the community, and to reinforce counterproductive policies that have contributed to the mass incarceration of black youth in our city.’


Local activists Martin Johnson (left) and Charles McKenzie (right) were among those who filmed confrontations with nearby police about the alleged bait truck
DailyMail.com has made multiple requests to Chicago Police for comment, but the force advised only Norfolk Southern Railroad police, who were also involved in the alleged sting were authorized to comment.
Susan Terpay, a spokeswoman for the local force, told the Chicago Tribune the operation was used to draw out people who had allegedly been breaking and stealing from freight containers in rail yards nearby.
‘The suspects saw a parked, unmarked trailer and then proceeded to cut open the safety seal with box cutters, broke into the back of the trailer and only then did they find retail shoes in unmarked brown boxes, previously secured and hidden inside,’ she said.
The spokeswoman said three people, aged 21 to 59, were arrested over the two-day operation.
Following Friday’s altercation, the truck was driven away, leaving activists and enraged locals to congratulate each other on their victory.

Chicago police have not responded to multiple requests for comment