Injustice Watch reviewed the tenures of each of the eight past FOP presidents elected in Chicago and found a pattern of leadership defined by allegedly racist and inflammatory public statements, resistance to accountability, and antagonism to racial justice and police reforms. (Illustration by Veronica Martinez for Injustice Watch)
Chicago’s first police union president, Joseph J. LeFevour, started his tenure during the height of the civil rights movement. As organizers like Martin Luther King Jr. put the spotlight on the vicious segregation and police brutality in northern cities, including Chicago, LeFevour aggressively defended officer misconduct and attacked prominent movement leaders. After nine years as president, LeFevour ended his term in 1972. He died in 1984.
Under its second president, John Dineen, the Chicago FOP became the official bargaining agent of rank-and-file police officers. A career cop, Dineen assumed his role at a time when police officers nationwide were demanding more protection from internal discipline, and he delivered those protections through the union’s first contract with the City of Chicago. Dineen’s tenure was also marked by internal dissent, as well as public outcry over the case of Jon Burge, a white police commander sued in civil court in 1989 over the torture of mostly Black in suspects in his custody. Dineen continued to support Burge publicly and was voted out as FOP president in 1993 after a 21-year tenure, the longest in the union’s history.
William J. Nolan became president of the Chicago FOP after more than three decades on the police force and six years as the Treasurer for the national FOP. Once a colleague of John Dineen’s in CPD’s organized crime division, Nolan criticized Dineen for “losing touch” with the membership after making secret deals with City Hall. After winning the heavily contested 1993 campaign for the union’s presidency, Nolan continued to fight tooth and nail against discipline for officers involved in a series of high-profile cases of police brutality against Black people. Nolan served as FOP president for nine years; after retiring from the CPD in 2000, he worked for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office for another 10 years. Nolan died in April 2020.
During his three terms, Chicago FOP President Mark Donahue helped turn the union into a power player in Illinois politics. A former president of the Illinois FOP, Donahue mobilized the union’s Chicago membership around key legislation in Springfield, winning favorable changes to state law and beating back efforts to enhance police oversight. Under his leadership, the union ratified new collective bargaining agreements in 2003 and 2007 that also preserved protections for officers facing discipline. Donahue ended his third term as president in 2011, continuing to serve as the Chicago FOP chapter’s legislative director for three more years.
At age 33, Michael Shields became the youngest president in the Chicago FOP’s history. During his short tenure, he oversaw negotiations for a new contract, prioritizing higher pay and a better pension plan. Shields was ousted by the union after accusing other FOP leaders of making under-the-table agreements during bargaining with the city.
The defining issues of Dean Angelo Sr.’s three-year tenure as FOP president was the police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald and the subsequent calls for reform. Angelo staunchly opposed the demands emanating from a wave of protests, blaming the “anti-police movement” for cratering member morale and jeopardizing public safety. Nonetheless, Angelo was voted out of office in 2017 by members who found him too accommodating.
Since the eruption of Black Lives Matter movement, the Chicago FOP has been in a defensive posture, facing ongoing protests and calls for change from both federal and local lawmakers. Kevin Graham was the second of three successive FOP presidents who vowed to fight the union’s critics harder than their predecessors. After defeating Angelo, Kevin Graham took over contract negotiations with the City, but his three-year tenure ended with no new contract in place.
John Catanzara is the first FOP president to be elected while stripped of police powers, after having them stripped in 2018 for a report he filed against the former police superintendent. Since joining the police department in 1995, Catanzara has racked up at least 35 misconduct complaints and been suspended about half a dozen times, most recently for inflammatory social media posts, including one in which he said Muslims “all deserve a bullet.” His election as FOP President coincided with a nationwide uprising against police violence, to which he has responded with even greater hostility than his predecessors. Catanzara is continuing the fight against DOJ-mandated reforms, stating “we’re not using the word ‘reform.’ That means we’re doing something wrong.”
When Injustice Watch gave me the assignment to illustrate all eight presidents of the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, I knew I wanted the portraits to act as a visual summary of each president’s tenure. Usually, with these types of projects, I start by looking for the heart of the piece. I ask myself simple questions like: What is the article telling me? How am I feeling while reading the article? Are there any patterns, contradictions, or information that inspire strong images or visual connections?
In this case, what came through as I read the timeline was the pattern of FOP leaders taking actions that violently disrupted the growth and livelihood of Black citizens in contrast to their mandate to protect and serve.
Veronica Martinez Credit: Jacqueline Hoover
Chicago’s first FOP President, Joseph J. LeFevour, who served from 1963 to 1972, started his tenure at the height of the civil rights movement. My first renderings of LeFevour were a bit more colorful and were illustrated to invoke images of a movement, such as wheat-pasted calls to action, newspaper headlines, and graffiti. As I continued to work on his portrait, however, the headlines from that turbulent period became a focal point of the piece, and the colors changed to be reminiscent of yellowing newspapers. I looked for headlines that specifically discussed the violence wrought upon civil rights leaders, supporters, and organizers. The headline “Daley orders police in Chicago to shoot arsonists and looters,” for example, draws the connection between police brutality and the halls of power during the unrest that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
John Dineen was FOP president from 1972 to 1993. His portrait was inspired by his attempt to honor police commander Jon Burge with a float in the 1993 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Burge and his crew were known to have tortured more than 100 Black men and women. Widespread outrage caused Dineen to withdraw the float, and he was voted out as president later that year. The dark color palette and falling confetti are meant to evoke an ominously celebratory scene and highlight Dineen’s effort to use a parade to defend police abuse. Burge’s figure looming in the background highlights the insidiousness of Dineen’s choice to ally himself and the police union with Burge and to foreshadow that it ultimately led to his downfall.
Injustice Watch reviewed the tenures of past FOP presidents elected by Chicago police, from the civil rights movement to the Black Lives Matter era. We found a history of police union leaders making inflammatory statements, antagonizing racial justice and police reforms, and shielding allegedly brutal cops from accountability.
William Nolan, who served from 1993 to 2002, is depicted almost like a bust or a monument. Behind him are silhouettes of community members protesting, symbolizing the community outrage at his staunch defense of officers who had been fired for alleged brutality against Black Chicagoans. While Mark Donahue, FOP president from 2002 to 2011, continued creating barriers for police accountability through legislation, his unique contribution was to vocally oppose tributes to Black activists Lucy Parsons and Fred Hampton. I wanted their images to be hovering over him in the background — almost haunting him. Michael Shields, who was president from 2011 to 2013, is portrayed with bills falling from above, pointing to his focus during his brief tenure on higher police pay.
The late Dean Angelo Sr.’s tenure (2014-2017) was marked by the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Angelo defended officer Jason Van Dyke and even gave him a job as a janitor after he was indicted for McDonald’s murder. In Angelo’s portrait, I included a still from the dashboard camera video of McDonald because watching that video was such a visceral experience for many Chicagoans, including myself. I wanted to include that image directly instead of using my hand to depict it because it is so ingrained in our collective memory.
The tenures of Kevin Graham, who served from 2017 to 2020, and current president John Catanzara, who was elected last year, spanned the Trump era. They are depicted with a bold red color palette, signifying each man’s apparent embrace of former President Donald Trump and his incendiary politics. I chose this particular hue because it is reminiscent of the Trump campaign’s red hats, which are such prevalent political symbols of our time.
As I read Emma’s timeline, I found that the FOP presidents’ noticeable pushback against civil rights and social justice movements felt so similar and repetitive that I struggled to find ways to distinguish between them. The resulting portraits range from almost strange or uncanny to ominous, reflecting the contrast between the ongoing fight for social justice and the ongoing resistance from the police union’s leaders. My hope is that my portraits shed light on this troubling history while encouraging the audience to take a more critical view of these men and the institution they lead, which continues to evade accountability.
Veronica Martinez is a Latinx visual artist based in Chicago. She focuses on the intersection between visual storytelling and social justice. You can find her work in Injustice Watch, Cicero Independiente, a recently-completed mural (“Flourish”) at Yorktown Center, and on Instagram at @veromartinezart.
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Verónica Martinez creates visual art to accompany Injustice Watch’s public service and investigative journalism. Before joining Injustice Watch in 2022, Verónica was a freelance artist creating illustrations, large-scale murals, and editorial content on police misconduct, education, and LGBTQ+ health. Her work has been featured by organizations such as Cook County Health, the Chicago Reader, the Trace, and Cicero Independiente. She is a Cicero native who now lives on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
How I visualized the turbulent tenures of Chicago’s FOP presidents
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When Injustice Watch gave me the assignment to illustrate all eight presidents of the Chicago chapter of the Fraternal Order of Police, I knew I wanted the portraits to act as a visual summary of each president’s tenure. Usually, with these types of projects, I start by looking for the heart of the piece. I ask myself simple questions like: What is the article telling me? How am I feeling while reading the article? Are there any patterns, contradictions, or information that inspire strong images or visual connections?
In this case, what came through as I read the timeline was the pattern of FOP leaders taking actions that violently disrupted the growth and livelihood of Black citizens in contrast to their mandate to protect and serve.
Chicago’s first FOP President, Joseph J. LeFevour, who served from 1963 to 1972, started his tenure at the height of the civil rights movement. My first renderings of LeFevour were a bit more colorful and were illustrated to invoke images of a movement, such as wheat-pasted calls to action, newspaper headlines, and graffiti. As I continued to work on his portrait, however, the headlines from that turbulent period became a focal point of the piece, and the colors changed to be reminiscent of yellowing newspapers. I looked for headlines that specifically discussed the violence wrought upon civil rights leaders, supporters, and organizers. The headline “Daley orders police in Chicago to shoot arsonists and looters,” for example, draws the connection between police brutality and the halls of power during the unrest that followed Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination.
John Dineen was FOP president from 1972 to 1993. His portrait was inspired by his attempt to honor police commander Jon Burge with a float in the 1993 St. Patrick’s Day Parade. Burge and his crew were known to have tortured more than 100 Black men and women. Widespread outrage caused Dineen to withdraw the float, and he was voted out as president later that year. The dark color palette and falling confetti are meant to evoke an ominously celebratory scene and highlight Dineen’s effort to use a parade to defend police abuse. Burge’s figure looming in the background highlights the insidiousness of Dineen’s choice to ally himself and the police union with Burge and to foreshadow that it ultimately led to his downfall.
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Timeline: Chicago FOP presidents’ turbulent relationship with race and police reform
Injustice Watch reviewed the tenures of past FOP presidents elected by Chicago police, from the civil rights movement to the Black Lives Matter era. We found a history of police union leaders making inflammatory statements, antagonizing racial justice and police reforms, and shielding allegedly brutal cops from accountability.
William Nolan, who served from 1993 to 2002, is depicted almost like a bust or a monument. Behind him are silhouettes of community members protesting, symbolizing the community outrage at his staunch defense of officers who had been fired for alleged brutality against Black Chicagoans. While Mark Donahue, FOP president from 2002 to 2011, continued creating barriers for police accountability through legislation, his unique contribution was to vocally oppose tributes to Black activists Lucy Parsons and Fred Hampton. I wanted their images to be hovering over him in the background — almost haunting him. Michael Shields, who was president from 2011 to 2013, is portrayed with bills falling from above, pointing to his focus during his brief tenure on higher police pay.
The late Dean Angelo Sr.’s tenure (2014-2017) was marked by the murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. Angelo defended officer Jason Van Dyke and even gave him a job as a janitor after he was indicted for McDonald’s murder. In Angelo’s portrait, I included a still from the dashboard camera video of McDonald because watching that video was such a visceral experience for many Chicagoans, including myself. I wanted to include that image directly instead of using my hand to depict it because it is so ingrained in our collective memory.
The tenures of Kevin Graham, who served from 2017 to 2020, and current president John Catanzara, who was elected last year, spanned the Trump era. They are depicted with a bold red color palette, signifying each man’s apparent embrace of former President Donald Trump and his incendiary politics. I chose this particular hue because it is reminiscent of the Trump campaign’s red hats, which are such prevalent political symbols of our time.
As I read Emma’s timeline, I found that the FOP presidents’ noticeable pushback against civil rights and social justice movements felt so similar and repetitive that I struggled to find ways to distinguish between them. The resulting portraits range from almost strange or uncanny to ominous, reflecting the contrast between the ongoing fight for social justice and the ongoing resistance from the police union’s leaders. My hope is that my portraits shed light on this troubling history while encouraging the audience to take a more critical view of these men and the institution they lead, which continues to evade accountability.
Veronica Martinez is a Latinx visual artist based in Chicago. She focuses on the intersection between visual storytelling and social justice. You can find her work in Injustice Watch, Cicero Independiente, a recently-completed mural (“Flourish”) at Yorktown Center, and on Instagram at @veromartinezart.
Verónica MartinezVisual Reporter
Verónica Martinez creates visual art to accompany Injustice Watch’s public service and investigative journalism. Before joining Injustice Watch in 2022, Verónica was a freelance artist creating illustrations, large-scale murals, and editorial content on police misconduct, education, and LGBTQ+ health. Her work has been featured by organizations such as Cook County Health, the Chicago Reader, the Trace, and Cicero Independiente. She is a Cicero native who now lives on Chicago’s Northwest Side.
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