Progress Illinois

There's more fallout from the recent revelations that Iowa-based Agriprocessors Inc. -- the nation’s largest kosher meatpacker, which gained notoriety after a vicious Immigration Customs & Enforcement raid in May -- allegedly hired child laborers.

Via the New York Times, the company now might lose its kosher certification:

Rabbi Menachem Genack, who is in charge of kosher supervision for the Orthodox Union, the major kosher certifying organization in the United States, said he had set a deadline of “several weeks” for Agriprocessors to name a new chief executive, or the group would suspend supervision of kosher production at its plants.

“Because of the new charges in the state of Iowa, we believe it is in the best interest of the kosher consuming public to have new management with a new C.E.O., that will give people a new sense of confidence that all laws and regulations are being completely complied with,” Rabbi Genack said in an interview on Wednesday.

Losing the designation could destroy the company, which sells an estimated $80 million worth of kosher products annually. For more on the controversy in Postville, check out the ongoing reportig by Lynda Waddington, who has been covering the story closely for the Iowa Independent.

Earlier this year, immigrants rights advocates voiced their outrage over the shameful treatment of 400 undocumented workers who were arrested by Immigration Customs & Enforcement during a raid of Agriprocessors, a Postville, Iowa kosher meatpacking plant.  The detainees were separated from their families and herded like livestock into a cattle ground. Sadly, these immigrant workers were no stranger to human rights violations on the day of the raid. The AP has the story:

The owner and managers of the nation's largest kosher meatpacking plant were charged Tuesday with more than 9,000 misdemeanors alleging that they hired minors and in some cases had children younger than 16 handle dangerous equipment such as circular saws, meat grinders and power shears. [...]

"All of the named individual defendants possessed shared knowledge that Agriprocessors employed undocumented aliens. It was likewise shared knowledge among the defendants that many of those workers were minors," the affidavit said.

Amazingly, these violations were all amassed over an eight-month stretch and none of the employees were paid wages for overtime.

Today, Amnesty International used Chicago's standing as a possible host for the 2016 Summer Olympics to shine a light on the city’s “flawed approach” to probing incidents of police brutality. The Sun-Times' Fran Spielman has the details:

At a news conference outside the mayor’s office, civil rights activists reiterated arguments they made last summer, when the City Council approved Daley’s plan to sever the Office of Professional Standards from the Police Department.

They argued that the landmark ordinance is undermined by a union contract tailor-made to protect rogue officers.

The contract bars the agency now known as the Independent Police Review Authority from investigating anonymous complaints about “anything short of criminal conduct”—even though many victims “fear retaliation” from police—and limits the use of past complaints needed to establish a “pattern of conduct, said Wendy Park, a staff attorney for the American Civil Liberties Union.

“These … contract provisions and others tie IPRA’s hands … which may allow officers to escape discipline in many cases. We demand that the city drop these provisions from the next FOP contract, currently under negotiation,” Park said.

The activists highlighted several individual cases of brutality and Mayor Daley responded by "highlighting the changes he has already made to restore public confidence in investigations of police wrongdoing," including: "the appointments of career FBI agent Jody Weis as police superintendent and Los Angeles attorney Ilana Rosenzweig to head an OPS [Office of Professional Standards] that now has subpoena power and a six-month deadline to complete investigations."

Of course, despite these reforms, the city still refuses to make public the list of 662 police officers who amassed more than 10 citizen complaints between May 2001 and May 2006. A group of 27 aldermen requested that the list be furnished to them last year, but were rebuffed by the city's corporation counsel. A lengthy court battle has ensued.

As Ald. Toni Preckwinkle wrote in a Progress Illinois column on the matter back in April: "The reestablishment of trust will come only after the department accepts its responsibilities and begins to discipline, rather than shelter, officers who abuse the citizens they are sworn to protect."