Rev. Al Sharpton To Open New Chapter

Thursday, August 2nd 2007, 7:29 am

By: News On 6

CHICAGO (AP) _ The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to open a branch of his National Action Network in Chicago to target what he calls chronic police misconduct and a lack of political accountability.

It's also the home turf of the Rev. Jesse Jackson's Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, but the New York-based Sharpton says he sees no conflict.

``There's this outrageous notion that one black with a national profile and another black, (we're) going to fight if we're in the same town,'' Sharpton said at a news conference Wednesday. ``Every national civil rights group has a branch in New York _ NAACP, Urban League, Rainbow/PUSH, all of them. And I don't have a problem with anybody in town.

``So what is the controversy about me coming to Chicago?'' the 52-year-old asked.

For now, Jackson isn't commenting on Sharpton's move, a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition spokeswoman told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Jackson, 65, a one-time presidential candidate liked Sharpton, marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and helped mentor Sharpton in his early career. More recently, the two men worked together to protest radio personality Don Imus, who was fired from CBS after he used racist and sexist language about female college athletes on the air.

Jackson has told the Chicago Sun-Times that he will continue to work with Sharpton, but that Sharpton's mission replicates what Jackson and other civil rights groups are already doing in Chicago.

The Chicago office would be one of 36 nationwide run by Sharpton's group. It would be headed by Jeri Wright, whose high-profile father, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, is pastor of Sen. Barack Obama's church, Sharpton said Wednesday.

Sharpton, who has crusaded against police brutality since the 1990s, said local civil rights leaders have failed to hold Mayor Richard M. Daley accountable for police torture.

The mayor and police department have been under scrutiny after several highly publicized recent incidents involving off-duty officers, including the alleged beating of a female bartender caught on video.

The department has been accused of brutality since the 1970s, when investigators say a group of detectives and their commander tortured dozens of suspects, most of them black, into confessing to crimes. Prosecutors now say those misconduct cases are too old to pursue.

Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said the mayor and Sharpton spoke by phone Wednesday and that the men have many of the same aims, including justice and addressing police misconduct.