Metcalfe became a local hero after running alongside Jesse Owens at the 1936 Olympics in Hitler’s Berlin and returned home to become a cog in the Democratic machine. But in 1972, he broke from Daley after one of Metcalfe’s constituents, a respected South Side dentist, was stopped and grievously mistreated by police officers for the apparent crime of being black, a not-infrequent occurrence in Chicago. Metcalfe was soon calling for an independent civilian agency with the power to investigate alleged incidents of misconduct. In the column, I analyzed a recent speech by the mayor condemning
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