Video footage making its way across the internet shows a white Chicago woman calling 911 on a Black state senator who was going door-to-door canvassing for votes on the city’s North Side.
The video shows State Senator and U.S. House candidate Mike Simmons and his campaign team in the stairwell of an apartment building when they encounter a woman on the phone.
The woman, who has 911 on speaker, doesn’t speak to Simmons, even after Simmons addresses her and asks if she’s on the phone with the police.
“Is that the police?” a surprised Simmons asked.
When she finally hangs up, Simmons addresses her again.
“I’m gonna let you know that it is against the law to call the police on an elected official who’s knocking doors. I know because I passed the law in 2021,” Simmons explains to the woman. “So if you’d like me to leave the building, I would leave the building, but I am so disappointed in how you chose to handle the situation at a time when police have been known to get into deadly altercations with people of color. I would expect more from my neighbors.”
In a news release obtained by the Chicago Sun-Times, Simmons explained that he initially introduced himself to the woman as a state legislator and candidate for Congress.
However, the woman requested documentation from him and his volunteers to prove his status as an elected official. When Simmons told her she could find him on the state Senate website, she ignored him.
After refusing to speak further with Simmons or his team, the woman dialed 911. Police responded to her call and caught up with Simmons, who told them what happened. No arrests were made.
“She then called the police and ignored all attempts at a conversation by Simmons and the volunteers with him — all people of color,” the release states. “After Simmons left the building on his own, Chicago Police did report to the scene a few minutes later, and Simmons spoke to them about the incident.”
The 2021 legislation that Simmons informed the woman about in the video makes it a hate crime to call the police on a person of color when there is no active threat to public safety. Simmons sponsored the bill, which was enacted in 2022, and subjects offenders to civil or criminal penalties.
Simmons is now running to replace outgoing U.S. Rep. Jan Schakowsky in the 9th District. He’s vying for Schakowsky’s seat against a crowded field of 14 other candidates.
Simmons would be the first Black representative for the 9th District if elected.
He’s the first Black state senator to represent Illinois’s 7th District, which includes parts of Chicago’s North Side, including Rogers Park, Uptown and Lincoln Square. He is also the first openly gay member of the Illinois Senate.
