Aurora Group Plans Courthouse 'Justice for Chicano' Rally

AURORA, IL — A new local coalition will hold a rally outside the Kane County Branch Court in St. Charles Friday as George "El Chicano" Gutierrez faces sentencing after he was found guilty of obstruction of a police officer.

The United Front for Justice for Chicano has planned both a press conference and a rally from 12:30 p.m. to 1:30 p.m. A "rainbow front" of Latino activists, religious and community leaders, and allies from the Black community will come together to call for justice for Gutierrez, according to the group, which said several people plan to testify as character witnesses during the hearing, set to start at 1:30 p.m.

On Jan. 4, Gutierrez was found guilty of restricting or obstructing a police officer, a misdemeanor, as well as two petty offenses of installing unauthorized window treatment and failure to signal when turning, according to court records. The charges stem from an April 26, 2020, incident where the man was pulled over in the 1000 block of Allaire Avenue for a moving violation, Aurora police told Patch.

"During the traffic stop, officers lawfully ordered the driver out of the vehicle, but the driver refused to get out of the vehicle," Paris Lewbel, the department's public information officer, wrote in an email. "In Illinois, police officers have the lawful authority to order the driver and passenger(s) out of the vehicle at any time for any reason and they must comply."

Lewbel continued to say police officers "lawfully order the driver out of the vehicle, but he continued to [refuse]. At one point, the driver began to roll up the window and the officer told him not to roll the window up. When the window was almost up, the officer pulled on the window causing it to shatter."

After the struggle, police said Gutierrez was removed from the car and taken into custody.

In a news release from the coalition, rally organizers said they believe the initial grounds for the traffic stop were "owed to racial profiling and the presence of his name in the Aurora gang database — despite having no gang affiliations."

"Finding me guilty is sending the wrong message to the community: that we have to comply even if it means getting assaulted by APD," Gutierrez said in a statement. "The irony is this, Officers Myers and McCue committed the crime by assaulting me, yet I am the one on trial and may be sentenced to jail time for exercising my right not to be assaulted."

Lewbel did not provide a statement regarding the rally when asked by Patch.

The group will highlight several demands at the Friday rally. They want all charges against Chicano dismissed, an end to racial profiling by Aurora police, an end to "over-policing, harassment of youth, and the racist, outdated gang database," as well as accountability "in the form of immediate firing" of the two police officers involved in the 2020 incident.

"If there is any thing that Chicano was obstructing it was [obstruction] of the violence he knew we would be subject to at the hands of the Aurora PD when they asked him to get out of his car," activist Cristobal Cavazos said in a statement. "Chicano and other Latinos in Aurora have been subject to racial profiling, stop and frisk, police flashlights in their faces in seemingly [militarized] hoods."

A member of the Immigrant Solidarity DuPage group, Cavazos said police had followed Chicano's lowrider car in an attempt to humiliate him, adding "it is this freedom to live and express ourselves free from oppression that we have to protect."