(WBBM NEWSRADIO) — Mayor Lightfoot on Monday suggested the Grant Park Columbus statue, which became a flashpoint for demonstrators during civil unrest in 2020, will be publicly re-installed but not before there is a plan in place to protect Chicago police officers.
Activists tried to pull down the statue in July 2020, as outrage continued over the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis. Police who moved to stop them were pelted with projectiles and fireworks.
“I will probably be forever haunted by the experience of the vigilantes who attacked our officers in Grant Park that summer,” Lightfoot said Monday. “[They] came armed with not signs but frozen water bottles, firecrackers and other things that severely wounded many of the police officers who were there.”
The mayor was asked about the delayed work of a special panel that is examining controversial monuments and works of art across the city and what to do with them.
Although the city removed the Columbus statue in Grant Park — and a second Columbus statue at Arrigo Park — Lightfoot said she “fully” expects the former sculpture to be reinstalled.
First, though, the city must “have a safety plan in place. I’m not going to do anything that puts our officers in harm’s way,” she said.
In the aftermath of Floyd's racially charged killing, Columbus statues became the focal point of some protesters who said European colonization of America set the stage for the destruction of indigenous people.
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