Lt John Cannon: Veteran Chicago cop sues law school claiming discrimination because he's white
A Chicago police officer is suing the University of Illinois, alleging that the institution discriminated against him because he is a white person. According to Lt John Cannon's complaint, the University of Illinois Chicago School of Law harmed his image, which hindered his career options, when he protested about former Dean Darby Dickerson's email to students regarding George Floyd's murder.
Dickerson's 2020 email, in which the former school administrator supposedly connected the homicide and police officers at large to white supremacy, offended the 23-year police officer, who recently received a degree from the UIC Law School. Cannon said he asked to be removed from the email list, but an anonymous associate dean replied, telling him he could "withdraw from the law school or drop out of classes" instead.
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In a comment, Cannon told WFLD-TV, "I was offended to a degree that is hard to articulate. I come from a long line of honorable police officers. I'm a fourth-generation police officer, and none of them have been white supremacists. They answered a call to serve the public no matter who that public was, and so did I.” A fellow law student then accessed Cannon's Facebook account and published several of his private updates, including reportedly conservative-leaning memes, to a public Twitter account, according to Cannon. They also included fake captions on them and then shared them with various Twitter handles all around the city, including the mayor, the superintendent of police.
According to Cannon, the incident sparked an inquiry by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability, and he is now facing disciplinary action. He told Fox32, "there's been a lot of damage to me. One of the reasons I went to law school was because I wanted to further my career. I want to advance, either on the police department or elsewhere." One of Cannon's primary goals, according to his lawyer, Dan Herbert, is to get the law school to realize that this sort of behavior is unacceptable especially for a law school. Cannon's attorney, also added, "it's so inappropriate and I just hope the school recognizes that and takes action to make sure this doesn't happen again."