March 21, 2022
COMMUNITYx was founded by a directly impacted womxn, whose father, Andrew Sledd, was nearly murdered by the Chicago Police Department in a case of mistaken identity. Her entire life has been shaped by police misconduct.
In March, 1989, Andrew was a young man living in Hyde Park, Chicago was preparing to head off to work a night shift as a pest control technician. He heard a loud banging on his door and went to check it out. By the time the 23-year-old St. Xavier College student-athlete reached the front door of his mother’s townhome, the door had been ripped off of its hinges as a group of plainclothes police officers stormed the building, opening fire and hitting the man over 12 times, including on the crown of the head and in his groin.
As he lay on the ground bleeding to death, the officers realized they had the wrong address. Rather than rush this wrongfully victimized man to the hospital, they first paused to cover-up their mistake, planting drugs in his dresser, and further assaulting him before paramedics arrived.
Doctors predicted he wouldn’t make it through the night.
72 hours later, he emerged, alive, but forever altered by this egregious case of police misconduct.
Chloe Cheyenne was born a year later. This man was her father.
“I remember being a little girl watching him put on a bulletproof vest under his clothes before he would leave the house because he suffers from extreme PTSD from what happened to him,” she told Black Enterprise. “Every single day that my family and I interact with my dad, we have to watch him in pain because he still has a bullet fragment lodged in his spine that can never be taken out, or else he will become a paraplegic.”
Cheyenne created COMMUNITYx as a resource for those looking to make proactive, tangible change. She continues to speak internationally, calling activists to use their voice and their platforms for good.