Crime Lab Chicago Sports Teams Donate $1 Million to Combat Gun Violence: 'We Want to be Invested in it'

Chicago Tribune / November 16, 2018
By Phil Thompson

Maybe it was a crime story he read in the newspaper or perhaps a sobering local TV report, but whatever it was, it prompted White Sox and Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf to pick up the phone and call the other most influential team executives in the city to combine their activist efforts and form the Chicago Sports Alliance.

Together they donated $1 million to fund training for crime lab analysts, and this week they announced plans to donate another $1 million for more gun violence initiatives.

But there was side effect of working together he hadn’t considered.

“At one point I said to (Sox vice president of communications) Scott Reifert, maybe I made a mistake with this thing because all of sudden you have five people used to running your own organization and now we have to agree with each other on everything. I’m not used to that,” Reinsdorf said in a joking manner. “I’m used to just making the decisions but we were all very simpatico.”

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16 November 2018