When Bernard Johnson goes to church on Sundays, he typically wears a sport coat and pressed slacks, saddle shoes, a wide-brimmed felt hat and sometimes a necktie.

He rides either the CTA Red Line or the Brown Line to get to Lincoln Park Presbyterian Church. Twice last winter, Chicago police officers stopped Johnson and asked for his identification. They asked why he walks with a limp, asked why his arm hangs slackly from his shoulder, asked what he is doing on a street corner in Lincoln Park.

Johnson is African-American. And on Sunday mornings in Lincoln Park, the smartly dressed 60-year-old church elder still gets eyed by the cops.

“I carry myself as a gentleman and a man,” Johnson said. “It’s a problem in the city with the Chicago police. They’re too aggressive. They’re just too aggressive.”

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David Greising is the president and chief executive of the Better Government Association, joining the BGA in 2018. For nearly a century, the BGA has fought for honest and effective government through investigative journalism and policy advocacy.

Greising’s career started at the City News Bureau of Chicago, with stops at the Chicago Sun-Times, Business Week magazine, the Chicago Tribune and Reuters. He was a co-founder of the Chicago News Cooperative and worked briefly as a consultant to World Business Chicago. Today, Greising writes on government issues in regular columns for the Tribune and Crain’s Chicago Business.

Under Greising’s leadership, the BGA has played a key role in uncovering public corruption amidst the wide-ranging federal probe, starting with an in-depth report about Ald. Ed Burke’s conflicts of interest before the federal charges against Burke. The BGA also has exposed waste and fraud at O’Hare and the proliferation of corruption and poverty into Dolton, Lyons and other Chicago suburbs. The BGA’s policy team has led calls for ethics reform in Chicago’s City Council and in state government.