The Rev. Al Sharpton plans to open a branch of his National Action Network in Chicago to target what he calls chronic police misconduct and a lack of political accountability. It’s also the home turf of the Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow/PUSH Coalition, but the New York-based Sharpton says he sees no conflict.

“There’s this outrageous notion that one black with a national profile and another black, (we’re) going to fight if we’re in the same town,” Sharpton said at a news conference Wednesday. “Every national civil rights group has a branch in New York — NAACP, Urban League, Rainbow/PUSH, all of them. And I don’t have a problem with anybody in town.

“So what is the controversy about me coming to Chicago?” the 52-year-old asked.

For now, Jackson isn’t commenting on Sharpton’s move, a Rainbow/PUSH Coalition spokeswoman told The Associated Press on Wednesday.

Jackson, 65, a one-time presidential candidate liked Sharpton, marched alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and helped mentor Sharpton in his early career. More recently, the two men worked together to protest radio personality Don Imus, who was fired from CBS after he used racist and sexist language about female college athletes on the air.

Jackson has told the Chicago Sun-Times that he will continue to work with Sharpton, but that Sharpton’s mission replicates what Jackson and other civil rights groups are already doing in Chicago.

The Chicago office would be one of 36 nationwide run by Sharpton’s group. It would be headed by Jeri Wright, whose high-profile father, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, is pastor of Sen. Barack Obama’s church, Sharpton said Wednesday.

Sharpton, who has crusaded against police brutality since the 1990s, said local civil rights leaders have failed to hold Mayor Richard M. Daley accountable for police torture.

The mayor and police department have been under scrutiny after several highly publicized recent incidents involving off-duty officers, including the alleged beating of a female bartender caught on video.

The department has been accused of brutality since the 1970s, when investigators say a group of detectives and their commander tortured dozens of suspects, most of them black, into confessing to crimes. Prosecutors now say those misconduct cases are too old to pursue.

Daley spokeswoman Jacquelyn Heard said the mayor and Sharpton spoke by phone Wednesday and that the men have many of the same aims, including justice and addressing police misconduct.

In April, hip-hop mogul Russell Simmons said the recording and broadcast industries should consistently ban three racial and sexist epithets from all so-called clean versions of rap songs and the airwaves. Expressing concern about the “growing public outrage” over the use of such words in rap lyrics, Simmons said the words “bitch,” “ho” and “nigger” should be considered “extreme curse words.”

Sharpton said the Buffalo chapter of NAN also would consider town hall forums and other venues to steer young blacks toward positive goals, especially now that the city has elected its first black mayor and has a black schools superintendent and police commissioner.

“I remember many years ago when I would come to Buffalo, we dreamed of days of black empowerment,” Sharpton said. “Now we have to make sure the conduct of our black citizens complements that achievement. We cannot undermine them with the conduct of killing each other, selling drugs to each other and really celebrating a culture of depravity and decadence.”

The Buffalo-Niagara Falls chapter is the 36th branch of NAN, which Sharpton founded to protect civil rights for minorities.

The Rev. Al Sharpton, who has challenged the entertainment industry on denigrating lyrics, on Monday supported a state senator’s idea to pull public investments from companies that won’t clean up their act.

Holding the entertainment industry accountable will be a primary goal of the newest chapter of Sharpton’s National Action Network, said the activist minister, who announced the formation of the Buffalo-Niagara branch while in town to address a convention of black criminal justice professionals.

Roughly $3 billion from New York’s state pension fund is invested in the entertainment industry, according to state Sen. Antoine Thompson, who requested an inventory of entertainment industry investments from the state comptroller earlier this year.

Thompson suggested leveraging the investments to open dialogue with industry executives.

“We just want to have more responsible entertainment where we’re not using language that’s offensive to anybody,” the Buffalo Democrat said.

“The idea of divesting New York State taxpayers’ money from record companies that have a double standard when it comes to language is something that will be a priority,” said Sharpton, who led the drive to have Don Imus fired from his syndicated radio show for calling the Rutgers University women’s basketball team “nappy-headed hos.”

NEW YORK (AP) — Calling himself “a good person” who made a bad mistake, radio host Don Imus said Monday he would check his acid tongue after being lambasted for making racially charged comments about the Rutgers University women’s basketball team.

“Here’s what I’ve learned: that you can’t make fun of everybody, because some people don’t deserve it,” he said on his nationally syndicated radio show Monday morning. “And because the climate on this program has been what it’s been for 30 years doesn’t mean it’s going to be what it’s been for the next five years or whatever.”

Imus said he was “embarrassed” by the remarks, in which he referred to the mostly black team as “nappy-headed hos.” He said he had made the comments in the course of “trying to be funny,” but he was not trying to excuse them.

“I’m not a bad person. I’m a good person, but I said a bad thing. But these young women deserve to know it was not said with malice,” he said.

Imus said he hoped to meet the players and their parents and coaches, and he said he was grateful that he was scheduled to appear later Monday on a radio show hosted by the Rev. Al Sharpton, who has called for Imus to be fired over the remarks.

“It’s not going to be easy, but I’m not looking for it to be easy,” Imus said.

Sharpton has said he wants Imus fired and that he intends to complain to the Federal Communications Commission about the matter.

“Somewhere we must draw the line in what is tolerable in mainstream media,” Sharpton said Sunday. “We cannot keep going through offending us and then apologizing and then acting like it never happened. Somewhere we’ve got to stop this.”

Meanwhile, the Rev. Jesse Jackson planned a protest in Chicago, and an NAACP official called for the broadcaster’s resignation or firing.

Imus made the now infamous remark during his show Wednesday.

The Rutgers team, which includes eight black women, had lost the day before in the NCAA women’s championship game. Imus was speaking with producer Bernard McGuirk about the game when the exchange began on “Imus in the Morning,” which is broadcast to millions of people on more than 70 stations and MSNBC.

“That’s some rough girls from Rutgers,” Imus said. “Man, they got tattoos…”

“Some hardcore hos,” McGuirk said.

“That’s some nappy-headed hos there, I’m going to tell you that,” Imus said.

Imus also apologized on the air Friday, but his mea culpa has not quieted the uproar.

Jackson said his RainbowPUSH Coalition planned to protest Monday in Chicago outside the offices of NBC, which owns MSNBC. Jackson said protests were being planned across the country.

James E. Harris, president of the New Jersey chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, demanded Sunday that Imus “resign or be terminated immediately.”

Allison Gollust, a spokeswoman for MSNBC, said the network considers Imus’ comments “deplorable” and is reviewing the matter.

Karen Mateo, a spokeswoman for CBS Radio — Imus’ employer and the owner of his New York radio home, WFAN-AM — said the company was “disappointed” in Imus’ actions and characterized his comments as “completely inappropriate.”