The protestors want the feds to investigate the Chicago Police Department and Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
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The white police officer charged with murder for shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald is also involved in a possible police cover-up in the brutal police killing of Emmanuel Lopez in 2005, court records reveal. He said there are both civilian and police witnesses, present that night, who will testify Johnson was unarmed.
Protests erupted afterward in the nation’s third-largest city, culminating in the firing of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy by Emanuel on Tuesday.
Oppenheimer said Johnson was at a memorial party for someone that had been killed and was in the back seat of a auto which had been shot at.
Authorities said Johnson pointed a gun at police before an officer fatally shot him.
Michael Oppenheimer, an attorney for the mother of Johnson, says he got out and ran, but was chased down by officers and shot.
The city also paid out $5 million to McDonald’s family in a settlement for any claims arising out of the fatal police shooting.
“Many things must happen to restore trust in the Chicago Police Department and I welcome efforts and ideas that can help us achieve that important goal. The voters spoke. I’ll be held accountable for the decisions and actions that I make”.
No one can look at the smoke and sparks leaping from Laquan’s prone body and not agree that there’s a problem with either the Chicago Police Department’s protocol for when to use lethal force, or a problem with Officer Van Dyke. Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that such an investigation was “misguided”, but changed course Thursday, saying one was welcome.
ABC News reports that the former Secretary of State and 2016 presidential candidate has called for a review by the Department of Justice into the Chicago Police Department’s behavior following the death of McDonald. Until Thursday, the mayor had resisted calls from black community leaders and Illinois’s attorney general, Lisa Madigan, for the Justice Department to investigate the department’s practices amid accusations of a cover-up. “Officials must have known what was on that video more than a year ago, and yet they saw no reason to seek a sweeping review of the police procedures until this week”. “He is running what I would term to be straight ahead”, Oppenheimer said.
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The debate over the release of videos typically lines up around the U.S.as such: Police and prosecutors argue they should be withheld until the conclusion of investigations into whether the shootings were justified, while transparency advocates, journalists and activists say the public has a right to see the footage immediately.
