In the wake the release of a video showing Chicago police officers shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald to death, the U.S. Justice Department is set to open an investigation into whether the police force’s practices have violated any civil rights.
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The Justice Department launched an investigation in May into the Baltimore Police Department’s use of force and whether there were patterns of discriminatory policing after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody.
The inquiry would be broader than the federal investigation already under way into the videotaped police killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald last year. That officer, Jason Van Dyke, has since been charged with murder. The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not elaborate on the investigation.
A Justice Department Civil Rights investigation of the police force would be separate from the federal investigation now under way in connection with the Jason Van Dyke shooting.
After the mayor signaled his intention to fully back Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy after the Laquan McDonald tape went public, he terminated McCarthy’s employment on Tuesday morning.
The official, who asked not to be identified because an official announcement hasn’t been made, said lawyers within the department’s Civil Rights Division would examine, in part, whether officers engaged in a pattern of biased policing. The city’s early efforts to suppress its release coincided with Emanuel’s re-election campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes in a tight race.
Hundreds of pages of police reports released by the city late on Friday indicated that, during an initial police investigation, at least five officers corroborated Van Dyke’s account that McDonald moved toward officers, according to the Chicago Tribune.
The statement says “new leadership is required as we rededicate ourselves to dramatically improving our system of police accountability and rebuilding trust in that process”.
A spokesman for the police department referred a request for comment to Adam Collins, a spokesman for the mayor’s office.
“I welcome the engagement of the Justice Department”, Emanuel said Thursday.
Emanuel acknowledged “the checkered history of misconduct in the Chicago Police Department” in an opinion column published over the weekend in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune.
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“All three of them – the police, City Hall and the prosecutor’s office – are suspect”, Jackson said. Sunday saw a fresh round of protests after newly released records revealed that a number of officers described the McDonald killing in ways that were thoroughly contradicted by the footage of the incident. Jackson has reiterated his call for “a full, thorough investigation with subpoena power” and says it’s time to escalate the protests.
