Last week, in a letter to Lynch, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan asked the Department of Justice for an investigation into the practices of the department. This investigation has been requested by a number of state and local officials and community leaders and has been opened only after a preliminary review and careful consideration of how the Justice Department can best use our tools and resources to meet Chicago’s needs. Dick Durbin have joined in the calls.
Advertisement
Emanuel initially said a federal civil rights investigation of Chicago police tactics would be “misguided” because the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago was already investigating. But Emanuel quickly changed course and said he would welcome federal involvement. “They’ll interview victims, litigants, prosecutors”, Soffer said.
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”. Alvarez faces criticism for taking 13 months to charge Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke with the murder of McDonald.
The New York Times said the police department was under further immediate scrutiny over another police shooting that occurred only days before Mr McDonald’s death.
He was charged with first-degree murder a year after the incident, hours before the city released the dashboard camera footage of the shooting.
Since the release of the video, Emanuel forced Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy to resign and formed a task force to examine the department in an effort to calm the city and deal with the most serious crisis of his administration. The Justice Department recently started similar inquiries into police operations in Ferguson, Missouri, and Baltimore, Maryland, both scenes of fatal police shootings of black men. Shortly after that, the city released a patrol vehicle video of the shooting.
Van Dyke fired all the shots.
Last week, Emanuel announced he had dismissed Police Supt.
More protests could be in store for Chicago.
But those improvements will take time, experts say.
The review is expected to be a wide-ranging examination of the police department as a whole, spurred by the events surrounding the fatal shooting of Laquan McDonald but not limited to that event alone. Van Dyke told investigators he believed that McDonald was attempting to kill him.
“The culmination of that sort of investigation is a public report”, Hostin said. The video seemed to contradict officers’ testimony that said McDonald was charging police with a knife. O fell to ground, continued to move/grasp knife.
“If the criminal investigation concludes that any officer participated in any wrongdoing, we will take swift action”, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said in a statement.
Advertisement
The Justice Department will open an investigation looking into whether the Chicago Police Department has engaged in a pattern or practice of violating the civil rights of residents, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on Monday. The department will be interviewing police officers, rank and file, police brass. “I just think that what we have now is too much for the mayor to handle, and the mayor has no experience in running a system like the Chicago Police Department, none whatsoever”.
