The US Department of Justice will investigate the Chicago Police Department over its handling of the police shooting of a black teenager, following widespread protests.
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The Justice Department will investigate the Chicago police for possible civil rights violations, Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced Monday morning.
Mr Emanuel initially said a federal civil rights investigation of Chicago police tactics would be “misguided”, but later reversed course and said he would welcome the Justice Department’s involvement – something that politicians, including Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, have called for.
Van Dyke has been charged with first-degree murder.
High-profile killings of black men at the hands of mainly white police officers in USA cities have prompted a national debate and protests about the use of excessive force by police.
The Chicago City Council settled with the McDonald family for $5m (£3.3m), and officials in the city fought in court for months for the video to be kept under wraps.
“The Department of Justice intends to do everything we can to foster those bonds and create safer and fairer communities across the country”, Lynch said.
Lynch was joined by Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Vanita Gupta, head of the Civil Rights Division, and Zachary Fardon, the U.S. Attorney from Chicago. But protesters’ calls for the mayor to resign – something he said he won’t do – have grown louder. Johnson runs off screen by the time he is struck and killed by two bullets. The DOJ did find racist police practices in the department, though, and forced them into a series of corrective measures.
The new investigation will focus more broadly on Chicago officers’ use of deadly force, the system of oversight of police shootings, training and community engagement.
The probe follows similar federal civil rights investigations that were launched in Ferguson, Mo., and Baltimore, in the wake of unrest in both cities.
The superintendent of the Chicago Police Department, Garry McCarthy, was dismissed last week by Mayor Emanuel and a task force to look into police accountability was also announced.
On Sunday, Emanuel’s spokesman Adam Collins said the mayor is open to the investigation.
The video shows the fatal shooting of Ronald Johnson, who was shot to death by a Chicago Police officer on October 12, 2014 in the 5300 block of South King.
Ando will be replaced by Sharon Fairley, a formal federal prosecutor who most recently was first deputy to the city’s inspector general.
“We are in the digital age and we didn’t have videos like this 15 or 20 years ago and now we do”, Alvarez said.
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Emanuel’s office and the police department did not immediately respond to a request for comment on reports of a federal investigation.
