Emanuel said he will implement recommendations from the federal probe and act on reforms outlined by his new police accountability task force, which was announced last week. “And regardless of the findings in this investigation, we will seek to work with local officials, residents, and law enforcement officers alike to ensure that the people of Chicago have the world-class police department they deserve”.
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The Illinois State’s Attorney’s Office has shown a video of a white Chicago police officer fatally shooting a young black man – the second such video to be released in as many weeks.
The Justice Department said Monday that it will investigate Chicago’s police department after protests over the 2014 police shooting death of a black teenager.
Damon Williams, of the #LetUsBreathe collective, said Alvarez served more as a “defense attorney for police” in her remarks Monday rather than a county prosecutor.
Organizers said late Monday that roughly 50 to 100 protesters were marching and rallying on the city’s South Side.
One 911 caller said black men were shooting.
Police tactics and racism have been the subject of an intense national debate since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in summer 2014 over the shooting death of another black teen, 18-year-old Michael Brown.
That’s a problem for the Chicago police department, and I think they need to answer to that.
The footage appears to contradict police reports that McDonald, who they say was holding a four-inch knife, had swung at them in an “aggressive, exaggerated manner”. Oppenheimer said Johnson did not have a gun and mocked Alvarez for relying on an Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) investigation of the case.
Van Dyke, the officer who killed McDonald, was the subject of 18 civilian complaints prior to that fatal shooting, but had never been disciplined.
Emanuel ousted his handpicked police superintendent last week. “While the Medical Examiner ruled that Mr. Coleman died accidentally as a result of treatment he received in the hospital, it does not excuse the way he was treated when he was in custody”, said Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Rev. Jesse Jackson Sr. said he is not satisfied with Alvarez’s findings in the Johnson case.
Alvarez, who has called for a Department of Justice investigation into the Chicago Police Department, said critics of state’s investigation process should turn their scrutiny on the police department’s practices instead.
Video of the 2014 Chicago police shooting of Ronald Johnson III has been released (Contains graphic content).
It was the first time in 30 years that a Chicago police officer was charged with first degree murder for an on-duty fatality. “Or, as we are left to conclude, were they simply biding their time, hoping the video would never be released and that this incident would simply fade from memory?”
“Johnson could have easily turned around and quickly fired at the officers pursuing him or even fired as he ran”, she said. Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder November 24, more than a year after the killing and just hours before the release of the footage. Johnson is not on screen when he was struck by two bullets.
Johnson had a gun, was running towards several police officers in Washington Park and made Hernandez believe he and the other cops were in danger, according to authorities, leading Hernandez to fire his gun five times, hitting Johnson once in the leg and once in the back.
Emanuel initially said a federal civil rights investigation would be “misguided”, but then later reversed course. And why, again, did it take more than a year for officials to release the video?
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The Justice Department has opened 23 investigations of police departments since the start of the Obama administration.
