John Escalante to brief police commanders on the investigative process.
Advertisement
Officer Jason Van Dyke was indicted on seven charges, including six murder counts, for the 2014 shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
Meanwhile, the fed’s investigation into the Chicago Police Department is underway. Unbeknownst to the public, police officers had visited a nearby Burger King whose security cameras had seemingly captured damning footage of the incident and, according to the manager, deleted it. Van Dyke wasn’t even named in the shooting, and the story caused only a small blip for the Chicago media.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel is expected is meeting with U.S. Department of Justice officials on Thursday as a group of retired police officers asked him to wait on appointing the next Chicago police superintendent.
The investigation into use of force, disparities in use of force and accountability systems of the CPD is being led by the Civil Rights Division with assistance from the U.S. Attorney’s Office of the Northern District of IL.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he is energized to finally fix a police problem that has been decades in the making. The video showed McDonald moving away from the white officer. “It is in our self-interest as a city that they’re here”, Emanuel said of the probe. The mayor also apologized for the shooting in an emotional speech.
The Chicago Tribune published the indictment to its website on Wednesday evening and said the grand jury had agreed to bring the new charges against the police officer on Tuesday after hearing testimony from an Federal Bureau of Investigation agent. There’s no rush: Investigations of far smaller departments have taken a year to finish and the one into Chicago’s 12,000-officer force could take longer.
Advertisement
In recent weeks, Emanuel has fired police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, publicly apologized that the shooting happened on his watch, and tried to make the case that he will oversee long overdue reforms to help restore public trust in the Police Department.
