Police experts said de-escalation training can be helpful and Tasers, when used properly, can preserve the lives of police and arrestees.
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Emanuel said his administration studied the best practices of police departments in several other cities – including New York, Seattle, Portland, Ore., Cincinnati and Cleveland – in devising its own reform package. Van Dyke pleaded not guilty to murder charges in the 2014 shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald during his arraignment.
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Police have said no officers or vehicles on the scene were equipped with one.
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Activists were skeptical Wednesday that the changes would reverse decades of problems and mistrust between Chicago residents and police.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, right, listens to Police Superintendent John Escalante during a news conference about new police procedures on Wednesday, Dec. 30, 2015, in Chicago. He said numerous squad cars were responding “and they’re all calling for a Taser and none of them have one”.
Days of protests followed the release of the video, which President Barack Obama said was “disturbing”.
The move comes amid growing criticism of Chicago police and their use of physical and lethal force.
The mayor did not say how he would pay for doubling the number of police Tasers to 1,400, or the additional training.
Emanuel has denied the allegation and has repeatedly said he won’t step down.
Chicago police initially said Laquan McDonald, 17, was high on the hallucinogen PCP, and had acted erratically and lunged at officers with a knife when he was shot dead in October 2014.
Most U.S. police receive little or no training on how to de-escalate crisis situations involving the mentally ill or people under the effect of drugs or alcohol, despite the growing frequency of such encounters and fatal results in a number of recent cases.
Ted Pearson is a leader of the Chicago Alliance Against Racist and Political Repression, which advocates for the city to have a civilian police accountability council that isn’t appointed by the mayor.
Public outcry has been furious since a dashcam video was released last month showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times. Pope said LeGrier gave his last dollar to get home instead of buying a honey bun. “It’s not just as simple as ‘Let’s put Tasers on police officers.’ But because of the erosion of trust in the community, [Rahm]’s always in a reactionary mode”. “They are part of the toolbox; they are not the toolbox”, he said.
But the Chicago Sun-Times reports (http://bit.ly/1moWNJE ) Quintonio LeGrier had run-ins with police in the past year at Northern Illinois University, including a charge of battery for allegedly punching someone.
Escalante could not say whether the policy changes would have made a difference in the shooting of Legrier and Jones, nor did he offer any new information about the investigation. Chicago police killed two people, a 55-year-old woman who was shot accidentally and a 19-year-old man police described as “combative” before he was shot.
A statement from the mayor’s office late Tuesday said the Police Department will begin to require every officer who “responds to calls for service” to be equipped with a Taser and trained to use it by June 1, 2016.
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As protesters call for his resignation, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel will announce major changes to local law enforcement policies Wednesday in an effort to tamp down police violence.
