CHICAGO (AP) Authorities released hundreds of videos Friday that offer startling glimpses into violent encounters involving Chicago police, including the fatal shooting of a robbery suspect speeding toward them in a van and an incident when an officer slammed his night stick against a man’s head at a party.
Advertisement
Whatever confidence once existed was shattered in many quarters after a court in November ordered the release of video of McDonald’s shooting, more than a year after he was killed. A video from 2012 shows officers confronting a man, Ismael Jamison, who was apparently behaving erratically and reportedly had been hitting people.
The Rev. Jesse Jackson comforts Laquan McDonald’s aunt Tanisha Hunter during a vigil for the 17-year-old McDonald last November. IPRA made the data dump in response to a Police Accountability Task Force recommendation that audio and video recordings, along with written documents such as police reports, be made publicly available no later than 60 days from the date of an incident.
Attorney Matt Topic, who represents several independent journalists and activists who have sued the city to gain access to IPRA records, said he was pleased to hear the city wasmaking the records public – but noted that the city still has not informed him as to whether video and recordings sought by his clients were among those slated for release Friday.
Change in oversight will be granular because there has to be buy-in at different levels and trust at different levels…It’s going to move at a glacial pace.
The Independent Police Review Authority, or IPRA, said information about 101 incidents involving the use of force by police from January 2011 to March 2016 showed its commitment to transparency in the wake of public uproar over Chicago police shootings, mostly of black men. The officer who shot him, Jason Van Dyke, was charged with first-degree murder just hours before the video was released, and a Cook County judge said Thursday he would appoint a special prosecutor to handle the case. Some of the videos are only partial clips of what happened, and don’t include audio.
“Video and audio material is only one source of evidence reviewed and analyzed in the context of other materials obtained in the course of an investigation”, IPRA wrote on its website.
The US Justice Department has begun an investigation into the Police Department, and the mayor’s task force issued a scathing report saying that racism had contributed to a long pattern of institutional failures by a department that had lost the trust of residents.
“You nearly never find the police were guilty of misconduct”.
City officials said about 68 cases have some video files, though often the footage often doesn’t show much.
“The release and availability of this evidence illustrates the challenges our officers face every day when they put their lives on the line to protect the city of Chicago”, Johnson said. He said the “new policy strikes a better balance of ensuring transparency for the public while also ensuring any criminal or disciplinary investigations are not compromised”.
Emanuel announced in May that he is abolishing IPRA and replacing it with a civilian department that he said will have more independence and resources to do its work.
The case portal now houses approximately 100 cases that can be searched by date of incident, IPRA notification date, type of case, IPRA log number or by the name of the person that was the subject of the police conduct.
Advertisement
Log#1058573-CHI-R-00003832 from IPRA Chicago on Vimeo.
