Justice Department investigators also reviewed a random sample of officer-involved use-of-force cases, including 170 officer-involved shootings over a five-year span, dating back to 2011. Attorney General Loretta Lynch shared the agency’s findings on Friday after a 13-month probe, but McCarthy predicted what she would say shortly before she even took the mic.
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Despite all the efforts in Friday’s press conference to assure police officers that they aren’t being blamed, and that numerous recommended changes were borne from their ranks, I doubt they will see it that way. On Friday, the DOJ released a report outlining a pattern of behavior within the department that includes excessive use of force in violation of the Fourth Amendment caused by severely deficient training procedures and accountability systems.
Still, recommendations have been made regarding next steps and how they will be implemented.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called the incidents described in the report “sobering”.
“The mayor can’t detail to Trump the seriousness of how we field out here in the field of Chicago only we as black and brown leaders can do this”, Trotter said. We found that CPD officers do not fully report their uses of force and that supervisors are not appropriately viewing these uses of force.
A Department of Justice report released on January 13, 2017, detailed excessive force by the Chicago Police Department. We found that CPD does not adequately train its officers to use the appropriate amount of force.
Among the remedies suggested in the report are requirements for all Chicago officers to wear body cameras by the end of 2017, along with improved deescalation training and a new transparency policy requiring the release of videos or other evidence of misconduct. The city’s minority community shouldn’t be stuck with a choice between excessive police force and being victimized by violent thugs and gang members. “We found also that CPD officers use force against people in mental health crisis where force might have been avoided”.
“Police misconduct will not be tolerated anywhere in this city and those who break the rules will be held accountable for their actions”, he said. A video that authorities waited more than a year to make public, sparking a wave of anger.
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The “Blue Wall” is real and it prevents separating bad cops from good ones. Disciplinary authorities, in turn, have rarely brought cases against officers who lied, even when their statements were contradicted by video, while officers are nearly never held accountable for even the worst shootings. The passage is possibly among the most damning in the report. In a 164-page report, the DOJ revealed that Chicago police officers have systematically engaged in unconstitutional and unreasonable use of force over the course of the last four years. All those problems were “compounded by poor supervision and oversight, leading to low officer morale”. He pointed to his decision to increase the number of lieutenants and other supervisors.
