Mayor Emanuel has “said that it’s all his fault, and I agree with him”, Representative Ford said.
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Outside City Hall, retired schoolteacher Audrey Davis carried a sign reading, “Mayor Emanuel is morally corrupt!”
“Each time when we confronted it in the past, Chicago only went far enough to clear our consciences so we could move on”, he said. “What happened on October 20, 2014 should have never happened”.
Emanuel says there is a “trust problem” between people and the police. “And that has to change”.
Other videos have since been released including footage showing police officers using a stun gun and dragging Philip Coleman from a jail cell in 2012.
McDonald was shot 16 times by police. Officer Jason Van Dyke, who is white, has been charged with first-degree murder. An autopsy report listed the cause of death as a severe reaction to haloperidol, an antipsychotic drug, but the report also documented a fractured rib and over 50 bruises and scrapes.
At least five police officers who were at the scene backed up much of Van Dyke’s account in statements to investigators after the shooting. Emanuel responded by firing Chicago police chief Garry McCarthy, and this week U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced that the Justice Department will investigate the Chicago Police Department.
As he’s done before, Emanuel noted Wednesday that most Chicago police officers, day in and day out, do a good job.
“These facts defy credibility”, Emanuel said.
The family, which has filed a lawsuit, was livid after the release of the video, saying that nobody from the city warned them it was to be made public in response to a media outlet’s public records request.
Most of the cries for Emanuel to resign have come from grassroots activists and residents, not from the city’s political powerbrokers. After initially saying that a federal probe of the department would be “misguided” because the U.S. Attorney’s office was already examining the McDonald shooting, Emanuel later said he welcomed such an investigation.
“I’m just really exhausted of turning on the news and seeing another innocent victim shot”, said Espindola, 28. Like some of the city’s other black elected officials, Rush, who has been involved in protesting the police department’s handling of the McDonald case, has a bit of a personal stake in Emanuel’s survival.
They addressed the department’s board members calling for an end to what they say is systemic racism throughout the city’s government.
High-profile killings of black men in USA cities have stirred a national debate about the use of force by police, particularly against racial minorities.
JIM YOUNG/REUTERS Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. The officers used electrical shock, burning and mock executions to elicit confessions from suspects, mostly African-American, from the early 1970s through the early 1990s. He was even more definitive and emphatic talking about McDonald’s death, which he called “totally avoidable”. “Our only choice is to do everything in our power to right that wrong”.
Squad auto footage of the shooting was released late last month, and there have been nearly daily protests.
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But since then Obama hasn’t said anything about the situation in Chicago.
