Meanwhile, Emanuel’s announcement came following Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s expression of support for a DOJ investigation into the Chicago police, via a campaign representative speaking to the Chicago Tribune.
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The battle not only echoes the dispute over video of indicted officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, but is clearly impacted by it, with mounting pressure on Emanuel, police and Chicago’s top prosecutor.
When asked why he had not yet spoken about the McDonald case or the events that followed the release of the dashcam video, Rauner said simply, “I wasn’t asked”.
Protests in Chicago led to the firing of the Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy on Tuesday.
Critics have blasted Alvarez for taking more than a year to charge Van Dyke, and only doing so after video of the shooting was released.
“It’s been a very rough ride out there during those three or four years”, Mr. Bratton said of Mr. McCarthy’s Chicago tenure. As he claims. And the mayor says: “If I watched it, voters like you, would say, ‘Why do you get to see it?”
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel made a bold yet belated move when he fired his embattled police superintendent in the wake of a national uproar surrounding the release of a chilling video that captured the police killing of a teen-a ward of the city of Chicago.
Emanuel’s reversal is striking because he spent a year opposing the release of video showing McDonald’s death, insisting such footage compromise fair investigations.
Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan noted the incident, as well as several others involving Chicago cops, in a letter this week to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch, in which she urged the Justice Department’s civil rights division to conduct an investigation of the CPD’s policies and practices. Emanuel also said a police accountability task force is being established, following days of unrest over the alleged murder of a black teenager by a white policeman.
Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez told reporters a forensic investigation found the video wasn’t compromised.
If Emanuel approved that payout without seeing the video that contradicted the official “justified shooting” posture of his Police Department then he was irresponsible with the purse strings of cash-strapped Chicago.
Mr. Emanuel, a Democrat who was elected to a second term, also acknowledged that broad change was needed in the Police Department.
“For forever, police have owned the narrative of what happened between any encounter between a police officer and a civilian”, said David A. Harris, a University of Pittsburg law professor who has written extensively on police misconduct.
Ronald Johnson III was running from police when Officer George Hernandez arrived and seconds later shot him in the back, lawyer Michael Oppenheimer said.
The mayor’s office declined to comment on the contents of the video. He also worked closely with Clinton during her tenure as secretary of state, when Emanuel was President Barack Obama’s chief of staff. She argued that “cover-up” will unravel once the public sees the video of police shooting her son.
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On her show, the host of FNC’s The Kelly File raised two issues about the case.
