This is big news, but what exactly is the DOJ looking into?
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GUPTA: So our investigation’s going to focus on the Chicago Police Department’s use of force, including deadly force, and racial, ethnic and other disparities in its use of force, as well as its broader systems of accountability.
The Chicago Police Department is widely recognized as being corrupt and following alarming, racist practices. The poll was conducted as Emanuel was forced to push for a massive property tax hike in the city to help close a hole in the city’s underfunded police and fire department pensions.
The move comes following the release of a video showing Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times.
For almost an hour, McCarthy used a PowerPoint presentation to explain in detail where police cars were and where Johnson ran from officers.
The autopsy showed Van Dyke shot McDonald 16 times. And if he can find it in his heart to do so, he needs to acknowledge and apologize for his role in accepting and protecting a broken system.
The city agreed to pay McDonald’s family $5 million back in April – before a lawsuit had been filed. He emphasizes that the family approached the city seeking a settlement.
Emanuel alsosaid calls for a Justice Department investigation of the police department, prior to the completion of a federal criminal investigation of the McDonald shooting, were “misguided”.
A final deal was struck April 8, a day after Emanuel’s re-election.
A police report said McDonald “raised the knife over his chest and over his shoulder, pointing the knife at Van Dyke”. Last month, a judge ordered that the video of the shooting be released, but there are also other allegations swirling that Chicago police intentionally deleted other video footage that may have been key to the case. The city released several police reports this past weekend, and there were five officers that kind of all gave the same narrative about how Laquan McDonald was attacking officers, and that when he was shot and down on the ground, how he was still trying to get up and trying to attack officers. But instead of establishing trust, the prolonged period between when the shooting occurred and when charges were filed created mistrust. When police arrested him, Coleman was brought to a hospital where he was given a drug to make him calm down. AKA they’re distancing themselves from the McDonald investigation.
Police and Cooky County prosecutors, however, said there was no evidence the video was tampered with.
The video, which prompted protests upon its release and led to the firing of police Supt. Van Dyke has been charged with first-degree murder.
He will face a minimum of 20 years in prison if convicted.
“Most officers don’t want that job”.
None of the 20 complaints resulted in discipline.
Emanuel acknowledged “the checkered history of misconduct in the Chicago Police Department” in an opinion column published over the weekend in the Chicago Sun-Times and Chicago Tribune. Moreover, white civilians were more likely to have their complaints taken seriously.
“Chicago is facing a defining moment on the issues of crime and policing and the even larger issues of truth and justice”, Emanuel wrote.
Mayor Rahm Emanuel says he didn’t consider the case closed.
In 2007, the City Council did away with an internal Chicago Police Department oversight office, turning it into a separate city department with subpoena power and a chief administrator reporting directly to the mayor. Between 1972 and 1991, at least 120 men – most of whom were black – were tortured under Burge to force confessions. It opened an investigation of Baltimore police in May in response to the death of a black man in police custody.
Last February, the Guardian published a startling investigation into a creepy secretive police compound called Homan Square. The state attorney found the shooting justified. “I would be curious to how people are feeling in a month or two months”.
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The department has insisted this site is perfectly legal and like an undercover police base.
