While Mayor Rahm Emanuel originally said a federal civil rights investigation would be “misguided”, after Monday’s announcement he released a statement saying in part “our mutual goal is to create a stronger, better police department”.
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The Chicago Democrat says “only an outside investigation” that includes the prosecutor’s office and the Independent Police Review Authority can restore the public’s trust in law enforcement.
On Sunday, the mayor announced that Scott Ando, head of the authority that investigates police shooting incidents such as the McDonald and Johnson cases, had stepped down.
On Monday, the U.S. Justice Department stepped in, announcing a broad civil rights investigation into the Chicago Police Department’s practices.
Emanuel said at a Monday afternoon news conference outside his office at City Hall that the shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald by Officer Jason Van Dyke had brought the city to what he called “an inflection point”.
Policing expert Samuel Walker had similarly said there’s a “terrible void” of information about how internal affairs units work and that internal affairs officers often have no specialized training and have been pushed into a role they didn’t choose.
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ousted the head of IPRA at the weekend.
He says he welcomes the Dept of Justice federal probe into the patterns and practices of by CPD and what he says are repeated cover ups of brutality and politically motivated actions by higher ups in the city including Mayor Emanuel.
“It’s in our long-term interest”, Emanuel added of the federal civil rights investigation.
Prosecutors say a Chicago police commander accused of shoving his gun down a suspect’s throat hid behind his badge and violated the public’s trust.
“We are deeply disappointed with the Chicago prosecutor’s decision not to charge officer George Hernandez in the murder of Ronald Johnson”.
Previous Justice Department investigations have highlighted problems like discriminatory policing aimed at minority communities, systemic failure to handle rape cases and patterns of troublesome pedestrian encounters.
The announcement comes amid protests over a video showing a white Chicago police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times and criticism of how the department and other officials handled the teen’s killing.
December 4: The city releases hundreds of pages of internal police documents, including reports from officers on the scene who stated that McDonald aggressively approached Van Dyke, in contrast to what can be seen on the dashcam video.
Simon Balto, a history professor at Ball State University who is writing a book on race and policing in Chicago, recently wrote that Chicago’s ability to make civilian complaints vanish “would be an nearly impressive feat of obfuscation, were it not so maddening and socially harmful”. “That doesn’t mean we’re absolved, and that’s why IPRA now has to start their investigation from the disciplinary action of the officers”.
When an investigator from the Independent Police Review Authority came to view the footage the next day, they found 86 minutes were missing from the footage – which included when the shooting happened.
Last week, Emanuel fired police superintendent Garry McCarthy amid controversy over a video showing a white police officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times.
Video of Ronald Johnson’s shooting was released by Alvarez’s office during a press conference explaining key details of the video on Monday. It was opened after a preliminary review, she said.
Mr. Emanuel said he’d not received a “satisfactory response” about how the policemen handled Mr. Coleman, “and as a result I don’t consider this case to be closed or the investigation into what occurred that night to be over”.
That however, is not clear from the video released, which doesn’t conclusively show anything in Johnson’s hand.
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Responding to questions about why Johnson was shot in the back, Alvarez said Johnson could have turned and fired at Hernandez or other officers. Baltimore police are also under federal scrutiny. That officer was taken to Weiss Memorial and later released, while another police officer… The officer who shot Johnson was not charged with a crime.
