The “patterns and practices” investigation will focus on whether the department violates constitutional rights.
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Rainbow PUSH and other groups have called for a Justice Department investigation into the Chicago Police Department.
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. Chicago is the nation’s third-largest city. Gov. Bruce Rauner and Sen. Dick Durbin, a Democrat and the state’s senior US senator. In March, the department released a scathing report of the Ferguson, Missouri, police force that found pervasive civil rights abuses, and in May, it reached a settlement with Cleveland police that called for sweeping improvements – including to that department’s use of force policies. In the last six years, more than a dozen investigations of police departments have been initiated.
The shooting happened while protests were still roiling Ferguson months after the fatal police shooting of an unarmed black 18-year-old, Michael Brown.
In a statement, Anthony Guglielmi of Chicago Police News Affairs wrote “We will let the Department of Justice address what action they will or will not choose to take, but as was made clear last week, we welcome the engagement of the Department of Justice as we work to restore trust in our police department and improve our system of police accountability”.
Congress empowered the federal government to conduct such investigations in the aftermath of the 1991 videotaped beating of Rodney King by Los Angeles officers and the riots that followed.
U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch is now reviewing requests for the investigation, and is expected to announce the investigation this week. Garry McCarthy; and formed a task force to review police discipline.
Emanuel has also rebuked those claiming that the release of the video was delayed for a year in order to smooth his re-election campaign. The mayor has said he will not resign.
Emanuel initially said a federal civil rights investigation of Chicago police tactics would be “misguided” because the U.S. Attorney’s office in Chicago was already investigating the incident.
Chicago spent more than $521 million local tax dollars in the past decade – a staggering figure – defending and settling excessive force cases…
“We have called for police reform as it relates to this police department … and we’ve also called for accountability in city government”, said Rose Joshua, president of Chicago South Side NAACP, which had previously called for a Justice Department probe into the city’s police.
The BGA had to sue CPD three times in the previous year for ignoring open records laws. McCarthy raised numerous eyebrows by promoting Dean Andrews to chief of detectives, even though Andrews supervised a thoroughly discredited 2011 re-investigation of David Koschman’s 2004 death at the hands of former Mayor Richard Daley’s nephew R.J. Vanecko.
They are demanding the appointment of a special state prosecutor to investigate the police shooting death of McDonald.
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The video shows McDonald veering away from officers on a four-lane street when Van Dyke, seconds after exiting his squad vehicle, opens fire from close range. The video contradicted the official account released by the city on Friday.
