Emanuel to address council on police crisis

In October 2014, several officers responded to a call of a man with a knife. Compounding things is that McDonald is black while Jason Van Dyke, the officer who shot and killed McDonald is white. It has also been alleged that the department attempted to cover up the killing, even deleting surveillance footage from a nearby Burger King restaurant.

“We just witnessed the mayor basically put a Band-Aid on a gunshot wound”, said Bishop James Dukes, pastor of Liberation Christian Center in Englewood.

The Mayor addressed the aldermen with hopes that his apology is the first step in a long process of healing for the community.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Wednesday that his city needs “a painful and honest reckoning into what went wrong” surrounding the death of Laquan McDonald, as well as other instances in which police officers used excessive force.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen him grapple with anything quite like this”, said longtime ally and adviser David Axelrod, who also served with Emanuel in the Obama White House. Only 18 percent of likely Chicago voters approve of Emanuel, while 67 percent disapprove of the job that he is doing as mayor. A Guardian investigation exposed in February that Chicago police have the equivalent of a domestic black site where they allegedly torture detainees who they often hold illegally and keep from legal counsel.

Police tactics and racism have been the subject of an intense national debate since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in summer 2014 over the shooting death of another black teen, 18-year-old Michael Brown.

Transparency: According to Smith, to avoid any controversy, police departments need “much more transparency on each shooting incident”, along with transparency in official documents and in media coverage.

The legislation would amend a 1941 law to create “a procedure for an election to recall the Mayor of Chicago”, and the bill proposes that change would be “effective immediately”, if passed by the legislature. The gathering occurred after he publicly apologized for Laquan McDonald’s death at the hands of police. The city has opposed release of video in the case. Days of protests and marches followed, including one on the busiest shopping day of the year that partially shut down the city’s most famous shopping district, Michigan Avenue. The problems have led to intervention by the U.S. Department of Justice, which announced a far-reaching civil rights investigation of the department this week.

Emanuel also talked more broadly about the lack of respect that some Chicagoans have for members of their police department, a sentiment made worse by their feelings that complaints too often fall on deaf years.