Police protests resume in downtown Chicago

Esquire: Emanuel’s apology speech came too late to distance himself from the police department’s many issues from Homan Square to McDonald. “And that has to change”. At the same time as the City Council meeting Wednesday, city attorneys were arguing before a federal court that footage of the fatal police shooting of 17-year-old Cedrick Chatman in January 2013 should be kept from public view. The teenager was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke.

An Illinois state representative has introduced a bill that could remove Mayor Rahm Emanuel from office immediately. He also reversed course on whether the U.S. Justice Department should launch a civil-rights investigation, saying he would welcome it only after presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and other top Democrats endorsed the idea.

Police and police union officials said after the shooting thatMcDonald, who was holding a knife and had PCP in his system when he was killed, lunged at Van Dyke. Van Dyke continued to fire for about 13 seconds after McDonald was on the ground, the video shows.

Emanuel has been engulfed in a media firestorm since a video was released two weeks ago showing the killing of a black teenager by a white police officer who shot him 16 times.

After the mayor’s speech, hundreds of protesters took to the streets near City Hall, the Associated Press reports – the latest in a string of protests since the video of the shooting was released.

After three years of delay, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has released video from the night in December 2012 that Philip Coleman, 38, died after being detained in a Chicago jail.

Additionally, politics has worked its way to the mayor’s office, with the heavy insinuation that Emanuel’s officer didn’t want the police shooting released because he was in re-election mode. “Given that he is the President of the United States and an attorney general that he appointed is leading an agency that’s conducting an independent investigation”. Emanuel cried “crocodile tears”, one protester said.

The city fought to hide the video, contesting Freedom of Information Act lawsuits by independent journalists, by the Wall Street Journal and by the Chicago Tribune.

His approval rating has hit a record low of 18 percent, and 51 percent of residents think he should resign, according to a new poll from the Illinois Observer.

“Yours is one of the most hard jobs in the city of Chicago, and we just want to make sure that you’ve got the resources that you need to complete the mission”, Reilly warbled. “But our goal is to build the trust and confidence with the public”.

“No officer should be allowed to behave as if they are above the law just because they are responsible for upholding the law”, Emanuel said. Multiple officers reported that even after McDonald was down, he kept trying to get up with the knife in his hand. For a couple of years now, one expose after another has been produced demonstrating in vivid detail that the Chicago Police Department has been a terrorist cult for decades. There are eight essay questions, including this: “What does accountability mean in the context of policing?” He was a suspect in a auto theft when an officer fatally shot him. “And it would likely have ended the career of the police superintendent, Garry F. McCarthy”, the Times opined. Because the blood of Laquan McDonald touched whatever spider web of a soul is to be found within the mayor? “Our only choice is to do everything in our power to right that wrong”.

They were sending a powerful message about the city’s police department, its mayor, and the response to deadly police shootings.

In the wake of the release of the video, Emanuel fired his Police Chief but rebuffed calls for his own resignation. In addition, acting Superintendent John Escalante has announced the expansion the use of body cameras to a third of the city and has said that there will be zero tolerance for patrol officers who fail to properly engage dash-cams.