Chicago mayor `sorry’ for fatal police shooting

Embattled Mayor Rahm Emanueloffered a plaintive apology Wednesday for his responsibility in the city’s handling of the shooting death of a black teenager by a Chicago police officer. “I’m going to be very visible for a very long time”, said Jeffery Coleman, the brother of Philip Coleman, on whom officers used a stun gun in a Chicago police lockup in 2012.

“I’m the mayor. I own it. I take responsibility for what happened because it happened on my watch”, he said, at times his voice cracking with emotion.

“Each time when we confronted these issues in the past, Chicago only went far enough to clear our consciences and move on”, according to an excerpt from Emanuel’s prepared remarks.

The delay in releasing the video of McDonald’s shooting and the 400 days that Alvarez took to file charges against Van Dyke have been some of the main factors that have put the city in turmoil.

Finally, Mayor Emanuel addressed what every Chicagoan can do to make communities safer, explaining that we cannot ask community members to respect police officers if police officers do not respect them in kind.

While Emanuel addressed the council, a group of several dozen protesters gathered at City Hall opposite a line of police officers and screamed various chants such as: “CPD. KKK”. Emanuel referred to a “code of silence”. The video immediately set off protests.

A woman who identified herself as Magda said: “We can not allow this (lack of justice) to continue”. “This is the people’s house – this is not Rahm Emanuel’s house”. “And I’m really proud of the young people that are here today because they’re standing up”, she added. The protesters were mostly in their teens and twenties – three teenagers were arrested on unknown charges. Many of them were shouting, “Rahm, resign!” Eventually traffic on Michigan Avenue was blocked, as were major storefronts in the area. When they went by the famed Tavern on Rush, the wait staff peered out windows giving thumbs up and snapping photographs.

Be Civil – It’s OK to have a difference in opinion but there’s no need to be a jerk.

He ran into a dark, abandoned building and hid in a pantry; several officers followed.

The most high-profile case relates to McDonald.

There’s evidence that Emanuel is trying to get on the right side of the black community – and quickly – after stumbling through the politics of the video’s release.

The Chicago Police Department’s top cop has been fired.

After the video was made public, other flashpoints kept coming.

Van Dyke is now out on bail after he was charged with first-degree murder. 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 Chicago agency that investigates all police-involved shootings, the Independent Police Review Authority, deemed that shooting justified.

With the release of the video the IPRA has announced that the investigation will be reopened. Davis said he was sacked in July when he refused to change his report. Longstanding practice has been to release such material only after prosecutors and city investigators have finished their investigation. He was even more definitive and emphatic talking about McDonald’s death, which he called “totally avoidable”.

“Everybody knows that he is passionate and he is tough and he is dogged in making sure that the city of Chicago is not just the coldest city, but also the greatest city”, Obama said during a visit to Emanuel’s campaign office in February.

The mayor won re-election in April by a healthy margin, but only after suffering the embarrassment of not getting a majority in a five-candidate February election, forcing the first mayoral runoff in decades.

– Renegotiating the city’s union contract to strip it of provisions critics say can shield bad officers. “It is a whole other thing to build friendships and relationships, which are integral to fighting crime”.

“Many in the crowd held up signs reading “Rahm is not healthy for Chicago” and “#WhiteCoats4BlackLives”. “I might live in NY, but Chicago’s still my home”. Many details were left to politically appointed administrators with law enforcement backgrounds. If the recall is successful, the current mayor would be forced to step down and temporarily replaced by the vice mayor. They want Emanuel ousted from the mayor’s office before the 2019 elections. “The people have lost confidence in the mayor and until he can regain confidence, we have to have something in place that we can try to bring the city together”, he told CBS Chicago. Rep. Mary E. Flowers is a co-sponsor to the bill.