Chicago releases hundreds of emails in fatal police shooting

Emanuel and Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante scheduled a news conference for 3 p.m. ET to discuss details of the policy that outlines how police officers respond to incidents and the level of force they use.

At a news conference, Emanuel (D) said the move, coupled with more intensive training for officers in de-escalating conflict, is a first step toward rebuilding trust between Chicago’s residents and its police force.

The Chicago Police Department, which now has more than 12,000 officers, has been under fire in recent months for a series of fatal shootings. Chicago police, under a federal civil rights investigation over the use of deadly force and other issues, have admitted the woman’s death was an accident.

The Chicago PD will double the number of Tasers deployed to 1,400, as well as training the officers to use them properly, Emanuel said, thanking the city’s black and Hispanic leaders for their push for more Tasers. It shows McDonald, who was armed with a small knife, walking away from officers when he was shot 16 times in October 2014.

Van Dyke has been charged with six counts of murder.

Emanuel said Chicago officials deliberately chose cities that had already undergone Justice Department review, in hopes of making the kinds of changes that would eventually be ordered at the end of the investigation. “The people in charge are continuing to give (some officers) a pass”.

The responding officer shot at the young man as he walked down the stairs while holding a baseball bat and the bullets also struck and killed the downstairs neighbor – a mother of five – who had answered the door. Both he and Jones were black. Between the shooting and the investigators’ return visit, family and other people have entered the property, which could have compromised the crime scene.

Coordinated: The Chicago mayor’s office, police and the body that investigates police shootings closely coordinated their actions in the days after a white officer fatally shot a black teenager in 2014, emails released Thursday revealed. A 2009 evaluation of conducted electrical weapons – the generic name for Tasers – by the Police Executive Research Forum, compared law enforcement departments that used the devices and departments that did not, and found that the former had reduced officer and suspect injuries.

“What we are doing is injecting some humanity into the work of the police department and the police officers”, Emanuel told reporters.

The overhaul in police tactics comes days after two African-Americans in Chicago were shot dead in a domestic dispute. The program teaches officers how to respond to a person in crisis or with mental health problems, and is aimed at resolving incidents without violence.