Rahm Emanuel Holds Presser to Announce Chicago Police Reforms: ‘Force Can Be

As details about the LeGrier shooting emerged, Emanuel said there were “serious questions” about what happened and ordered changes in how city police officers are trained to handle calls involving people who may have mental health problems.

“There’s a difference between whether someone can use a gun and when they should use a gun”, Emanuel said at the news conference.

The police department has been under scrutiny since a dashcam video was released last month showing a white officer shooting a black 17-year-old 16 times. Jon Burge, for policy changes to carry much weight with protesters calling for Emanuel’s resignation.

Quintonio LeGrier, a Northern Illinois University student, and his neighbor Bettie Jones, a mother of five children, were killed Saturday while officers responded to a domestic disturbance. Quintonio LeGrier was shot dead as was Bettie Jones, a first-floor tenant and neigbour of LeGrier and his father, Antonio LeGrier, who lived on the second floor. 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.

The Chicago PD has been under fire for months due to a series of officer-involved shootings that killed several people.

Emanuel promised to rebuild the trust between the police department and the city’s residents.

The reforms come amid a federal investigation by the Justice Department into the use of force by Chicago police. He says “the mayor’s office obviously does not direct investigations, nor are any employees involved in those investigations”.

“There is no plausible justification for such an excessive use of deadly force”.

“Just because you train that you can use force, doesn’t mean that you should”, Emanuel noted.

Police have said no officers or vehicles on the scene were equipped with one.

About 50 demonstrators, including one with a sign reading, “New Year, New Mayor”, faced a line of police in front of Emanuel’s three-story colonial home in the Ravenswood community. Earlier Thursday, the Chicago mayor’s administration released hundreds of emails related to a recently released video that shows an officer shooting a black teenager 16 times in October 2014.

Each level represents an escalation of the situation, starting with giving verbal direction, followed by officers having to put their hands on an individual, including handcuffing or physically restraining the person, Escalante said.

Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke, center, enters the Leighton Criminal Courts Building Tuesday in Chicago.

Only about 1,800 of Chicago’s 12,000 sworn officers – about 15 percent – have taken the department’s voluntary crisis-intervention training, Fox32 reported.

Van Dyke, who is white, is the first Chicago police officer to be charged with murder for an on-duty fatality in more than 30 years.