As Justice Department Opens Investigation, New Police Shootings In Chicago

“No mother should have to bury her child”, Janet Cooksey, Mr LeGrier’s mother, told a news conference, saying her son was shot seven times.

Grieving relatives and friends of two people shot and killed by Chicago police said Sunday that the city’s law enforcement officers had failed its residents.

The Chicago Police Department also is under a federal civil rights investigation looking into patterns of racial disparity in the use of force as well as the way department handles officer discipline and misconduct.

Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel called for a review of officers’ training on how they respond to calls dealing with mental health issues, a day after city police officers shot dead two people in a domestic disturbance incident. The shooting comes after weeks of demonstrations in Chicago over police brutality following the release of a video last month showing Chicago Police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald in October 2014.

Marshall Hatch, minister at the New Mount Pilgrim Missionary Baptist Church of West Garfield Park, the neighborhood where the shooting occurred, said that “for Chicago police to be this reckless when the national spotlight is on the department shows how deeply dysfunctional the relationship is between this department and its citizens”.

Early Saturday morning, 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier’s father called the police after his son became agitated during an argument and began brandishing an aluminum bat. The other person shot, 55-year-old Bettie Jones, lived in a ground-floor apartment. He said Jones told him she saw Quintonio outside with a baseball bat. A police statement said officers “were confronted by a combative subject resulting in the discharging of the officer’s weapon”.

The killings in Chicago add to the daily list of victims of police violence.

However, families for both victims are demanding answers, questioning whether the shooting was warranted.

Police were summoned and the father asked Jones, a neighbor, to look out for the officers. And perhaps most critically: Why did police decide to start shooting?

She said she used to watch the news and see other families who lost their loved ones to police shootings, and now it’s happened to her. The relatives of Jones said that she was behind LeGrier and by the entrance to her apartment when the police opened fire. It isn’t clear how many officers responded, how many used their firearms and how many times both LeGrier and Jones were struck.

“Right now is a time for compassion towards the suffering of families that are experiencing injustices throughout our city”, Jahmal Cole, a Jones relative, said Sunday at a press conference. It couldn’t be independently verified that the casings had any link to Saturday’s shooting.

In a later press release, police explained that officers had gone to the location for “a domestic disturbance”.

Another official said, “Here in his hometown, President Obama we are under siege”. Only a relatively small number of Chicago’s 12,000 officers have body cameras, and there’s been no indication that any officers responding Saturday were wearing the devices. She lived downstairs from the LeGrier family and had just hosted Christmas dinner for her family. “What’s wrong with that picture?” said Janet Cooksey, the mother of slain 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier. A student at Northern Illinois University, Quintonio LeGrier, was also fatally shot. Person said the son’s refusal to go caused friction, but he downplayed the severity of the argument. “So now you going meet the streets then”, one protester said. An Independent Police Review Authority investigation is under way. The quasi-independent IPRA has come under sharp criticism for clearing officers involved in shootings of wrongdoing in the vast majority of cases in recent years.

Two teenagers from Evanston, ages 16 and 17, and a 16-year-old from Skokie were each charged with two counts of burglary to a motor vehicle and were petitioned to juvenile court, according to a statement from the Evanston Police Department. He said he wants them to review the training around how officers respond to mental health crisis calls, and determine deficiencies and how to immediately address them.