Chicago announces ‘fundamental’ changes to police practices

On Thursday morning, even as Black Lives Matter protesters chanting “16 shots and a cover-up” marched along downtown Chicago’s Michigan Avenue, the city’s law office sent reporters thousands of pages of emails related to the dashboard camera video that recorded the teen’s death. Some of the emails released Thursday include officials discussion how to respond to requests to release police dash-cam video of that shooting. The city released the video last month under court order over a year after officer Jason Van Dyke shot and killed McDonald.

After the release of the emails, Adam Collins, a spokesman for the mayor, told The Chicago Sun-Times that “City Hall was never involved with [the Independent Police Review Authority’s] investigation of McDonald”.

The Police Department will begin to require every cop who “responds to calls for service” to be equipped with a Taser and trained to use it by June 1, 2016, Emanuel said.

Emanuel announced a number of police reforms during a press conference today to “rebuild the trust that our police officers need to do their job safely and effectively”. Emanuel ended his Cuba vacation early this week to deal with fallout from the police shooting to death a 55-year-old mother and a 19-year-old college student, whom relatives said had suffered from mental issues.

The release of the video set off weeks of demonstrations and forced the resignation of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy.

While the mayor hinted at how we got to the place where white Chicago Police officers are killing black people in encounters that don’t appear to have required deadly force, he didn’t get to the nitty-gritty.

In a shocking plot twist within the ever growing narrative of police brutality cases in the United States, we once again see injustice reign, as Chicago Police officer Jason Van Dyke pleaded not guilty to murder and misconduct charges in the shooting death of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. “We expect that every police officer develops skills and abilities that allow them to help dissolve confrontations by the using the least amount of physical or lethal force necessary”, he said. Van Dyke was charged with murder 13 months after the shooting and just before the video was released to the public.

Chicago police say LeGrier was “combative” toward officers before he was shot early Saturday.

Chicago police are to receive new training and equipment following tension over fatal shootings of African-Americans by white officers.

He said police must learn when they can use a gun and when not to do so. They say Jones was accidentally hit. Emanuel has apologized for the McDonald shooting, fired his police chief and created a task force to review police department policies. He noted that on audio recordings of communications between dispatchers and officers on the scene, several are heard “frantically” asking for a Taser before the shooting.