Chicago officer pleads not guilty to murder charges

Jones and Quintonio LeGrier, 19, were killed early Saturday by police responding to a domestic d…

“We believe that Austin and Englewood and all these neighborhoods should have the same type of policing as they do in Ravenswood, Lakeview and Lincoln Park”.

Illinois Gov. Bruce Rauner says the latest fatal shootings by Chicago police raise questions about why officers don’t have more options besides using lethal force.

Police referred all questions to the Independent Police Review Authority, the agency that investigates possible police misconduct.

The mother of slain Quintonio LeGrier, centre, is comforted during a press conference to speak out about the shooting death of her son by Chicago police. “We could not to wait on the city to do it. The city did call and apologize and said it was an accident, but they didn’t think enough of the family to come clean up their accident”.

An aide to Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel was punched, kicked and tackled by a pair of assailants on Sunday night during a vigil for two people who had been shot and killed by police. He is coming back from his family vacation in Cuba Tuesday to a very tense city.

Emanuel has denied the allegation and has repeatedly said he won’t step down. The lawyer for the Jones family said police confiscated the hard drive of a home-security camera from across the street that captured the shootings.

“By all accounts-official and unofficial-a minimum of one in four fatal police encounters ends the life of an individual with severe mental illness”, according to a report from the Treatment Advocacy Center, a Virginia-based nonprofit dedicated to eliminating barriers to the treatment of severe mental illness. Quintonio’s father reportedly owns the two-story building and Ms. Jones was a downstairs neighbor.

Officers shot and killed LeGrier, a college student home for Christmas break.

“This needs to stop”, LeGrier’s mother Janet Cooksey told reporters Sunday.

Van Dyke was indicted on six murder charges earlier this month.

McDonald’s and other high-profile police killings drove hundreds of protesters to block Chicago’s retail district on Black Friday, the U.S.’s post-Thanksgiving sales event.

Protests erupted when a video of the shooting death of a black teenager by a white officer in 2014 was released.

Monday afternoon, Emanuel’s office issued a statement saying the Mayor is returning to Chicago so he can “continue the ongoing work of restoring accountability and trust in the Chicago Police Department”.

Cook County prosecutors were not available for comment after the arraignment.

Jason Van Dyke appeared in Cook County Criminal court Tuesday in Chicago.

He fired 16 rounds at McDonald and was reloading when another officer told him to hold fire. Police have said McDonald had a knife.

Responding to the pressure from civil rights activists, Emanuel admitted that the practices of former Chicago Police Commander Jon Burge, who served from the 1970s to the ’90s and was notorious for racist policing and extreme abuse of black residents, were a “stain that can not be removed from our city’s history”. As Van Dyke left the courthouse December 18, several groups of people shouted profanities and pounded on the black pickup truck he was riding in before it pulled away. According to the Chicago Tribune, Van Dyke is the first officer in 35 years charged with first-degree murder as a result of an on-duty incident.