Chicago Releases Emails Surrounding Police Killing Of 17-Year-Old Boy

The announcement comes as protesters continue to call for Emanuel’s resignation after multiple police shootings that Black Lives Matter activists have rallied around. He called for the “complete and total reform of both the system and the police culture”.

The Independent Police Review Authority is investigating for the city. And he said “force can be the last option, not the first choice”.

Escalante called them “mitigation or de-escalation techniques”.

The statement said the department will also begin to require every officer who “responds to calls for service” to be equipped with a Taser and trained to use it by June 1, 2016. “These stories are getting done with or without us”.

Tasers shoot electrodes created to stun the intended targets.

The city plans to supply all officers with Tasers and overhaul its training methods to promote the deescalation of physical confrontations with suspected criminals, local newspaper the Chicago Sun-Times reported.

Laquan McDonald was fatally shot by Chicago cops in October 2014.

“This is not the end of but the beginning of a solution”, Emanuel said. Davis concluded that several police shootings he helped investigate should be ruled unjustified but he was overruled.

Emanuel, who this week had to interrupt his holiday vacation in Cuba because of another killing of an unarmed African American man by police, announced changes in police training and tactical measures to try and defuse a tense situation with the public. “While their investigation is underway, we must also make real changes within our police department today and it is clear changes are needed to how officers respond to mental health crises”. “Chicago is not unique that way”.

“Obviously, we as a city have a lot of work to do”, he said.

The shooting prompted a federal civil-rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department. “But we will finish the job top to bottom”. Escalante said the weekend shootings were “a tragic accident” when asked why his department has not publicly released more information about what happened, and cited the ongoing investigation.

He said the goal is for police in the field to establish “time and distance to allow for more prudent thinking, and physical space to promote a safer environment”. “Yes, and I intend to see them from start to finish”, Emanuel told reporters at City Hall. “Helping officers make that distinction – and the training that goes with it – is essential”.

Emanuel said the cities they examined shared a common tie of having “gone through a change with the Department of Justice”.

The changes come amid an uproar over shootings by police, including one in which a white officer shot a black teenager 16 times.

Mr Emanuel had not planned to be in Chicago on the day before New Year’s Eve.

Police tactics and racism have been the subject of an intense national debate since protests erupted in Ferguson, Missouri in August 2014 over the shooting death of another black teen, 18-year-old Michael Brown. Currently, about 20 percent of officers have Tasers.