Justice Department investigates Chicago police

Garry McCarthy was forced to resign and the U.S. Department of Justice announced an investigation into the Chicago Police Department’s “patterns and practices”.

Mr. Emanuel said he’d not received a “satisfactory response” about how the policemen handled Mr. Coleman, “and as a result I don’t consider this case to be closed or the investigation into what occurred that night to be over”.

“Specifically, we will examine a number of issues related to the CPD’s use of force, including its use of deadly force; racial, ethnic and other disparities in its use of force; and its accountability mechanisms, such as its disciplinary actions and its handling of allegations of misconduct”, she said.

The civil rights probe would follow others recently in Baltimore and Ferguson, Missouri, and comes as the police department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel are under intense scrutiny.

“Our goal in this investigation … is not to focus on individuals but to improve systems”, the United States’ top law enforcement official said.

In a second week of protests at City Hall, groups of demonstrators continued their call for Mayor Rahm Emanuel to step down.

A senior USA military official told the Associated Press that the United States is “certain” that it was Russian Federation that hit a Syrian army camp in the city of Deir ez-Zor, killing three Syrian soldiers.

The U.S. Justice Department says it will investigate Chicago’s police department following protests over the 2014 shooting death of a black teenager, on the same day local prosecutors said they would not seek charges in another police-shooting case.

After the explosive video was released, Van Dyke was charged with murder, Chicago police Supt.

Emanuel will speak Monday afternoon on police accountability with interim Chicago Police Superintendent John Escalante and the new head of the Independent Police Review Authority, a city agency that investigates police cases. “State’s Attorney Alvarez must resign”. Alvarez showed police vehicle dashboard video to reporters on Monday, which showed an officer firing at Johnson. Alvarez alleged that Ronald Johnson III, who was shot in the back while running away from the police, was carrying a gun, according to the Chicago Tribune.

Michael Oppenheimer, the Johnson family attorney, stated his disbelief in the decision, calling it “a joke” and “the blind leading the blind”, according to ABC News.

Holmes filed a federal lawsuit against Chicago police shortly after her son’s death, and the defendants filed a motion to block the video’s release.

Here’s your cheat sheet on the shady sh*t the Chicago Police Department has to account for. The city released several police reports this past weekend, and there were five officers that kind of all gave the same narrative about how Laquan McDonald was attacking officers, and that when he was shot and down on the ground, how he was still trying to get up and trying to attack officers.

Policing expert Samuel Walker had similarly said there’s a “terrible void” of information about how internal affairs units work and that internal affairs officers often have no specialized training and have been pushed into a role they didn’t choose.

Authorization for the Justice Department to conduct such investigations came under a 1994 civil rights law passed after a black motorist, Rodney King, was videotaped being beaten by police in Los Angeles.

“Officer Arturo Becerro said: “(I) saw (Laquan) in the middle of the street flailing arm, saw a knife in (his) hand, heard multiple shots, did not see who fired”.

No criminal charges will be filed against the Chicago police officer who shot and killed Ronald Johnson in October 2014, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez said Monday. It comes almost two weeks after the release of a video showing a white Chicago police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.

Emanuel initially said a federal civil rights investigation of Chicago police tactics would be “misguided”.

“If people are not telling truth but believe there’s a permissible culture that enables that rather than holds them accountable, we have a problem because people won’t trust it”, Emanuel said Monday. Coleman clashed violently with police officers at the hospital where he was taken for treatment, trying to seize an officer’s Taser, it said.

This story has been corrected to show the name of the new head of the Independent Police Review Authority is Sharon Fairley, not Fairly.