Justice to open civil rights probe of Chicago police

Amid an outcry after the city waited more than a year to release dash-cam footage of Officer Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times, Mayor Rahm Emanuel announced this week that he was setting up a special task force to examine, among other things, the citys video-release policy.

Just weeks after a video of a white Chicago police officer fatally shooting a black teenager was released, the U.S. Department of Justice is expected to launch a sweeping investigation of the city’s police department to determine if officers have demonstrated a pattern or practice of violating civil rights, according to a report in the Washington Post on Sunday.

The source, who spoke on condition of anonymity, would not elaborate on the investigation.

The probe in Chicago would follow growing protests over the death of Laquan McDonald, who was shot in 2014 by Officer Jason Van Dyke. The officers’ statements are at odds with the dashboard video camera footage, which shows McDonald walking away from Van Dyke before the officer fired 16 bullets in less than 15 seconds. The video does not include sound, which authorities have not explained.

Emanuel has come under fire for his administration’s handling of the McDonald video, specifically for fighting its release for more than a year, which some have suggested was a politically motivated decision meant to insulate the mayor from political backlash while he was locked in a tight re-election effort.

After a week of street protests, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel ultimately fired his top cop, Garry McCarthy, despite spending the previous week claiming that he had full confidence in his police superintendent.

But the pressure on the mayor has not diminished. Protesters counted to 16 during the march, a number that has taken on a symbolic significance since the demonstrations began.

“We welcome the engagement of the Department of Justice as we work to restore trust in our police department and improve our system of police accountability”, Collins said.

On the same day that McCarthy was sacked, Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan wrote a letter to the DOJ urging them to open an investigation into the police department.

On Friday, Chicago released hundreds of pages that show police officers reported a very different version of the McDonald encounter than video shows. That further angered activists and protesters, who were already accusing the city of covering up what really happened the night McDonald was killed.

Five officers at the scene broadly backed up Van Dyke’s account in their own statements made to investigators after the shooting, according to police reports.

Police departments in Ferguson, MO, and Baltimore, MD, which have also seen questionable use of deadly force on the part of police officers, are being investigated by the Civil Rights Division.

The Justice Department launched an investigation in May into the Baltimore Police Department’s use of force and whether there were patterns of discriminatory policing after the death of Freddie Gray, a 25-year-old black man, who suffered fatal injuries while in police custody.

The Rev. Jesse Jackson says he hopes the sight of protesters holding a disciplined and non-violent march will prompt the city to “dispense justice and fairness all across the city”.

Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez’s office will investigate the possibility of criminal charges against the officer, her office said Wednesday.

“All three of them – the police, City Hall and the prosecutor’s office – are suspect”, Jackson said. “We can not trust them”.