Responding to mistrust, feds investigate Chicago police

“And when suspicion and hostility is allowed to fester, it can erupt into unrest”.

The head of the Independent Police Review Authority said Tuesday that she wants an agency besides her own to look into the conduct of the officers at the scene of the Laquan McDonald shooting, but she vowed to reinvestigate another controversial police case involving a video. “That’s why independent investigations are so crucial in these cases”, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel said in a statement Monday. Police reports that were released over the weekend (hosted on the website of the Chicago Tribune) indicate several officers at the scene give accounts that differ from the video.

Last week, Emanuel fired police superintendent Garry McCarthy amid controversy over a video showing a white police officer fatally shooting a black teenager 16 times.

“I promise you I bring no agenda other than the pursuit of integrity and transparency in the work that IPRA does”, Fairley said.

US Attorney General Loretta Lynch announced on Monday that the US Justice Department opened a probe into the Chicago Police Department’s practices following the release of a video showing a white officer shooting dead a black young man in 2014. Oppenheimer also described the state attorney’s press conference, which used blown-up visuals-that Alvarez herself described as “grainy, dark (and) blurry”-to prove their allegations, as a “27-minute infomercial”.

Alexa Van Brunt, attorney at the McArthur Justice Center and clinical professor of law at Northwestern University, has litigated on behalf of victims of violence in past Chicago police misconduct cases.

Prosecutors on Monday showed police vehicle dashboard video to reporters and played audiotapes of police radio communications and 911 emergency calls.

Alvarez said Hernandez would have been able to see a man struggle with a plainclothes officer before breaking away and fleeing on foot and could hear officers shouting for the man – Johnson – to stop and drop his weapon.

“We are in the digital age, and we didn’t have videos like this 15 or 20 years ago and now we do”, Alvarez said. And it’s a pretty wide-ranging investigation that is obviously very important, I think, both for the city of Chicago as well as for the country.

Johnson’s family and its attorney rejected Alvarez’s decision, calling it a “joke” and dismissing authorities’ assertions that Johnson was armed.

“They asked us our position in telephone calls – we said it was not our preference to release it, but it was ultimately their decision because of the FOIA”, Alvarez spokeswoman Sally Daly told POLITICO. “Time and time again we look at these videos, and there is not any audio”.

The video, however, showed that McDonald was veering away from the officer when he opened fire. Relying on the testimony of corporation counsel Patton, the City Council agreed to a $5 million settlement without a lawsuit being filed or members of City Council looking at the incriminating tape. The city’s early efforts to suppress its release coincided with Emanuel’s re-election campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes in a tight race.

Attorney General Loretta Lynch speaks during a news conference at the Justice Department in Washington, Monday, Dec. 7, 2015.

More than 51% of likely voters said Emanuel should resign, while 29% said he should not step down, according to the poll commissioned by The Insider, a newsletter published by Illinois Observer. The Rev. Jesse Jackson said he hopes it would focus not only on the police department, but on Emanuel’s office and the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office.

“The fact that you have three entities, and if people are not telling the truth, that they… believe there is a permissive culture that enables that, rather than hold them accountable, we have a problem because people don’t trust it”, Emanuel said. Our expert is telling us there are aggravated circumstances and the police did all of them.

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

WBBM’s Steve Miller reports that new IPRA head Sharon Fairley is asking Chicago Inspector General Joe Ferguson to investigate the officers’ statements.