Chicago mayor fires chief of police in wake of video

Associated Press

CHICAGO

Rahm Emanuel sought for months to keep the public from seeing a video that shows a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.

Now, a week after the video’s release, the Chicago mayor has fired the police superintendent, created a task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras.

But Emanuel’s effort to keep the video secret and his long wait to take action at the police department have stirred deep skepticism among those protesting the teen’s death. Many activists are especially incensed by the fact that the video first surfaced during a re-election campaign, when the mayor was seeking African-American votes.

The mayor’s quest for a second term sustained a setback after he failed to win the February election. He desperately needed black support to prevail in an April runoff.

But Emanuel had angered black voters with his decision to close dozens of schools. And many African-Americans complained that the city was not doing enough to police the predominantly black West and South Sides.

Had it emerged earlier, the video “could have buried” Emanuel’s chances for re-election, Columbia Law School professor Bernard E. Harcourt wrote in a New York Times op-ed piece published Monday.

The mayor defended the decision to withhold the video from the public until the investigation was finished and the officer charged with murder. He said the move had nothing to do with his 2015 campaign.

“You don’t compromise an ongoing investigation,” he said Tuesday. “Yet it’s clear you all want and the public deserves that information. They’re two conflicting principles.”

Asked by a reporter if Emanuel thought he would become a distraction himself and would consider resigning, the mayor responded, “You’ll make that judgment. I think I’m doing my job.”

Emanuel announced the dismissal of Superintendent Garry McCarthy, whose departure Tuesday came just a week after the video was released.

Protesters have been calling for McCarthy’s dismissal in response to the handling of the death of Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was killed in October 2014.

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan on Tuesday requested that the U.S. Department of Justice investigate whether the Chicago Police Department’s practices violate federal and constitutional law. Madigan in a letter to U.S. Attorney General Loretta Lynch asked that the investigation weigh, among other things, the department’s use of deadly force and whether a pattern or practice of discriminatory policing exists.