Officials Ask For FBI Help in Double Chicago Police Shooting

The Chicago Police Department and Mayor Rahm Emanuel have come under scrutiny over the use of force and how the investigation was handled. He didn’t reply directly but pointed out that the problems at the CPD built up over decades, rather than in the last four years when he was mayor of the city.

Along with the increase in Tasers, the CPD will also change its procedures to emphasize mitigation or de-escalation techniques in hopes that officers will not resort to using deadly force as often.

Escalante said the department’s goal is to resolve confrontations using the least amount of physical or lethal force necessary and to “change the way officers think” when they approach a critical incident. Tasers are weapons that can deliver an incapacitating, non-lethal shock. The city has already announced it will add more body cameras to police equipment and that officers involved in fatal shootings will be put on a mandatory 30-day period of desk duty, compared with the current three-day policy.

Police on Saturday fatally shot 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier and a downstairs neighbor, 55-year-old Bettie Jones, as they responded to a domestic disturbance. One of them was a 55-year-old woman who police say was killed by accident.

Emanuel, joined by interim police Supt. McCarthy said that police-involved shootings were down 38 percent from a year ago and 65 percent from 2011.

Mayor Rahm Emanuel still can’t bring himself to go down that road.

The shooting prompted a federal civil-rights investigation of the Chicago Police Department. In an email dated April 14, 2015, from Shannon Breymaier of the mayor’s office to several people, she writes: Sun-Times reporter Fran was just badgering [city attorney] Steve down in council about why we won’t release the McDonald video.

Additionally, Emanuel said Chicago police will “double the number of tasers to 1400 while also providing officers in training to use them properly”. “But to recognize the degrees in between so they can respond to appropriately to each individual situation, where force can be the last option, not the first choice”.

Police say no one was arrested.

Emanuel pledged training to make police encounters with citizens “less confrontational and more conversational”.

“He is cutting his family trip short so that he can continue the ongoing work of restoring accountability and trust in the Chicago Police Department“, Stephen Spector, another spokesman for the mayor, said in an email.

Pearson noted that after a video was released showing a white officer shoot a black teenager 16 times, Emanuel forced his police superintendent to resign and gave an emotional public apology. “We want to make sure officers aren’t acting in either first gear or fifth gear, but to recognize the degrees in between”.