USA TODAY International Edition
Mayor apologizes over cop shooting
Embattled Mayor Rahm Emanuel offered a plaintive apology Wednesday for his responsibility in the city’s handling of the shooting death of a black teenager by a Chicago police officer.
Emanuel said the city is at a “defining moment” and that Chicago needs to go through a “painful but honest reckoning” not just in the case of last year’s shooting death of Laquan McDonald, 17, but “over decades” of mounting public distrust of the city’s police department. He vowed “complete and total reform” of the police department.
“The first step in that journey is my step, and I’m sorry,” Emanuel said in an emotional address to Chicago’s City Council. “What happened on Oct. 20, 2014, should have never happened. Supervision and leadership in the police department and oversight agencies that were in place failed. And that has to change.”
The mayor, a former threeterm U. S. congressman and chief of staff to President Obama, has been under fire, since the city was forced by court order more than two weeks ago to release police dashboard video of the shooting death of McDonald, who was shot 16 times by officer Jason Van Dyke.
Protesters who have taken to the streets of Chicago have called for both the mayor and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez to step down in the wake of the video’s release. The Justice Department also announced Monday that it was launching a patterns- and- practices investigation of the police department.
Police and police union officials said after the shooting that McDonald, who was holding a knife and had PCP in his system when he was killed, lunged at Van Dyke. But the police video showed that McDonald was veering away from Van Dyke when the officer fired. Van Dyke continued to fire for about 13 seconds after McDonald was on the ground, the video shows.
Emanuel had long resisted releasing the dashcam video, citing ongoing federal and state criminal probes, but was forced to after an independent journalist successfully sued the city for the video under state’s Freedom of Information law.
“Laquan McDonald’s death was totally avoidable,” Emanuel said. “Our only choice is to do everything in our power to right that wrong.”