Emanuel apologizes for police shooting as calls for resignation rise
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday apologized for how the city handled the shooting death of an unarmed African-American teenager by a police officer, amid swirling protests and calls for his resignation.
“We need a painful but honest reckoning of what went wrong, not just in this one instance but over decades,” the embattled mayor said during a special Chicago City Council meeting.
{mosads}Emanuel told the city’s aldermen that “nothing can excuse” what happened to Laquan McDonald, 17. Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with fatally shooting McDonald 16 times.
Outcry surrounding a dashcam video released two weeks ago of the October 2014 shooting helped spur a federal civil rights probe into the city’s police department, which was announced Monday.
Calls from activists for Emanuel to resign have continued to grow a week after he fired his police chief, with hundreds of protesters spilling into the streets of Chicago on Wednesday, according to the Chicago Tribune.
Demonstrators were unmoved by Emanuel’s apology, chanting “Rahm, resign!” and “What did Rahm know, and when did he know it?”
“Respect is a two-way street. You want your respect from young men of color, you have got to show it. And that’s vice versa,” Emanuel told reporters later in the day.
Prosecutors in Chicago announced earlier this week that they would not pursue criminal charges in another case where a police officer fatally shot a black man, saying the man had wielded a gun.
Emanuel addressed the city council Wednesday as a federal judge weighed releasing yet another video that reportedly shows the shooting of a teenager by police in 2013.
“Our city has been down this road before. We have seen fatal police shootings and other forms of abuse and corruption,” he said.
“We took corrective measures, but those measures never measured up to the challenge,” added Emanuel, who served as White House chief of staff during President Obama’s first term.
“That has to come to an end now. No citizen is a second-class citizen in the city of Chicago. If my children are treated one way, every child is treated the same way.”
Reps. Robin Kelly (D-Ill). and Luis Gutiérrez (D-Ill.) on Wednesday sent Attorney General Loretta Lynch a letter, inviting her to come visit Chicago.
“A visit from the Attorney General to meet with key stakeholders and constituents will signal to Chicagoans that the Department of Justice is making progress,” Kelly said in a statement obtained by The Hill.
“People need to see that something is being done to help rebuild trust in law enforcement,” she added.
“Ultimately, this is about building confidence in the police and getting them to work with communities that they protect and patrol,” Gutiérrez said.
Lynch visited riot-scarred Baltimore earlier this year, a week after a prosecutor announced charges would be filed in the police-involved death of Freddie Gray, an African-American man who died in police custody.
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