- former mayor of Chicago and former Obama Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel on the concept of Medicare for All, embraced by a majority of Democratic 2020 presidential candidates
As the first quarter of 2016 nears an end, violence in Chicago has reached levels unseen in years, putting the city on course to top 500 homicides for only the second time since 2008.
As of 6 a.m. Wednesday, homicides totaled 135, a 71 percent jump over the 79 killings in the same year-earlier period, official Police Department statistics show. That represented the worst first quarter of a year since 136 homicides in 1999, according to the data.
Shootings have jumped by comparable numbers as well. As of Wednesday, at least 727 people had been shot in Chicago so far this year, a 73 percent rise from 422 a year earlier, according to a Tribune analysis of department data.
Worse yet, that jump follows two consecutive years in which shootings rose by double digits, the analysis found. Homicides also rose by about 12.5 percent last year over 2014.
Crime experts caution about making year-to-year comparisons, but Arthur Lurigio, a professor of criminal justice and psychology at Loyola University Chicago, called the escalating violence at the start of the year "alarming."
"We have to go back decades to find jumps of this magnitude in year-to-year comparisons," he said. "We're on our way to 500 homicides again. We're going backward."
Thousands of emails were released yesterday after multiple requests from the press about communications between the Chicago police and Mayor Rahm Emanuel‘s office over the death of Laquan McDonald.Will the Left go as hard after a politician with a (D) after his name, when it comes to police brutality, as they do the NRA and Republicans? Or is even the "outrage" concerning the deaths of innocent, young black people by police, just used as a another political ploy to keep minorities in this ocuntry voting Democrat?
You’ll recall that back in November, the Chicago PD released video of an officer repeatedly shooting McDonald. That officer, Jason Van Dyke, has been indicted on counts of first-degree murder.
Community outrage has centered around Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel. He has pledged police reforms and even fired the chief of police.
But according to the AP, there was email correspondence between Emanuel’s office, the police, and the independent police review board Emanuel set up in which there were concerns about how bad it would be for the city if this became a story.The head of the Independent Police Review Authority emailed in March about sending witness interview transcripts to the law department so they could use them for settlement negotiations.
And in May, when a spokesman for the review board asked Emanuel about doing interviews (since there was some media interest in the case), an Emanuel spokesman said that they need to “tread lightly” if the focus is on the specifics of the case.
That same spokesman also sent out another email expressing his frustration with how the––again, independent––review board didn’t go along with what he said about one particular media inquiry.
He finally sent out an email, days before the video was finally released in November, asking that everyone speak with “one voice” on the matter.And then there’s this, from another Emanuel aide, worried about the blowback from the case:
As you might imagine, the timing and details discussed in the Sun-Times article and growing interest in the McDonald incident has not worked in our favor, and is helping to “stir the pot.”
Last week, Hillary Clinton gave Rahm Emanuel her vote of confidence even after it became clear that the mayor’s administration deliberately withheld the video of the shooting of Laquan McDonald until after his re-election. This week, Chicagoans have a much different answer for the former adviser to Hillary’s husband. USA Today reports that a poll of Chicago voters puts Emanuel’s approval rate at a microscopic 18%, while a majority of respondents demand his resignation (via Newsalert):RELATED: New Bill Introduced In Illinois To Recall Mayor Rahm Emanuel
A new poll published on Tuesday shows that more than half of Chicagoans believe Mayor Rahm Emanuel should resign in the aftermath of the release of a police dashboard video that shows a white police officer shooting a black teen 16 times.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.Only 18% approved of how Emanuel is handling his job and 67% disapproved, according to the poll which was conducted by the Chicago firm Ogden & Fry. Meanwhile, 63.2% of respondents said they did not believe the mayor when he said he did not view the disturbing video of officer Jason Van Dyke shooting Laquan McDonald ahead of its public release.The pollster offered a caveat to his one-day survey:
“Right now, you’re in the middle of a strong emotional response,” said pollster Tom Swiss. “I would be curious to how people are feeling in a month or two months.”Well, maybe, but this isn’t just the day after, either. The video finally got released before Thanksgiving, a little over two weeks ago. It was a full week ago that Emanuel insisted he wouldn’t resign, and tried to quell the firestorm by firing a police superintendent over the shooting. Thus far, the “strong emotional response” does not appear to be receding, nor the political judgment which it has created.
When Rahm Emanuel was a congressman, he was nicknamed “the Jewish LBJ,” not only for his ambition, but for his reputation as an amoral political animal focused only on power. Now that he’s facing his biggest crisis as mayor of Chicago – the coverup of a video showing a police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times – he’s looking much more like Richard Nixon.If liberals are serious about justice for Laquan McDonald, they'd start a petition now to get Barack Obama's longtime buddy and former counsel Rahm Emanuel to resign as mayor of Chicago for his part in this major coverup.
On Tuesday morning, Emanuel began attempting to excise this cancer on his mayoralty by firing Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, a move reminiscent of Nixon’s dismissals of H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. Then he held an “I Am Not Corrupt” press conference, which one veteran City Hall reporter called “the most unusual in his four-and-a-half years as mayor,” because he showed up on time and answered questions. When Rahm Emanuel starts treating people with respect, you know he’s in trouble. He also appointed his very own special prosecutors, announcing the formation of a Police Accountability Task Force, to be advised by former Massachusetts Gov. Deval Patrick, a Chicago native.
Emanuel was asked whether he had sat on the video – which was released 400 days after the incident, as the result of a lawsuit by a freelance journalist – to protect his reelection bid.
“The family came forward on February 27 contacting the city,” the mayor explained. “In a short time, we reached a conclusion. As it relates to the video, that on the completion of the investigation, the video would be made public, which is what happened. It is a common practice that you don’t release material essential to an investigation.”
Feb. 27 was three days after the mayoral election. Emanuel received 46 percent of the vote, forcing him into a runoff with Cook County Commissioner Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, in which the support of the city’s black voters would be decisive. The “conclusion” was a $5 million settlement with the family of Laquan McDonald, the 17-year-old gunned down by Officer Jason Van Dyke. The shooting occurred on Oct. 20, 2014. The video was finally released last month. A Cook County judge ordered it made public in response to a suit by journalist Brandon Smith. (The police department had previously turned down 14 Freedom of Information Act requests from news agencies.) Almost simultaneously, Emanuel condemned the officer for violating the public trust “at every level,” and Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez charged him with first-degree murder.
There’s even a missing tape in this Nixonian saga. After McDonald was shot, police spent hours viewing security camera footage at a Burger King across the street from the scene. When officials from the Independent Police Review Board asked to view the footage, 86 minutes were missing, from 9:13 p.m. to 10:39 p.m. McDonald was shot at 9:57. The store’s manager believes police erased the tape, but the FBI says it found no evidence of tampering.
Police shoot civilians all the time in Chicago, which has led the nation in homicides for every full year of Emanuel’s term. In 2014, they killed 17 and wounded 28. As the Chicago Tribune noted in a headline last year, “In Chicago, police shootings rarely protested.” But this shooting was different, because the video contradicted the official story that McDonald had lunged at officers with a knife, and because it ended with the sight of smoke trails from bullets passing through his inert body. On the day after Thanksgiving, protesters formed a human wall outside the tony shops on Michigan Avenue, causing one would-be Apple Store patron to wail, “I’m an American. I just want to shop!” On Monday, the University of Chicago campus was closed after an anonymous threat to shoot 16 white males in retaliation for McDonald’s death.
