Pressure Mounts on Chicago Mayor to Resign After Latest Shooting
by NEWSMAX Wires
Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, President Obama’s former chief of staff, is under increasing pressure to resign after police shot and killed two black citizens over the weekend.
Appearing on MSNBC’s “Morning Joe” on Tuesday, former Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean said Emanuel “is in deep trouble.”
Also appearing on “Morning Joe” on Monday, black activist and MSNBC commentator Al Sharpton, called on Emanuel to step down.
“I’ve never seen this kind of detachment in the years that I’ve been fighting, whether I got along with the mayor or not,” he said.
Pressure intensified on the embattled mayor over his lack of urgency after the latest shootings when he initially said he would not cut short his vacation in Cuba. Sharpton called Emanuel’s lack of reaction “the height of arrogance.”
Emanuel decided Monday to come home early from his vacation, which began Dec. 18.
“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,” Emanuel spokeswoman Kelley Quinn said on Monday.
She said the mayor would return on Tuesday instead of Saturday.
The mayor on his return will face renewed protests over police shootings after Bettie Jones, 55, and college student Quintonio LeGrier, 19, were killed early on Saturday. Police said Jones was killed by accident during the altercation with LeGrier.
The fatal police shootings on Saturday were the first in America’s third most populous city since it released a video in late November showing an October 2014 police shooting of a black teen that belied the official account he had lunged at police with a knife.
LeGrier’s father has said his son had mental health issues and that he called the police early in the morning because his son had threatened him with a metal baseball bat.
Chicago police said LeGrier was being combative. It offered condolences in the shooting of Jones, who lived on the first floor of the building.
The release of a Chicago police video last month of the fatal shooting of a black teenager, which had been withheld for more than a year, led to the resignation of the city’s police chief and the start of a U.S. Department of Justice probe into whether the city’s police use lethal force too often, especially against minorities.
“He’s in deep trouble,” Dean said Tuesday morning. “This has been going on for a long time. Suppression of the film for 450 days because he was running for re-election . . .
“The Chicago Police Department is in a lot of trouble. They were running essentially off-the-record jails. Incarcerating Chicagoans and nobody knew where they were. They wouldn’t tell their lawyers. This is completely out of control. Completely out of control. The city is out of control.”
A protest focusing on police issues and a call for Emanuel to resign is planned at City Hall on Thursday.
Illinois Democratic state Representative La Shawn Ford, who is pushing legislation to permit a mayoral recall, said the main question was how the mayor intends to rebuild trust between Chicago residents and what critics regard as a trigger-happy police force.
“He should be at every police district, meeting with every officer in this city and letting them know where he stands on brutality and misconduct by the police,” said Ford.
Emanuel became Chicago’s mayor in 2011 and was re-elected earlier this year. He was already facing pressure over high crime and gang violence in parts of the city and skyrocketing taxes.
Supporters of the victims’ families made their own protest against the mayor on Sunday, some wearing t-shirts reading “Rahm Failed Us,” and several speakers at a media conference demanding to know why police used lethal force.
Regarding Saturday’s shooting, police said LeGrier was being combative. They said Jones was killed by accident and extended condolences. Chicago police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said on Monday he did not know if there was video of the shooting.
However, attorney Larry Rogers Jr., representing Jones’ family, said at a prayer vigil on Sunday that there may be a video from a house under construction across the street, along with possible police footage.
Material from Reuters was used in this report.
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