CHICAGO _ As battles over policing reform in Chicago continue, the agency that investigates shootings by police is recommending that the Police Department tighten its rules on deadly force to further limit the circumstances in which officers can shoot.
A quarterly report from the Independent Police Review Authority, or IPRA, in part aims at preventing shootings that could be considered legally justifiable _ but also unnecessary.
One recommendation calls for the department to revise its "fleeing felon" rule, which allows officers to shoot fleeing suspects who have committed violent crimes. The department's current policy mirrors the state statute on justifiable uses of deadly force by police, but IPRA recommended that the policy be revised to be more restrictive, barring officers from shooting fleeing felons except when officers reasonably believe those people pose an immediate threat to police or others.
IPRA also called for policy revisions to mandate that officers give warnings before shooting, when possible, and avoid drawing their weapons unless they are likely to have to shoot.
IPRA has found that police sometimes drew and pointed their guns at people without justification.
The agency's recommendation also calls for a symbolic change that would revise the policy to emphasize the importance of protecting all human life.
Tightening the rules could give police disciplinary authorities greater leeway to suspend or fire officers after shootings, which the city has almost never done. Of more than 400 police shootings of people since 2007, only three have been ruled to violate the city's use-of-force policies, records show.
Neither the Police Department nor police union officials could immediately be reached for comment.
IPRA's recommendations come amid a wave of changes to policing in Chicago triggered by protests that followed the release of a video last year that showed white police Officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times. Mayor Rahm Emanuel has announced plans to scrap and replace IPRA _ which has been slow and prone to superficial investigations that rarely lead to discipline for police _ but the oversight agency has sought to reform itself even as it faces elimination.
Changing policies related to force has the potential to spur political rancor; as Emanuel tries to cope with public anger over police abuse, he's also facing a surge in violent crime, believed by many to be a result of police avoiding confrontations with civilians that could land officers in trouble.
IPRA commissioned an outside review of shooting cases, which is ongoing, and Emanuel has publicly said that the fact that officers are legally justified to shoot in a range of situations doesn't mean they should fire in all of them.
IPRA's report notes McDonald's 2014 shooting. Van Dyke is charged with murder, though the city has yet to rule on whether that officer _ or those whose reports were at odds with video of the shooting _ violated policy.
"Based on our review of officer-involved shooting investigations, we are greatly concerned about the number of instances in which the use of deadly force may have been justified, but the scope of the force appears excessive based on the totality of the circumstances," IPRA's report reads.
"In particular, there have been investigations where the evidence suggests that the officers have continued to fire their weapons without making any assessment of whether the additional shots fired were really necessary. As (an example), we point to the 16 shots fired at Laquan McDonald."
