Feb. 17--Mayor Rahm Emanuel said Tuesday that Chicago would begin releasing video footage of shootings by police within two to three months of the incident.
The new policy, recommended by Emanuel's new Police Accountability Task Force, would call for the city to release within 60 days any recordings or police reports related to shootings and other incidents of use of force by officers. The policy, however, allows law enforcement agencies to seek an additional 30-day delay.
In a telephone interview Tuesday afternoon, Emanuel said he'd adopted the task force's recommendations as part of his effort to rebuild trust between police and city residents in the fallout over the release of a disturbing video of the police shooting of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. He said nothing would prevent the release of information on a police incident before the 60-day deadline.
"(The task force) helped the city take a bold step forward, in a comprehensive way, to establish the rules going forward that are clear to everybody," he said.
Emanuel noted that the city, in the past, has sometimes taken years before releasing information about high-profile police shootings. In a news release, Emanuel called the old system for releasing information "out of date."
The task force was created late last year amid a public furor that followed the release of the video showing a white Chicago police officer shooting McDonald 16 times. The delay in releasing that footage was a key issue in the ensuing controversy, as the city released the video more than a year after the shooting following an unsuccessful court fight to keep it from public view. Just before the footage was released, Cook County prosecutors charged Officer Jason Van Dyke with McDonald's killing.
The release of police officers' reports on the incident inflamed controversy further, as their accounts of the shooting clashed with video footage that showed McDonald moving away from officers when he was shot.
dhinkel@tribpub.com
