Dec. 31--Mayor Rahm Emanuel on Wednesday rolled out his latest short-term steps to try to reduce the number of people shot by Chicago police, suggesting that training to "create more time and distance" to make tense situations "less confrontational and more conversational" would help.
"There's a difference between whether someone can use a gun and when they should use a gun. And we as a city must train for that difference," Emanuel said, referencing what he said was a conversation with a police sergeant.
The city also plans to buy hundreds of Tasers, a generally less-lethal option that has been available in the department for years, though not every officer has been trained to use them or carries them. Under Emanuel's plan, all officers would be trained by June and officers will be equipped before the start of a shift.
Emanuel, joined by interim police Superintendent John Escalante, suggested the training and additional Tasers would help ensure that officers' perspectives are changed so that "force can be the last option, not the first choice."
Police experts said de-escalation training can be helpful and Tasers, when used properly, can preserve the lives of police and arrestees. But the experts said no training or equipment will make a meaningful difference without effective supervision, policies and accountability.
Chicago has expanded Taser use before -- in 2010 -- and the city's own numbers indicate shootings by police did not drop in the following years, even though police used the Tasers vastly more often.
Emanuel was asked why he didn't make such changes in the previous four-plus years in office. The mayor pointed to other moves he's made while acknowledging he hasn't done everything he could under his tenure. Emanuel said the problems are "four or five decades in the making" and the changes will take time.
The mayor did not say how he would pay for doubling the number of police Tasers to 1,400, or the additional training.
Once again Wednesday, Emanuel found himself responding to a crisis, rather than being proactive in his approach to police actions that have led to protests downtown and outside his Northwest Side home.
In this case, the mayor was reacting to the early Saturday morning fatal police shootings of a 19-year-old college student and a 55-year-old grandmother identified as an innocent bystander. The shootings came as a police officer responded to a domestic disturbance at a West Garfield Park apartment building.
After Quintonio LeGrier and Bettie Jones were killed, some African-American and Latino aldermen questioned Police Department use of force policies and called for all officers to be equipped with Tasers. Emanuel announced the new policies on police training and Taser use late Tuesday, after a day of calls for him to do so, and just hours after he returned home from a family vacation to Cuba that he cut short.
In his first public comments since last weekend's shootings, Emanuel said that while in Cuba he talked to Escalante about the shootings Saturday morning, and asked for the phone numbers of the families so he could call them. Escalante said the weekend shootings were "a tragic accident" when asked why his department has not publicly released more information about what happened, and cited the ongoing investigation.
In previous cases, the mayor was reacting to public response to the release of an October 2014 police dashboard camera video that showed Officer Jason Van Dyke pumping 16 bullets into Laquan McDonald, a 17-year-old who was wielding a small knife but appeared to be walking away from officers. Most of the shots, which proved fatal, struck McDonald after he already was down on the pavement.
For months, Emanuel had fought to keep the video under wraps, but a judge ordered the footage released last month. Amid a storm of criticism, the mayor fired former police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, who he had defended days earlier. The mayor later replaced Scott Ando, his hand-picked head of the Independent Police Review Authority that investigates police shootings, as the protests continued.
The mayor also set up a task force to look into how IPRA investigates police misconduct, how to deal with officers who have faced multiple allegations of misconduct, as Van Dyke had, and the city's policy on the release of police videos. The panel has a March 31 deadline to report back.
At first, Emanuel also described the incident involving Van Dyke, who was charged with first-degree murder hours before the video was released, as the actions of one bad cop, only to later say during a special speech to the City Council that the department needed "complete and total reform" and was plagued by a "code of silence" that encourages cover-ups. The mayor also apologized.
And Emanuel eventually welcomed the U.S. Department of Justice civil rights probe into the policies and practices of Chicago police after first calling it misguided.
By stressing de-escalation tactics Wednesday, the mayor may be trying to get ahead of the Justice Department probe, which could take years. Similar investigations in other big U.S. cities have led to court-ordered consent decrees that require de-escalation training.
Hours before Emanuel had his news conference Wednesday, Cook County President Toni Preckwinkle said Tasers alone would not solve the longstanding problems between the Chicago Police Department and Latino and African-American neighborhoods.
"It's hard for me to believe that the police in the city of Chicago could get away with the shootings and executions of young black and brown men if the victims of those shootings and executions were white," Preckwinkle said. "There's a culture in the police department, I think, and in our larger society that black and brown lives don't matter in the same way that the lives of white people matter.
"And that's something we have to address more broadly in our society, but of course in our police department. And I think that's the challenge. It's not so much the weapons that are in the hands of our officers but their attitudes toward the people that they're serving."
Preckwinkle's comments came at an event convened in support of the Muslim community, and echoed sentiments expressed by state Rep. Mary Flowers, D-Chicago.
"Tasers kill also," Flowers said. "If you're not talking about the root of the problem being racism and ignorance and not respecting human beings as human beings, the Tasers will kill. ... Tasers only is not the answer."
The Rev. Jesse Jackson, whose Rainbow PUSH coalition organized the event, called the move to give officers Tasers "a little late."
But Jackson said "there will only be fundamental change on the issue if ... there are consequences for misconduct."
Also on Wednesday, about 25 activists gathered outside a district headquarters police station at Harrison Street and Kedzie Avenue demanding better training for officers and a department more attuned with the issues and concerns of black residents. The group stepped inside to try to meet with the station commander but instead had only a brief conversation with officers in the lobby.
Some activists also continued to call for Emanuel's resignation and for the officer involved in this past weekend's shooting to be fired.
"We are sick and tired of being sick and tired," activist Marseil Jackson said. "We're tired of being scared of living in our own community. ... It's a sad day in America when I cannot call 911 because I'm afraid I may get hurt."
Tribune reporters Cynthia Dizikes and Patrick M. O'Connell contributed.
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