Rahm Emanuel is gettting away with Murder

    McDonaldChicago's Rahm Emanuel has about as ugly record as a Mayor can have when it comes to protecting the public - especially African Americans - from police brutality. An ongoing series by the Guardian this year revealed that since Emanuel took office in 2011, the Chicago Police Department (CPD) has detained over 2500 people – nearly all of whom are black - at a secretive facility known as Homan Square. Locals liken it to a CIA “black site” where arrestees are routinely held for hours or longer and subject to physical abuse.

    In response to reports by 1) four black men of “prolonged shackling and off the books interrogation,” 2) attorneys who say they were unconstitutionally denied access to clients, and 3) white protesters that they were shackled for 17 hours at Homan Square, Emanuel told the Guardian “we follow all the rules”.

    In July 2014, Emanuel declined to follow the recommendation of the Chicago Independent Police Review Authority (IPRA) to strip Commander Glenn Evans of his authority.  IPRA had investigated a complaint that Evans jammed his handgun down a black suspect's throat and held a taser against his crotch while threatening to kill him. Notwithstanding a DNA test finding the Ricky Lee Williams' saliva on the muzzle of Evans' weapon, Emanuel left him in command. Evans was only discharged after he was charged with assault stemming from the Williams arrest.

    In October, Emanuel attributed the recent uptick in Chicago's crime rate to tentative police who fear they will be videotaped by cell phone wielding citizens when they arrest suspects. To protect themselves, from unfair charges of police brutality, many officers are becoming “fetal” the Mayor said. The Mayor did not explain how the cops at Homan Square and Commander Evans managed to torture and batter citizens while “fetal”.

    Chicago is now being roiled by protests stemming from the release of a police videotape of the execution-style killing of 17 year old Laquan McDonald in October 2014 by white Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke. The video shows that McDonald was walking away from the cop whose first rounds struck the teen in the back spinning him to the ground where he collapsed into a fetal – there's that word again - position facing the killer cop who emptied his 16-bullet clip into McDonald's prone motionless body. Within days the officer was taken off the streets and given a desk job.

    In the wake of the killing, Emanuel did everything he could to prevent the video's release. This included 1) requesting approval of a $5 million settlement with McDonald's family in April 2015 – just a few days after Emanuel won re-election in a run-off against a progressive challenger tapped by the Chicago Teachers Association – even though several officers on the scene described the shooting as legitimate self-defense, 2) denying 15 FOIA requests for the video, 3) fighting in court a lawsuit brought by a journalist demanding the video's release.

    In light of this history, one might expect the President and the leading Democratic Presidential candidates to distance themselves from Emanuel if not to follow the lead of Roots Action and demand the Democratic Mayor's resignation. One would be wrong.

    President Obama and Hillary Clinton released anodyne statements on social media expressing dismay at the McDonald slaying but studiously avoiding mentioning Emanuel. Both singled out the police for praise. On facebook, Obama asked Americans to be “thankful for the overwhelming majority of men and women in uniform who protect our communities with honor.” For her part Clinton decried on twitter the “loss of so many young African Americans taken too soon” but like Obama reminded us that “[a]ll over America, there are police officers honorably doing their duty”.

    Obama's and Clinton's refusal to chastise Emanuel, even in the mildest terms, is understandable. Obama endorsed Emanuel, who was his first White House Chief of Staff, against a much more progressive challenger earlier this year. In 2011, Bill Clinton campaigned for Emanuel. Hillary has praised Emanuel as the “glue” who held Bill Clinton's cabinet together. Suggesting Emanuel did less than he should have would be akin to admitting they badly misjudged a man they have empowered and relied upon heavily.

    Still, their broad-based encomiums for the police set a standard in tone-deafness given that many police are complicit in McDonald's death and protecting Van Dyke after the fact:

    1) Five officers watched Van Dyke gun down McDonald and said nothing.

    2) The manager of the Burger King near where McDonald was slain claims a CPD detective and technician seized surveillance footage from the restaurant and returned the records with the video from the time of the shooting missing.

    3) Prior to killing McDonald, Van Dyke had never apparently been subject to disciplinary action, despite A) the fact that CPD had received 20 citizens complaints against him including several claims of brutality and that he used the n-word and B) a payout by the city of over $500,000 after a jury finding that Van Dyke employed excessive force when arresting a suspect for a traffic violation.

    4) Van Dyke was not fired until it became clear that CPD and the Mayor's Office could not prevent the video's release.

    Less understandable than Clinton's and Obama's inadequate response to Emanuel's neck-deep involvement in the latest Chicago police outrage, are Bernie Sanders' tepid comments.

    All Americans should be sickened by the video of Laquan McDonald’s murder. As a nation we must do more than just echo the phrase Black Lives Matter. We must put actions behind those words. Actions that will bring about the fundamental reform that is needed in the face of this crisis. Criminal justice reform must be the civil rights issue of the 21st century and the first piece must be putting an end to the killing of African Americans by police officers.

    At least he didn't praise the police. But with no connections to Emanuel, whose impeccable DLC credentials make him anathema to the progressives who support Sanders, the Vermont Senator missed a golden opportunity to call directly for a full-scale Justice Department investigation into the unconstitutional practices of CPD and Emanuel's involvement in covering them up. Perhaps, Sanders feared that taking too confrontational approach might hurt him with the white working-class voters he is trying to woo. If this is the case, it is most regrettable.

    Regardless of the reasons, top Democrats are wrong to give Emanuel a pass. Doing so flies in the face of their claims to support the “Black Lives Matter” movement. Nothing would reform bad police departments like the indictment, or failing that, the forced resignation of a high-profile Mayor and Police Superintendent because they protected killer cops.

    City and county executives, police chiefs, sheriffs, and other top police officials will be loath to cover up brutal cops if doing so is likely to lead to the end of their political careers and possibly jail time. With the recognition that their political livelihood depends on overseeing clean forces, bad apples will quickly be removed to prevent their taint rubbing off and police killings are likely to be fewer and farther between.

    Moreover, Democrats lose the moral high ground when they fail to call out their own. Progressives rightly in my view see themselves as morally superior to right-wing Republican knuckle-draggers. But how superior can we be if our party's leaders support a powerful Mayor who repeatedly ignores well-documented examples of police brutality thereby enabling the abusers.

    Finally, when Democratic leaders back an unrepentant Rahm Emanuel, they greatly weaken their (and our) ability to rally Americans to support them and the obvious liberal solutions to our most serious problems.

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    Comments

    Great blog, Hal.  Emanuel is an unfortunately protected animal in the political ecosystem.  No comeuppance, for some reason.


    Good post, Hal. You obviously spent some time researching and put it together well. I agree with practically all of it, with the exception being your assertion that the President and democratic candidates should be leading the charge against Emanuel.

    As much as we might believe in the importance of speaking out, it's also important to remember that national figures have to be careful about individual state - especially racially charged - issues. And here we have no proof of anything that they can cleanly point out as worthy of denouncing him, or other officials, publicly.

    I am outraged by the entire, ongoing and allegedly criminal behavior in Chicago from the mayor on down - but expecting top democrats to weigh in at this point is simply unrealistic. Imagine if they spoke out regarding equally (though less publicized) agregious behavior in other states? With lesser known but culpable mayors or police department leaders? Unless we're choosing which heads to roll, we must accept that Obama, Clinton and Sanders aren't the ones to lead the fight against Emanuel. Especially since the DOJ and the state of IL have thus far chosen not to.


    Great reply...you said everything I would have said had I been more eloquent.  Thanks, barefooted, for getting all of my concerns and responses out there.

    And Hal, yes, excellent post. 


    Thanks, Lis.


    The President should be leading the charge - even more than Clinton or Sanders - because he is ultimately in charge of the Justice Department which should be investigating Emanuel.  http://chicago.suntimes.com/opinion/7/71/1135359/carol-marin-feds-drag-i...


    Another good post, Hal.


    Excellent post. Rahm is in lockstep with the Mayors of Baltimore and Cleveland in avoiding confrontation with the police over issues of abuse. The prosecutor in Chicago was forced to bring charges. The prosecutor in Cleveland has had over a year to bring charges in the Tamir Rice case and seems to be attempting to blow the case by releasing biased reports. It took a new prosecutor in Baltimore, elected against the wishes of the Democratic machine. Rahm is not unique.

    When NYC Mayor DeBlasio talked about the risk his son faced from police abuse, police officers turned turned turned backs on him. There is great risk in challenging police power. Mayors realize that at the end of the day, the likelihood that a jury will convict a police officer because of a fatality is very slim. For politicians, there is little to gain by forcefully challenging police.

     


    Yes, but Emanuel is insidiously worse on the face of it. He's not nearly as interested in protecting the police as he is himself; hence waiting to offer five million in hush money 'til after his reelection. The attempt to deny access to video, etc., that would lead to expected outrage wasn't to protect the police - it was to shield him from questions regarding timing and cover-up attempts.


    In a liberal city where the black population is about equal in size to the white, the electoral risk Emanuel would face in standing up to the police is much less great than that which D.A.'s and sheriffs would face in predominantly white rural counties or counties where the black vote is suppressed.
     


     

    Police know that they can use any action taken against them as a reason that will  crime increase. Look at NYC. Stop and Frisk became more limited. There were protests after the choking death of a man selling loose cigarettes. The NYC noted that he had concerns about the risk his on faced from police.  When two NYPD were killed by a madman, the Mayor and those who protested against police violence were blamed. 

    The NYT published an article noting an increase in violent crime in 35 cities. It did not focus on crime declining in other cities. In the case of NYC,the NYT compared homicides in 2015 to those in 2014. The article did not mention that homicides were still lower in 2015 than they were in 2013. Was 2013 a "bad' and 2014 a "good" year, or are we witnessing normal fluctuations in crime? It is hard to pinpoint why crime goes up or down. Despite that uncertainty, a Mayor will be blamed if crime goes up in their city. The police know that they have this leverage over the Mayor. Attack the police and watch crime rise.

    in Baltimore there has been a large increase in homicides. Protests after the death of Freddie Gray in police hands are blamed, but the crime spike occurred before the homicide. Similarly, there is little data to support a national "Ferguson effect" where police are inactive secondary to public recording police activity.

    https://reason.com/blog/2015/09/02/cities-see-spikes-in-murder-violent-crim

    Facts do not matter. If crime goes up, the Mayor will be blamed. Under these circumstances, many Mayors taken no action against police.. 

    Note: 538 also gives Amore nuanced analysis of crime statistics

    http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/scare-headlines-exaggerated-the-u-s-...


    I don't quite understand - while Emanuel should be held responsible for his city, the problem of police brutality is nation-wide. I'm more interested in politicians addressing the larger problem - I expect the Chicago papers will trash Emanuel well enough.

    The other aspect is that police can't be made the enemy in doing this - Digby occasionally posts examples of police acting restrained, respectful, caring - those are the cops that need to lead the reform.

    The family of Laquan McDonald and the people of Chicago deserve justice and accountability. As criminal charges proceed in this case, we also have to grapple as  acountry with broader questions about ensuring that allour citizens and communities are protected and respected. All over America, there are police officers honorably doing their duty, demonstrating how to protect the public wihout resorting to unnecessary force. We need to learn from and build on those examples. The loss of so many young African Americans taken too soon should reaffirm our commitment to press forward for progress.

    I'm also not sure how quick & how hard you expect Democrats to turn on an ally - is this free-for-all month? I get removing Woodrow Wilson. I don't get an internecine purge. I'm sure the GOP would love us to go all tribal on ourselves - would complete their sweep of the US political scene.

    Emanuel's comments, whether you believe them or not:

    September was Chicago's deadliest month since 2002, with 60 homicides. Through Sept. 27, homicides and shooting incidents had risen 21 percent from the year-earlier period, Police Department numbers show. Most of the City Council's black aldermen last week called for Emanuel to fire police Superintendent Garry McCarthy, but the mayor said he supports his top cop.

     

     

     

    On Monday, the mayor said a group of beat officers told him recently that they have begun to hesitate before stopping people on the street for fear they could get in trouble.

    "Officers themselves are telling me about how the news over the last 15 months impacted their instincts: Do they stop or do they keep driving?" Emanuel said at an unrelated news conference. "When I stop here, is it going to be my career on the line? And that's an honest conversation. 

    Yes, I believe officers who routinely abuse suspects or innocent citizens should have their careers ended. I don't know how anecdotal this is & an attempt to be business as usual, but of course there will be clean cops who are affected as well. I watched a cell video where 2 cops were trying to put handcuffs on an inmate, and he was wiggling free and bouncing around the room - I didn't see anything improper, but the person posting the video seemed to feel there was - what will a cop do with real criminals? I want them out there stopping this fucker that shot up Planned Parenthood - I want them pro-active against real criminals, just not against normal people. That's a transition that's been a long time coming, and Rahm Emanuel didn't create this situation - 25-30 years ago I realized being in a car was giving up my rights, that cops would be insulting, would pull you over for no reason, could run into you and then give you a ticket, and much much worse, and that they would lie in court and get their buddies to lie too. The age of tasers and left-over Iraq military equipment and post-9/11 lack-of-sensitivity has escalated this feeling, and by-and-large the American public's shitty scared response to terror has fed this nasty situation. I've never much liked Rahm, but I also don't think he's the water-boy for everything that's happened. And I do like that the murder rate went down from the early 90's - wouldn't like it to surge again.


    It's hard not to see the police as the enemy when they consistently try to defend the indefensible. If occasionally they would have a normal human response to just the most outrageous and extreme videos of cop shootings and exhibit outrage and indignation it would go a long way to forging bonds between the citizens and the "good" cops.


    When police departments try to remove bad cops, the police unions intervene on behalf of the bad cop.


    Awesome post! This has been one of the better articles I've read about this fiasco.

    Thanks!


    Rahm fired the police chief for "mishandling" the situation.

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/garry-mccarthy-fired_565dcce9e4b079b...


    I don't see "mishandle" in the article. "has become a distraction" is hardly an admission of screwup, and the Police Chief's "the initial press release was mistaken" doesn't quite account for faked/destroyed evidence and inability to correct the record since.

    Now that there's a screenshot of an officer at Burger King, with identities of at least 2 known, there will be more pressure for accountability on that front - saying "there's no evidence of tampering" as the result of some fucked up "forensic"investigation into 1 1/2 hours of tape gone missing in light of this obstruction isn't going to fly very far, and I expect Anita Alvarez will get her packing orders soon unless she's an elected official.

    Rahm's got a lot of problems at this point - he should resign for his part in coverup, playing the settlement around his runoff election - essentially the city's $5 million campaign contribution, standing behind a head cop who's watched Chicago's murder rate surge and then botched this rigged "investigation", and just overall mismanagement, but it's hard to say what pressure will force him to.


    I used quotation marks deliberately. Rahm was looking for a scapegoat. Rahm, the olive chief, and the prosecutor were all involved in a cover-up. Jessie Jackson is calling for a federal investigation. The Chicago PD is probably too screwed up to repair itself. Rahm and the prosecutor will come under the microscope if there is a federal investigation.


    The Illinois AG has requested a review of the Chicago PD

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/chicago-police-civil-rights-investig...


    Just curious why you frequently stack 2 answers together?


    Preference to note added info 

    Easier than Edit to add:

     


    I submitted this to Salon about a week ago.  I guess they liked Jack Mirkinson's take better.  Not sure why. 


    Nicely played, Hal!


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