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F.B.I. Is Asked to Investigate Chicago Police Shooting
F.B.I. Is Asked to Investigate Chicago Police Shooting That Left 2 Dead
CHICAGO — The top county prosecutor here Thursday asked the F.B.I. to investigate the fatal shooting of two people by a Chicago police officer over the weekend, and Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s administration separately released a trove of emails showing how City Hall aides scrambled for months to address an earlier police shooting that was captured on video.
The request for a federal investigation, made by State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez of Cook County, came five days after an officer fatally shot Quintonio LeGrier, a college student said to have been wielding a baseball bat, and Bettie Jones, a 55-year-old neighbor who police said was accidentally struck by the gunfire. The F.B.I. did not announce an investigation, but said in a statement there was ongoing “analysis and assessment of the circumstances surrounding the incident.”
The conduct of the police has become a pressing issue for Mr. Emanuel, who has faced persistent demonstrations and calls to resign over the way his administration handled the 2014 killing of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald, particularly its resistance to releasing the video showing a white officer shooting the black teenager 16 times.
On Thursday, as protesters again marched through downtown, his administration released about 3,000 pages of emails related to the McDonald case that spanned more than a year. The messages showed top City Hall officials coordinating a response to the shooting, sharing information about media inquiries with the independent body that investigates police shootings, and in recent weeks seeking to temper dissent and make changes to Chicago’s embattled Police Department.
Mr. McDonald was carrying a knife and veering away from police on Oct. 20, 2014, when Officer Jason Van Dyke shot him repeatedly, continuing to fire after he collapsed on the ground. The police cruiser camera footage, which City Hall officials sought for months to keep sealed, was released under court order in November on the same day Officer Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder. Officer Van Dyke told investigators he shot because he feared for his safety.
The emails, made public after open records requests by news organizations, show a growing awareness among Mr. Emanuel’s aides of the case’s significance in early 2015 and their repeated denials of journalists’ open-records requests for the video or other documents related to the case. Then comes the harried outreach to community leaders after a judge ordered the video be made public.
“We have five days to build community buy in and dialogue,” David Spielfogel, a mayoral adviser, wrote to fellow aides after a lawyer offered to help plan a peaceful demonstration before the video was released. “We shouldn’t waste a second.”
Notably sparse in the documents, which spanned October 2014 to early December 2015, were emails from Mr. Emanuel, who officials said usually communicates with staff by phone and in person. In one of the rare emails from Mr. Emanuel in the release, from days before the video was made public, the mayor asked Kelley Quinn, a spokeswoman, about the weather forecast. “How much snow then,” he wrote, in a partly redacted email chain. Another time, Mr. Emanuel asked aides questions about police body cameras as city officials announced increased use of them in Chicago.
Though the death of Mr. McDonald has dominated national headlines recently, it received relatively little attention in the days after the shooting. The morning after the shooting, Chicago Public Schools officials copied mayoral aides on a note about the encounter and a request not to publicize it immediately “due to the sensitivity of the incident.”
As months wore on, and as city lawyers began negotiations that led to a $5 million settlement with the family, top City Hall staffers emailed more frequently about the case. The settlement came just after Mr. Emanuel won re-election in early April, leading some to question whether political interests played a role in the timing. City officials have insisted they did not.
There was, however, growing concern at City Hall, after the election, about how the case could affect Mr. Emanuel at a time of increased scrutiny nationally about police conduct.
We live in a time in which decent and otherwise sensible people are surrendering too easily to the hectoring of morons or extremists.