CHICAGO (AP) — Chicago officials are expected to announce changes in police training, including a requirement that every officer responding to service calls be equipped with a Taser.
A statement from Mayor Rahm Emanuel’s office late Tuesday night said Emanuel and Interim Police Superintendent John Escalante would announce Wednesday “a major overhaul” of the policy regarding how officers respond to incidents and the use of force.
The statement said the police department will also begin to require every officer who “responds to calls for service” to be equipped with a Taser and trained to use it by June 1, 2016. The mayor’s office had already said some changes in training would be forthcoming in the wake of the release of dashcam video last month showing white officer Jason Van Dyke shooting black 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in 2014. Van Dyke, who is charged with murder, pleaded not guilty Tuesday.
The release of the video set off protests, forced the resignation of the city’s police chief and has led to an ongoing wide-ranging civil rights investigation of the entire Chicago Police Department by the U.S. Department of Justice. Community activists have also called for Emanuel’s resignation.
The statement does not specifically mention the McDonald shooting but says, “The policy changes center around de-escalation tactics to reduce the intensity of a conflict or a potentially violent situation at the earliest possible moment, emphasizing that the foremost goal is to protect the safety of all involved.”
Police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi didn’t immediately return a message from The Associated Press seeking further details about the plan. Another police shooting over the weekend has sparked further criticism of the department. Chicago police killed two people, a 55-year-old woman who was shot accidentally and a 19-year-old man police described as “combative” before he was shot. Both were black. Police have not released the race of the officer or officers involved and will not say how many officers fired their weapons or what the man and woman were doing before they were shot.
More training? Isn’t their training what taught them to behave like psychopaths in the first place?
“….every officer responding to service calls be equipped with a Taser.”
In response to public outcry (riots and protests were required before they gave a second though to slaughtering innocent people), they’ll be electrocuting more people than they shoot.
They’re trying to quiet an angry public, but it’s too late, because the angry public has already seen the true motives of politicians, and the true psychopathy of the thugs they’ve unleashed on us.
It’s coming to a fight, and when it does, you’ll get to see all the big, tough, pigs running, hiding, and crying like scared little girls.
Too bad it’s not a requirement to be equipped with brains. Here is the epitome of just how stupid and evil cops are now. And still people out there defend them! “Horrifying Video Shows Cops Sic K-9 on Infant Daughter of a Man they Mistook for a Suspect” Free Thought Project. I say cop apologists that can see past stuff like this deserve whatever cops do to them down the road. Unfortunately most stupid sheep think it won’t happen to them. They just really DON’T THINK.
“The mayor’s office had already said some changes in training would be forthcoming in the wake of the release of dashcam video last month…”
The main change being that the dashcam videos not be made available to the public.
Unless they really ARE trying to start a war between the people and the pigs.