Chicago Releases Thousands Of Emails Related To Shooting

The number of officers with a Taser will double to 1,400. Meanwhile in Cleveland, more protests were planned two days after a grand jury decided not to charge two white police officers in the 2014 shooting death of Tamir Rice, a black 12-year-old boy who was playing in a park with a toy gun that shoots plastic pellets.

Demonstrators continue to protest the fatal police shooting of Laquan McDonald as they attempt to disrupt holiday shoppers along Michigan Avenue in Chicago, Illinois, December 24, 2015.

About 15% of Chicago's police officers have so far received training aimed at resolving incidents without violence, officials say.

Speaking to reporters Wednesday, Emanuel noted that Chicago is not the only city struggling with the issue.

"This afternoon I directed the new acting chief administrator of the Independent Police Review Authority and the interim Superintendent of Police to meet with each other as soon as possible to review the crisis intervention team training, around how officers respond to mental health crisis ", the Mayor continued. These policies are not the end of the challenge, but they are the beginning of the solution", he said. "We can change the culture piece by piece, policy by policy to provide the safety that every resident deserves and to rebuild the trust where it has been lost.

Emanuel cut short a family vacation in Cuba this week to return to the city to deal with public anger after police shot and killed a 55-year-old mother, Bettie Jones, and a 19-year-old college student, Quintonio LeGrier.

Tasers are seen as an alternative to guns because they allow police to forcefully subdue a suspect without putting bullets in them. Police had been responding to calls of a domestic disturbance between LeGrier and his father, Antonio LeGrier. Critics say it took too long to both charge Van Dyke and release the video.

Though the generally less-lethal Tasers have been available in the department for years, not every officer has been trained to use them or carries them.

The city of Chicago has released hundreds of emails related to the fatal shooting of an African American teenager by a Chicago police officer in October 2014. Recently, London's Metropolitan Police Service equipped its officers with Taser's Axon Body 2 cameras, which lead to a 33% reduction in allegations against the officers. "But anybody would tell you, that challenge that Chicago is facing, its Police Department in this city, is not only not unique, it's not over four years, it's four, five decades in the making, and the changes we're trying to do will also not be done in four years".

Public outcry has been furious since a dashcam video was released last month showing Van Dyke shooting McDonald 16 times.

The footage sparked days of street demonstrations, the forced resignation of Police Superintendent Garry McCarthy and a broad federal civil rights investigation of the Police Department's practices and how allegations of officer misconduct are handled.

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