Political Theater? Rahm Emanuel Cries for Laquan McDonald

By Kari Lydersen, teleSUR

14 December 15

Chicago “Rahmbo” promises changes after video shows horrific police shooting of Black teen; but it’s really nothing new for “Mayor One Percent.”

ec. 9 brought an unlikely spectacle to Chicago City Hall.

Rahm Emanuel, the foul-mouthed mayor known for “brass balls” and stunts like sending a dead fish in the mail, stood before the City Council and cried.

The last two weeks had been tumultuous ones for the mayor and the city, with the release of the police dashcam video showing white officer Jason Van Dyke gunning down a Black teenager carrying a small knife and staggering aimlessly in the opposite direction. Not only did Van Dyke kill Laquan McDonald with 16 shots fired in two rounds, leaving smoke rising from the body. Other officers on the scene appeared unalarmed and uninterested in helping the dying young man, and later made statements clearly contradicted by the video in an apparent effort to protect Van Dyke.

On April 15, just a week after Emanuel won a runoff election against progressive upstart candidate Jesus “Chuy” Garcia, the City Council had approved a $5 million settlement with McDonald’s family. However, the video wasn’t released until Nov. 24 after a county judge in the lawsuit filed by independent journalist Brandon Smith over-ruled the city’s attempts to keep the video under wraps.

Hours before the video’s release, Cook County State’s Attorney Anita Alvarez announced first degree murder charges against Van Dyke – more than a year after the October 2014 killing. Emanuel’s apparent alarm and remorse over the killing escalated in the two weeks between the release and his teary address to City Council, wherein he said “I own the problem of police brutality, and I'll fix it.”

But many see only crocodile tears, noting that it took the release of the video and the days of public outcry that followed to provoke such a reaction, even though the mayor had been well aware of the incident and willing to shell out millions in taxpayer money in previous months.
Emanuel has claimed that he didn’t watch the video until its release, hence his delayed shock and outrage. If this is true, it seems a massive abdication of official responsibility authorizing a $5 million payout without viewing crucial evidence and indicating little interest in an issue that has been front-and-center nationwide since the police killing of Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri.

Whether he saw the video or not, it is clearly no coincidence that the settlement was not announced until after the election, where Emanuel’s victory hinged on the Black vote.

Allegations of police brutality, racism and misconduct are nothing new in Chicago. Former Commander Jon Burge attracted global attention once the systematic torture of Black men under his direction was revealed, and he was sent to prison for lying to cover it up.

Independent journalist Jamie Kalven and lawyer Craig Futterman recently won a years-long legal battle making public the complaint records of officers, showing that scores of officers with repeated serious allegations of brutality, abuse and racism were rarely disciplined, remained on the force and were often promoted.

When Rahm Emanuel took office in 2011, he inherited a department plagued with these and various other scandals. He brought in decorated, though controversial former Newark chief Garry McCarthy to try to reform the department and tackle the street violence that had earned the city the moniker “Chiraq.”

McCarthy, who resigned in the wake of the video release, has faced opposition from rank and file officers, like previous “outsider” police chiefs before him. And the Fraternal Order of Police has battled with Emanuel over issues including staffing, overtime pay during the 2012 NATO summit and contract issues.

In other words Emanuel does not truly control the police department, filled with commanders and officers who long preceded him, so he cannot perhaps really be blamed for the killing of McDonald.

But the way Emanuel has responded to the shooting dramatically underscores the reasons why he has been dubbed Mayor One Percent, why he was forced into a runoff election with a relatively little-known opponent, why he has been locked in battle with the Chicago Teachers Union whose members have extensive public support. And why now a majority of residents would like to see him removed, according to one recent poll, with his approval ratings at a dismal 18 percent.

The idea that Emanuel truly did not watch the video until it was released publicly is perhaps even more damning than if he had watched it. It shows a callous disregard and disrespect for the city’s Black residents, who have long been speaking out about the racial profiling, police violence and harassment that they face on a daily basis.

Even in the post-Ferguson, Black Lives Matters era, with law enforcement race relations a major issue in the presidential campaign, Emanuel was either so unconcerned by a white officer’s killing of a Black teen that he didn’t bother to watch the video; or he watched it and then focused his attention on making sure it didn’t affect his own political career. In the process, he tried to stifle the possibility for justice, reform and public soul-searching that is only now occurring.

McDonald is far from the only Black person shot including fatally by police officers in Chicago. Just during Emanuel’s tenure there have been multiple others, including the October 2014 shooting of Ronald Johnson, also captured on a dashcam video that Emanuel agreed to release after the McDonald one. And Rekia Boyd, a young woman killed by off-duty officer Dante Servin when he fired into a crowd of youth on the West Side.

It was only after the McDonald video release that Emanuel called for Servin to be fired, even though the city had settled for $4.5 million with her family, and a judge had described Servin’s conduct as “beyond reckless.”

Officers may in some cases have been reasonably justified in shooting minority residents. But in a city where segregation and racial inequality are such undeniably enormous issues, it’s unforgivable that Emanuel would not make it a priority to examine and publicly address every police killing, not to mention the larger context of police treatment of minorities.  

It was just in October that Emanuel complained that police were becoming “fetal” because of increased scrutiny from the public. Van Dyke and the officers who witnessed him shooting McDonald were clearly not “fetal” that night.

Emanuel has repeatedly expressed his deep sorrow and empathy for the largely African-American victims of street violence and their families. But his conduct regarding Laquan McDonald’s death suggests either an extreme case of cognitive dissonance or chilling disingenuousness. While he comforts the parents of other slain teenagers, he seemingly tried to buy the silence of McDonald’s parents and essentially denied McDonald and the public the chance for justice and truth.

After Emanuel’s supposed come-to-Jesus moment about the McDonald case, in his address to City Council he said:

“One young man asked me a question that gets to the core of what we’re talking about. He said, ‘Do you think the police would ever treat you the way they treat me?’ The answer is, no. And that is wrong! And that has to change in this city! That has to come to an end, an end now. No citizen is a second-class citizen in the city of Chicago.”

The mayor got a standing ovation for the proclamation.

But there has long been ample evidence that police officers in Chicago and other cities play fast and loose with rules, make false statements in official reports and strive to protect their own, confident that there is little chance they will be disciplined for any misdeeds. So the idea that Emanuel would fail to question the officers’ narratives of that night, or that he would view the video himself and still protect the officers, speaks volumes about the value that he places on Black lives.

No amount of tears or rousing speeches, faux or genuine, can change that.