Tossing One of the Riders From the Sleigh; Chicago Edition

Rahm Emanuel sought for months to keep the public from seeing a video that shows a white police officer shooting a black teenager 16 times.

Now, a week after the video's release, the Chicago mayor has fired the police superintendent, created a task force for police accountability and expanded the use of body cameras.

The mayor's protestations that he was waiting until the investigation was finished before releasing the video is bullshit. As I wrote last week, try to think of another situation where it would take prosecutors over a year to bring charges against a person who pumped bullets into a prostrate victim, after the prosecutors had video of the murder.

Changing the top cop in Chicago isn't going to change the police culture in that city, a culture that rivals the pre-Katrina NOPD for brutality and corruption. The Chicago PD regards itself as above the law. Zendo Deb has blogged about the Chicago cops for a long time, if you want to read a compilation of disgustingly awful authoritarian fuckery. It should be obvious, now, that if the video hadn't been released, the City and the county prosecutor would have swept the killing under the rug.

Over the last ten years, Chicago has paid out over a half a billion dollars to compensate victims of police brutality and outright torture. And that number doesn't include what the city paid its lawyers to defend the cases, estimated at over $80 million.

Six hundred million may be pocket-lint money for the Feds, but it's not for any city. Chicago pays a heavy price for its gang of brutal overseers. One wonders when they'll get tired of it.

(Note that the Chief Torturer of Chicago went to prison for perjury and impeding an investigation. He was never called to account for torturing people.)