NYTimes OpEd calls for Resignation of Rahm, Chicago police chief and States Attorney

[mucifer]

Last edited Tue Dec 1, 2015, 09:16 AM - Edit history (1)

THERE’S been a cover-up in Chicago. The city’s leaders have now brought charges against a police officer, Jason Van Dyke, for the first-degree murder of 17-year-old Laquan McDonald. But for more than a year, Chicago officials delayed the criminal process, and might well have postponed prosecution indefinitely, had it not been for a state court forcing their hand.

Then up for re-election, the mayor of Chicago, Rahm Emanuel, was looking ahead to a contested election on Feb. 24, 2015, which would ultimately result in a runoff election on April 7. In Ferguson, Mo., a grand jury was hearing testimony on the police shooting of Michael Brown. The video of Eric Garner being choked to death during an arrest in New York had gone viral. The Black Lives Matter movement was gaining momentum across the country.

The video of a police shooting like this in Chicago could have buried Mr. Emanuel’s chances for re-election. And it would likely have ended the career of the police superintendent, Garry F. McCarthy.

Rather than hold hearings, investigate and perhaps prosecute its leaders, the city of Chicago needs to restore trust. These officials no longer have the public’s confidence. They should resign.

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/opinion/cover-up-in-chicago.html?ref=opinion


The author of the Op Ed: Bernard E. Harcourt, a professor at Columbia, was a professor of law and political science at the University of Chicago from 2003 to 2014. He is the author, most recently, of “Exposed: Desire and Disobedience in the Digital Age.”

I'd rather see them in prison. But, I'm glad this is in the NYTImes.

[merrily]

1. Good for the NYTimes! The NYT has been shilling for too long.

Happy to be the 5th rec!

[longship]

2. Whoa! So the vise tightens as they are exposed.

This is incredible.

R&K

[nc4bo]

3. He must go! Eta

All involved should step down or pink slipped from top to bottom.

Ideally there should be charges and court appearances along with some sort of punishments like huge fines and time behind bars.

[AllyCat]

4. Rahm covered up a crime to get elected.

He should not hold office and should be charged with tampering, hindering, aiding and abetting or some combination of the above.

[BeanMusical]

7. +1

[Half-Century Man]

13. Accessory, after the fact, in a first degree murder case would be enough.

Concealment of a crime.

[longship]

18. At least obstruction of justice.

That is why Nixon resigned.
Remember?

The coverup!

[Duppers]

5. K & R

[Stuart G]

6. K and R

[DLevine]

8. Sounds good to me. nt

[Helen Borg]

9. And down goes Rahm....

[meow2u3]

10. Forget about resigning

Chicago City Council ought to start impeachment proceedings against Rahmbo for covering up a murder. Then he'll never be able to run for office if he's ousted in an impeachment trial.

[Ptah]

11. Link:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/11/30/opinion/cover-up-in-chicago.html

[mucifer]

12. Oops thanks. I'll edit the OP

[MynameisBlarney]

14. Glad to see this brought to the light of day.

[Justice]

15. The point is they were never going to release it - they only did so after being forced

Rahm could have won reelection and then had the video released. But they never intended to release.

The fact that they arrested and charged the officer within hours/days of it being released is disgusting. When did they determine he should be arrested - only after the court ordered the release.

[jalan48]

16. Rahm? Now where have we heard that name before?

[dpatbrown]

17. Long overdue

It's about time that Rahm's name is out there. He was certainly a part of the cover-up, and now he's guilty of lying about it. Hopefully, a recall will be around the corner. IMO, he has always been a very dishonest politician.

[mountain grammy]

19. Nobody in the Chicago government gave a shit about this kid

Or any other Chicagoan not in the upper crust of the hierarchy. His body riddled with bullits while the "good cops" stood by and did nothing until one of them wouldn't let the shooter reload. WTF?
Just another dead black kid whose murder might, just maybe, hurt Rahm's reelection, so, "investigate and ignore" because in two months nobody will care.
All the fucking dirty corrupt bastards should not only resign, they should be in prison. Let's hear that out of the New York Times.

[safeinOhio]

20. Can a FOIA be filed

on the mayor, police dept and the prosecutor for all emails, notes and interviews?

[Truprogressive85]

21. ADIOS

Good time for the people of Chicago to apply the pressure get him out

If closing schools weren't enough for this third way POS
the video was suppressed for 400 days screw him and head of CPD

[librechik]

22. yup--time for a clean sweep in Chicago!

who knows, maybe it'll work this time.

[KG]

23. rahm is a shitbag.

[Blue_Tires]

24. k+r

Of course because a Dem is involved, all of a sudden Glenn Fucking Greenwald is paying attention: https://twitter.com/Wilson__Valdez/status/671736216627372033

[frylock]

26. Yay team!

[clarice]

25. Rahm.....the creepiest man I have ever seen. nt

[kath]

27. yeah, his whole countenance just oozes sleeze and creepiness, doesn't it?

[clarice]

28. He reminds me very much of someone I met once.....

Even looked like Rahm. We were all in a meeting and this guy just sat there and took notes and smiled in a creepy , knowing way. Come to find out, someone told me later that hiding under his well tailored suit, he had an entire body tattoo of some kind of weird vine. (shudder)

[mucifer]

32. He kinda looks like the grinch.

[DebbieCDC]

29. Rahm's last official act needs to be the firing of the police chief that took place earlier today

The state's attorney has to go

Rahm has to go

Maybe then Chicago can start to come back.

[951-Riverside]

30. They're being asked to resign over the Laquan McDonald shooting but not Homan Square?

Homan Square revealed: how Chicago police 'disappeared' 7,000 people

Police “disappeared” more than 7,000 people at an off-the-books interrogation warehouse in Chicago, nearly twice as many detentions as previously disclosed, the Guardian can now reveal.

From August 2004 to June 2015, nearly 6,000 of those held at the facility were black, which represents more than twice the proportion of the city’s population. But only 68 of those held were allowed access to attorneys or a public notice of their whereabouts, internal police records show.

The new disclosures, the result of an ongoing Guardian transparency lawsuit and investigation, provide the most detailed, full-scale portrait yet of the truth about Homan Square, a secretive facility that Chicago police have described as little more than a low-level narcotics crime outpost where the mayor has said police “follow all the rules”.

The police portrayals contrast sharply with those of Homan Square detainees and their lawyers, who insist that “if this could happen to someone, it could happen to anyone”. A 30-year-old man named Jose, for example, was one of the few detainees with an attorney present when he surrendered to police. He said officers at the warehouse questioned him even after his lawyer specifically told them he would not speak.

“The Fillmore and Homan boys,” Jose said, referring to police and the facility’s cross streets, “don’t play by the rules.”

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/oct/19/homan-square-chicago-police-disappeared-thousands

Homan Square detainee: I was sexually abused by police at Chicago 'black site'

For psychological reasons, Angel Perez does not call what happened to him rape. But he vividly recalls being taken to Homan Square, a warehouse used by the Chicago police for incommunicado detentions, where police inserted something into his rectum.

“I felt the coldness and the metallic aspect of it,” Perez, 33, told the Guardian.

It was 21 October 2012. The day before, Perez had been driving his Rav-4 on his restaurant delivery route when he says police accosted him, wanting him to contact a drug dealer who they believed Perez knew so they could arrange a sting. But Perez was less cooperative than they had hoped.

Now, Perez was handcuffed by his right wrist to a metal bar behind a bench in an interrogation room on the second floor of Homan Square. Behind him were two police officers that a lawsuit Perez recently re-filed identifies as Jorge Lopez and Edmund Zablocki. They had been threatening him with a stint at the infamously violent Cook County jail if he didn’t cooperate.

“They’re gonna think you’re a little sexy bitch in jail,” Perez recalled one of them saying. The lawsuit quotes Lopez: “I hear that a big black nigger dick feels like a gun up your ass.”

Perez claims he was bent over in front of the bench and a piece of detritus. He recalled smelling urine and seeing bloodstains in the room. The police officers pulled his shirt up and slowly moved a metallic object down his bare skin. Then they pulled his pants down.

“He’s talking all this sexual stuff, he’s really getting fucking weird about it, too,” Perez remembered. He began shaking, the beginnings of a panic attack.

“They get down to where they’re gonna insert it, this is where I feel that it’s something around my rear end, and he said some stupid comment and then he jammed it in there and I started jerking and going all crazy – I think I kicked him – and I just go into a full-blown panic attack … The damage it caused, it pretty much swole my rear end like a baboon’s butt.”

Whatever the object was, the police suggested it was the barrel of a handgun. After Perez involuntarily jerked from the penetration, Officer Edmund Zablocki is alleged to have told him: “I almost blew your brains out.”

Perez claims all of this occurred to persuade him to purchase $170 worth of heroin from the dealer.

http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/may/14/homan-square-detainee-police-abuse

[KeepItReal]

31. K&R

Eom

[mucifer]

33. So the police chief is now gone. Just waiting on Alvarez and Rahm to be gone.

I will probably have to wait quite a while.Looks like the police chief for now is the fall guy:

http://chicago.cbslocal.com/2015/12/01/reports-garry-mccarthy-out-as-chicago-police-superintendent/

[Bernblu]

34. It's about time!