Why would a mayor who cares so deeply about his national image and whose reputation has suffered so much because of his handling of the Laquan McDonald shooting video put himself in a position to be kicked in the political version of his Achilles’ heel?
That’s the question swirling around City Hall after Mayor Rahm Emanuel agreed to participate in a panel discussion on “Reducing Violence and Strengthening Police/Community Trust” during Wednesday’s opening session of the U.S. Conference of Mayors meeting in Washington D.C.
Joining Emanuel on the panel will be Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, who is president of the U.S. Conference of Mayors; New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu; National Urban League President & CEO Marc Morial; and St. Louis Police Chief Colonel Dotson.
ANALYSIS
New Orleans has already been through a federal civil rights investigation of its police department that the Justice Department is only beginning in Chicago.
The New Orleans probe culminated in a sweeping reform agreement that’s almost certain to be duplicated with the appointment of a federal monitor similar to the one that rode herd over Chicago’s city hiring for more than a decade.
“If you’re a quarterback and you have a bad game, you don’t quit. You go back out there for the next game and keep throwing,” said Ald. Pat O’Connor (40th), the mayor’s City Council floor leader.
“Rahm Emanuel is the mayor of a big city. He’s had a bad couple of months. But he’s trying to make it better and tackle this issue head-on. The Conference of Mayors is the place where big-city mayors go to talk about problems and share solutions. Why in the world would he not go?”
Ald. Joe Moore (49th), one of the mayor’s staunchest City Council supporters, said Emanuel obviously views the mayor’s conference as an opportunity to begin the formidable job of “rebuilding his reputation” on the national stage.
“He has to eat some humble pie, which he’s been doing lately, and talk about what’s he’s learned, how important he believes it is for mayors to confront head-on the challenge of repairing the fractured relationship between police and community,” Moore said.
“Chicago is not the only city facing this. The reason we’re getting a lot of attention now is because it’s Rahm. No one has ever accused Rahm Emanuel of being a shrinking violet. Over the years, he’s stepped on more than a few toes, especially in Washington D.C., where he spent so many years. He’s paying the price for that now. But, you’ve got to give him credit. He’s not running and hiding. He’s standing up and taking it.”
Press releases issued by the U.S. Conference of Mayors and the mayor’s office in Chicago were a study in contrasts. In Emanuel’s version, the policing panel is mentioned in the last paragraph. In the Washington version, it’s in the second paragraph.
“Building trust between the community and police is an issue that cities across the nation are facing, and something that is very important to the Mayor. He is committed to spending a great deal of time in rebuilding trust here in Chicago, and looks forward to sharing Chicago’s story on a panel of other mayors who are facing similar challenges,” Emanuel’s communication director Kelley Quinn wrote in an emailed statement.
Emanuel has been under fire for keeping the Laquan McDonald shooting video under wraps for more than a year and waiting until one week after the April 7 mayoral runoff to authorize a $5 million settlement to the McDonald family even before a lawsuit had been filed.
The video was released only after a judge ordered the city to do so and on the same day that Officer Jason Van Dyke was charged with first-degree murder.
Last month, Emanuel apologized for the “systematic breakdown” that culminated in the “totally avoidable” police shooting death of Laquan McDonald and acknowledged the “code of silence” in the Chicago Police Department he once tried to keep out of a court record.
The cathartic and emotional speech before a special City Council meeting did nothing to silence demands for Emanuel’s resignation.
The mayor has emphatically denied keeping the dashcam video of the McDonald shooting under wraps to get past the election.
But he has acknowledged that he “added to the suspicion and distrust” of everyday Chicagoans by blindly following and not questioning the city’s long-standing practice of withholding shooting videos to avoid compromising ongoing criminal investigations.
The Laquan McDonald controversy has turned a powerful player on the national stage into a politician with a bullseye on his back.
Just last week, the Washington Post ran a front-page story under the headline, “Chicago Mayor Faces New Scrutiny.” The New York Times once wrote glowingly about Emanuel’s reforms, but has been even more critical. So have the national networks where Emanuel was a frequent guest on Sunday talk shows.
In his struggle to regain shattered public trust and fend off demands for his resignation, Emanuel has fired a police superintendent he promised to keep, welcomed a federal civil rights investigation he once called “misguided,” and ordered a third-party review of a Law Department he initially claimed could not possibly be part of the “code of silence” he acknowledges exists in the Chicago Police Department.
After the police shooting of 19-year-old Quintonio LeGrier and the accidental shooting of LeGrier’s neighbor, 55-year-old Bettie Jones, Emanuel pledged to double the number of Tasers available to Chicago Police and ordered officers retrained in so-called “de-escalation” tactics.
All of those moves — along with a massive email dump on New Year’s Eve demonstrating behind-the-scenes maneuverings at Emanuel’s City Hall — have invited even more questions about the man once described as the “leaker-in-chief” during his days as White House chief of staff to President Barack Obama.
The chorus of political enemies Emanuel made across the nation has been salivating at his political troubles.
They’ve been waiting for their chance to get even for the bare-knuckles, take-no-prisoners style Emanuel used during his White House days and who, between White House stints, served in the U.S. House of Representatives and helped to engineer the 2006 Democratic takeover of that chamber.
The last time Emanuel went to Washington to talk about policing, he was accompanied by now-fired Supt. Garry McCarthy. Chicago was coming off its deadliest month since 2002.
The mayor inadvertently made negative headlines when he contended during a closed-door meeting with Attorney General Loretta Lynch and 20 big-city mayors and police chiefs that police officers across the nation are becoming “fetal” because they’re afraid their videotaped encounters with the public will end up on YouTube.
The same term can be used to describe the defensive crouch that many Chicago Police officers have adopted in the wake of the video played around the world of a white officer emptying 16 rounds into the body of a black teenager.
January shootings and homicides are way up, an anomaly during a cold weather month. And police stops, gun confiscation and other indicators of police activity are way down.
Fraternal Order of Police President Dean Angelo has accused Chicago politicians, including Emanuel, of attempting to “limit proactive policing” to avoid more bad headlines — even if it paves the way for more street violence.
O’Connor added: “A police officer acts in a reprehensible way. He gets indicted for it. But that takes all of the bandwidth from people being killed every week? At what point do we turn back to trying to solve problems really impacting our city?”
