“TODAY we stand together as a city to try and right those wrongs, and to bring this dark chapter of Chicago’s history to a close,” said Rahm Emanuel, Chicago’s mayor, on April 14th as he announced a $5.5m reparations package for (mostly black) suspects who were tortured by police in the 1970s and 1980s.
The next day the city council revealed that it is paying the family of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager fatally shot by a cop last autumn, as much as $5m to dissuade them from suing. The police refuse to release a video of the shooting, saying the investigation is still going on. Many Chicagoans are unimpressed.
On April 20th an outcry ensued after a judge cleared Dante Servin, a cop who shot Rekia Boyd, a black woman, in the head. Mr Servin’s lawyers said that he mistook a mobile phone held by of one of Ms Boyd’s companions for a gun, and opened fire because he feared for his life.
Chicago’s cops shoot about 50 suspects dead each year—more than 75% of them black. The police are largely white and Hispanic and, consciously or otherwise, tend to associate blacks with criminality, says Craig Futterman of the...
from The Economist: United States http://ift.tt/1d4yQmy
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