In Chicago, the year 2016 really began on November 24, 2015—the day the city released the infamous dash-cam video of Chicago police officer Jason Van Dyke shooting 17-year old Laquan McDonald. “Sixteen shots!” would come to be the mantra of the protesters flooding the streets the night the video was released, and for the year to come.
2016 thus also became the year that many city residents stopped believing police reform was possible, with some calling for police to be abolished altogether. Chicago police shot and killed 11 people in 2016, ten of whom were black men. (An 11th black man, 28-year-old Roy Morris, survived CPD gunshots in July.)
Later that month Emanuel proclaimed his plans to overhaul IPRA in favor of a new police oversight agency, and in June he promised greater transparency and faster release of information and footage of police shootings. Though he offered scant details on how this would be accomplished, shortly after the announcement, IPRA ruled three police shootings unjustified—a record, since, over nine years and more than 400 investigations, the agency had found just two other shootings unjustified.
The next month Emanuel announced that by mid-2017 IPRA would be remade into COPA—the Civilian Office of Police Accountability. But reform advocates were not impressed, arguing that COPA wouldn’t be a truly independent oversight agency, and that civilians, not mayoral appointees, needed to have final oversight of the police department. CPD also announced an overhaul of its use-of-force policy, asserting that the “department’s highest priority is the sanctity of human life.”
