See Whats Wrong With Chicagos Police in 3 Charts
African-Americans shot nine times more than whites. Blacks stopped eight times more frequently. Complaints not investigated. The task force looking into racial bias within the Chicago Police Department issued a damning report Wednesday showing years of mistreatment, questionable stops and arrests, and physical and verbal abuse by officers directed toward African-Americans. The task force, which offered more than two-dozen recommendations to improve police accountability and restore trust between officers and communities of color, was appointed by Mayor Rahm Emanuel following the death of Laquan McDonald, a black teenager, who was shot 16 times by Jason Van Dyke, a white police officer, in October 2014. In November 2015, video from a police dash cam was released showing that McDonald was not threatening officers at the time of the shooting, directly contradicting officers' statements at the time. The Police Accountability Task Force called it the "tipping point for long-simmering community anger.", Hours before the report was released, Mayor Emanuel addressed charges of racism within the department. "I don't really think you need a task force to know we have racism in America, we have racism in Illinois or that there is racism that exists in the city of Chicago or obviously can be in our departments," Emanuel said, according to the Chicago Tribune. "The question isn't, Do we have racism?' We do. The question is, What are you going to do about it?'", Read more Chicago Police Officers Sabotaged Dashcams to Block Audio, Report Finds, While the report highlighted a number of areas where police have overwhelmingly targeted African-Americans in stops, searches and arrests, these three charts show the extent of the policing problems in Chicago. 1. Police Officers Shoot African-Americans at Higher Rates Than Whites, Almost 300 African-Americans were shot by Chicago cops between 2008 and 2015, according to the study, compared with 55 Hispanics and 13 whites. 2. Stops Without Arrests Higher for Blacks, The Chicago police stopped more than 250,000 people in the summer of 2014. Almost three-quarters were black. Seventeen percent were Hispanic, and 9 were white. 3. Citizens' Complaints Went Uninvestigated, The Independent Police Review Authority, mandated to investigate allegations of misconduct and abuse of force, did not fully investigate four of 10 complaints it received between 2011 and 2015, which were characterized in the report has having no affidavit filed. Sources Police Accountability Task Force U.S. Census Bureau data from 2010