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Report Finds Rampant Racism in Chicago Police Department

HeadlineApr 14, 2016

In Chicago, a task force appointed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has found evidence of rampant racism within the Chicago Police Department. The report finds the police department’s own data “gives validity to the widely held belief the police have no regard for the sanctity of life when it comes to people of color.” Despite equal proportions of black, white and Latino residents in Chicago, 74 percent of the more than 400 people shot by Chicago police between 2008 and 2015 were black. Black people also made up 72 percent of people stopped on the street—but not arrested—in the summer of 2014, and three out of four people on whom Chicago police tried to use Tasers between 2012 and 2015. The report comes as Mayor Emanuel faces calls to resign over a possible cover-up of the police killing of Laquan McDonald, the teen shot 16 times in 2014.

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