Protesters gathered outside Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel’s home Tuesday to call for his resignation in the wake of another high-profile police shooting, and an Emanuel aide was reportedly “roughed up” at a prayer vigil Sunday.
After announcing Monday that he would cut his family vacation to Cuba short to return to Chicago to handle matters personally, Emanuel joined interim Police Superintendent John Escalante today to announce a few short-term reforms intended to reduce police shootings.
“There’s a difference between whether someone can use a gun and when they should use a gun. And we as a city must train for that difference,” Emanuel said, en route to rolling out his plan to increase the number of Tasers distributed to officers in Chicago. While the Taser-increase is designed to provide police with a non-lethal option for detaining arrestees, prior Taser surges have not been correlated with drops in police shootings, and Tasers themselves can also be lethal.
Emanuel added that police would receive additional training to make encounters more conversational and less confrontational, so that “force can be the last option, not the first choice.”