Chicago Police Department Warns of Gangs’ Threats to Attack Officers

[Valin]

NY Times:

KATHARINE Q. SEELYE

AUG. 9, 2016

 

The Chicago Police Department has alerted its officers that gang members are plotting to shoot police officers in retaliation for the killing last month of Paul O’Neal, a black man who was chased by the police through a residential neighborhood before being shot by an officer whose body camera was not recording.

 

The department issued an alert Friday to its officers that leaders from three West Side gangs had met Thursday and discussed plans to attack police officers, The Chicago Sun-Times reported. The alert said that one of the gangs had “provided guns” and had a “sniper in place,” though the sniper’s location was not known, according to the newspaper.

 

Such a threat against the police signaled a frightening new escalation in the already heightened tensions between the police and blacks in many cities after a rash of police killings of unarmed black people over the last two years. Chicago, awash in guns and reeling from incidents of police-related violence, has been an epicenter of those tensions.

 

Mayor Rahm Emanuel issued a statement Tuesday that said, “We can have a reasonable conversation about the need for police accountability reform, but the idea that a bunch of gang members would threaten violence against the men and women every Chicagoan relies on for their own safety is absolutely unacceptable.”

 

The Chicago Police Department said it would have no comment.

 

(Snip)

 

_______________________________________________________________________

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V8lxyiffCv8

 

Chicago Police Superintendent Eddie Johnson, right, is blocked by one of three protestors as he tries to deliver a written statement about the recent release of police shooting video to television reporters outside the police department headquarters Friday, Aug. 5, 2016, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Tae-Gyun Kim)

 

H/T PJ Media