chicago obviously know that and i think the mayor, in a sense, indicated that, by going up to say, not, this is an important task force, let me really show that, but rather, i have to make other changes, which he did in, of course, firing mccarthy today, but there s a lot more there. you mentioned the complaints, 20,000 plus complaints, that s a lot of citizen complaints. another way to ballpark that, is over ten years, from 04 to 2014, the city paid out $520 million in settlements regarding police misconduct. again, a lawyer would tell you a settlement is not an admission of wrong doing. a journalist would tell you, where there s smoke there is some fire. and you don t spend $500 million because everything s working right. that s just those ten years. looking a to the national headlines, john burj was convicted of torturing 200 people. chicago residents. this is happening in midwest america. torturing people to give false
emanuel was trying to move forward, trying to come up with a solution in appointing this board, overseeing the police reform, but his problems are continuing to mount. erica? nbc s john yang in chicago. let s turn to nbc chief legal correspondent, ari melber. a couple things we want to point out here. obviously, the violence and complaints about the police department in chicago are nothing new. they have made national headlines. for years, the new york times recently, from 2011 to 2015, 97% of more than 28,500 citizen complaints resulted in no officer being punished, according to the files. we re hearing now, there s a call for the civil rights division of the doj to look into use of force. all that being said, does this new task force change anything in chicago? no. no. the legal term for the task force would be, it s a joke. and i think the people in
away. ugh have eight, nine, ten officers. were that, in your perspective, were they, in your point of view, acting unreasonably because they didn t fire? let s talk about this officer for a second. he joined the chicago pd in 2001, 14-year career, in that time, had at least 18 citizen complaints against him ranging from excessive force to the use of racial slurs. never been disciplined, wn that. can that be presented in court and can that be problematic? i think what this shows, there are all kinds of when it comes to police officers, they get complaints lodged against them fairly often. the critical fact to me, if none of them were founded, as a defense attorney, i would strongly argue for the inadmissibility. especially in the case where it s unfounded, police officers are open to criticism by the public and they frequently are. does that mean there s potentially something there? yes, but we off all kinds of
weapon. i think you are one of them. right. and so the fact that you have an officer for 14 years with 18 citizen complaints, two now the third involving a police shooting that is still on the force and was paid for the past year tells me that there s a real transparency problem with the chicago police department. let me tell you, a shooting investigation like this should not take a year. of course not. i ve investigated many a police shootings in the detective squad and we had it cleaned up within two weeks. the reason people in chicago maybe are not trusting i don t know who, maybe the district attorney s office and not so much the police department here, is because this investigation should have been done within two or three weeks. probably 20 detectives working on this case, have the answers and then they should have come out and said, listen, we re going to charge this officer with a crime. the video was very clear here. harry, stand by. sunny, stand by. we re goin
from officers. i don t want to we can describe now. he opens fire fatally shooting him 16 times. the coroners report shows two of the wounds were in the back. this isn t the first time, the nbc chicago affiliate showed at least 20 citizen complaints that have been filed against him in his 14 year career with the chicago p.d. and he was never disciplined. four of the investigate gass are open. he faces a potential penalty of life in prison if convicted and joining the table is the host of politics nation and t of the national, a lot to pick apart here. the boy goes down and continues to be shot on the ground, continuously, i think up to 16 times. why do long for the video to be released and then you heard officials in chicago saying we