Rahm Emanuel Is Performing a New Emotion: Sadness
Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel addressed City Council this morning, where he continued to insist that his police department needs to be completely overhauled while also attempting to display an emotion heretofore foreign to the Emanuel brothers: Sadness.
An AP report describes Emanuel as “near tears” as he recounted a young, presumably black, man pointing out to him that his police force treats white people and black people very differently.
The mayor was near tears when he recalled a question from a young man who had had run-ins with the law. The mayor said he asked him, “Do you think the police would ever treat you the way they treat me?”
Of course, Rahm Emanuel is not an innocent bystander in this equation. It was his attorneys who fought vigorously to suppress the video of Laquan McDonald’s murder that apparently led to Emanuel’s epiphany that his cops are monsters. It was Emanuel who continued to operate a black site within the city, where Chicago cops pulled thousands of its black residents off the street and interrogated them without any regard to constitutional rights.
If you’re a decent person, standing against things like evidence suppression and systemic illegal detainment should not require much thought. And if you’re a decent person who also finds himself to be the mayor of a large metropolis, striving to reform those things should not require a Lifetime movie-esque teary revelation inspired by some kid you met on the street.
[image via Getty]
