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Thursday, March 28, 2024 | Back issues
Courthouse News Service Courthouse News Service

Sanders Attacks Rahm, Police Problems Persist

CHICAGO (CN) - Bernie Sanders aired an ad attacking embattled Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, just as Chicago police seem to have been caught using racial slurs over police radio.

Today, Chicago news website DNAinfo.com obtained a recording of a conversation between police and dispatchers in which a person, possibly a Chicago police officer, is heard saying "typical fuckin' nigger" and possibly "all black lives matter, my ass."

Another person comes on the radio to then say: "Black lives matter, man. Fucking niggers."

In a statement, police spokesman Anthony Guglielmi said: "The statements made are absolutely unacceptable and Superintendent John Escalante has ordered an immediate internal affairs investigation into this incident."

Meanwhile, the Bernie Sanders campaign aired a scathing attack ad on Rahm Emanuel's education policy, which has led to the closure of dozens of Chicago schools. With the Illinois primaries scheduled for tomorrow, it is the rare time a presidential candidate has singled out an incumbent mayor.

In the ad, Troy LaRaviere, a Chicago Public Schools principal, says: "We have endured a corrupt political system, and the chief politician standing in the way of us getting good schools is our mayor."

He continues: "If you have a presidential candidate that supports someone like our mayor, you have a candidate who's not willing to take on the establishment. Bernie Sanders sees that this is not the way it has to be. That is why I support Bernie Sanders."

Emanuel has been in the spotlight since late last year, when officer Jason Van Dyke shot 17-year-old Laquan McDonald 16 times in a public street. Van Dyke entered a not guilty plea on related charges in December.

Soon after, Police Superintendent Gary McCarthy stepped down amid calls for Emanuel's resignation and a stop to Chicago's police brutality epidemic.

However, last week, McCarthy told a Harvard panel that he was "the fall guy" in the McDonald case and was scarcely involved in the investigation of the teen's death.

"At the end of the day, police legitimacy in Chicago took an enormous hit, and people are dying at record numbers right now as a result," McCarthy told the Chicago Tribune.

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