Democratic activist Al Sharpton is demanding that Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel resign because of police shootings in Chicago.
Rahm has been facing criticism over his handling of a 2014 shooting by police. The video showed officer Jason Van Dyke firing 16 shots at 17-year-old Laquan McDonald in 2014, but the video wasn’t shown to the public until a court ordered it’s release a year later — well after Rahm’s reelection campaogn.
“He’s gone beyond the point where he can govern with the trust of the people,” Sharpton said about Obama’s former chief of staff on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program. “I think the people have to make that decision, but certainly from where I sit, he should.”
I’ve never seen this kind of detachment [by the mayor] in the years that I’ve been fighting, whether I got along with the mayor or not,” he said.
“This is the height of either insensitivity, lack of intelligence, or arrogance or a reasonable combination of all three,” said Sharpton.
From January 2009 to October 2010, Emanuel served as chief of staff to President Barack Obama, who has many political allies in his adopted home-town of Chicago, including Emanuel and Sharpton. But Emanuel is now facing much criticism for his Chicago mayorship — GQ Magazine even named Emanuel one of the worst people of 2015.
Rahm is currently vacationing in Cuba with his family, while protesters have taken to Chicago’s streets to demand that Emanuel resign.
“They are circulating petitions in Chicago to recall you. The state legislature is going to have to deal with it. And you don’t even come back?” Sharpton said on TV.