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1
HOUSE RESOLUTION

 
2    WHEREAS, Police in the United States killed approximately
3102 unarmed black people in 2015, a rate of nearly two each
4week; nearly one in three black people killed by police in 2015
5were identified as unarmed; and
 
6    WHEREAS, In 2015, 37% of unarmed people killed by police
7were black despite black people being only 13% of the U.S.
8population; unarmed black people were killed at five times the
9rate of unarmed whites in 2015; and
 
10    WHEREAS, Only 10 of the 102 cases in 2015 in which an
11unarmed black person was killed by police resulted in criminal
12charges against the officer or officers involved, with only two
13convictions; and
 
14    WHEREAS, Police shootings of unarmed individuals are not a
15recent phenomenon; on February 4, 1999, Amadou Diallo, a
1623-year-old immigrant from Guinea, was shot and killed by four
17New York City Police Department officers when they fired a
18combined total of 41 shots, 19 of which struck Diallo; and
 
19    WHEREAS, On August 9, 2014, in Ferguson, Missouri, Michael
20Brown, an 18-year-old black man, was fatally shot by a white
21police officer; the disputed circumstances of the shooting

 

 

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1further inflamed existing tensions in the predominantly black
2city, where protests and civil unrest erupted; the events
3received considerable attention in the U.S. and elsewhere and
4generated a debate about the relationship between law
5enforcement and African Americans; it also created a national
6dialogue about the use of force, concerns over insensitivity to
7the local community, and the militarized response of the police
8to the situation; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Laquan McDonald was killed in Chicago on October
1020, 2014 when he was shot 16 times in 13 seconds by a Chicago
11police officer; video of the shooting shows that McDonald fell
12to the ground after the first shot was fired; the officer
13stopped firing for a moment, then opened fire again when
14McDonald moved; the officer was on the scene for less than 30
15seconds before opening fire and began shooting approximately
16six seconds after exiting his car; another officer stated that
17he did not see the need to use force and none of the at least
18eight other officers on the scene fired their weapons; and
 
19    WHEREAS, On December 26, 2015, Quintonio LeGrier was shot
20six times by police after allegedly swinging a baseball bat at
21the officers when they responded to a 911 call he placed
22regarding his father; the shooting also left, 55-year-old
23Bettie Jones, who lived at the address, fatally wounded in what
24police labeled an accident; and
 

 

 

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1    WHEREAS, Rekia Boyd, a 22-year-old African-American woman,
2was fatally shot on March 21, 2012 in Chicago by an off-duty
3Chicago police detective; he approached a group of four people
4who were walking down an alley and admonished them for talking
5too loudly; the group turned to leave and the officer fired
6multiple shots into the group from inside his car, hitting Boyd
7in the back of the head killing her; the officer claimed that
8he mistook a cell phone for a handgun; and
 
9    WHEREAS, Although not shootings, Eric Garner, Sandra
10Bland, and Freddie Gray all died in circumstances that seemed
11to have been unnecessarily escalated by police; therefore, be
12it
 
13    RESOLVED, BY THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES OF THE
14NINETY-NINTH GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF THE STATE OF ILLINOIS, that we
15urge changes in the manner in which police officers are trained
16when dealing with the public; these changes should include (1)
17de-escalation - talking to and calming down agitated,
18weapon-wielding suspects and suspects who run away and then
19struggle when they are caught; (2) cultural sensitivity -
20police should take into account the perceptions minority groups
21(Black, Latino, Muslim) have of the police and how those
22perceptions may influence their actions; (3) community
23engagement - officers being aware of the character of a

 

 

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1community so that everyone in a particular community is not
2treated like a potential lawbreaker.