US protesters call for changes to policing in Chicago after fatal police shooting
US protesters have rallied in Chicago, calling for changes to the US city's policing after last month’s fatal shooting of a teenage Latino boy.
The protesters demanded changes in how Chicago police serve the city, including reform of state and city laws on policing, removal of police from Chicago public schools and cut to the police budget to make more money available for social services.
"We needed social workers. We needed youth employment. But yet we met time after time with police brutality and repression," a protester said.
A protest organizer said the demonstrators aimed to "cause change" and "start a conversation" about how the city spends money on US police.
They also held a vigil for people who have been killed by the police, including Adam Toledo, a teen Latino boy who was shot last month by a Chicago officer after a foot chase, and Daunte Wright, a Black 20-year-old man who was shot by a white suburban Minneapolis officer.
Activists have organized protests and vigil in Chicago since the April 15 release of video of the deadly police shooting of Toledo.
The police body camera showed Officer Eric Stillman shooting Toledo less than a second after the boy dropped a gun and began turning while raising his hands.
The fatal shooting came amid growing racial anger over police killings of African Americans and members of minority groups in the United States.
Just last week, a US jury found Derek Chauvin, a white former Minneapolis police officer, guilty of murdering African-American George Floyd last year by kneeling on his neck for nine minutes while he was handcuffed and under arrest.
Floyd’s killing by the white police officers brought US racism back into focus and became an emblem of the Black Lives Matter movement. It has, however, not stopped trigger-happy US cops from unleashing terror on hapless minorities, including African Americans and Asian Americans.
Fatal police attacks on people of color in the US have witnessed a disconcerting surge in recent years, which activists have attributed to former president Donald Trump's racist rhetoric.
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