Mayor Emanuel Calls United Incident "Unacceptable" And "Wrong"
CHICAGO (CBS) -- Mayor Emanuel condemned Monday the manhandling of the United passenger by the city's Aviation Police, but he's declining to say yet what will happen next with the Aviation Police Department.
The mayor's news conference was about a smooth ride for Chicago motorists, after an expected 250 miles of Chicago streets are re-paved this summer.
"In the past 5 years, the city of Chicago has repaved 1,600 miles of roads throughout the city of Chicago," Mayor Emanuel said.
But in his first comments about the incident, the mayor had harsh words for the rough ride that aviation security officers gave Dr. David Dao when he refused to get off an overbooked united flight.
"What happened the other day is totally all-around unacceptable," he said.
Mayor Emanuel said if you watched the video of the passenger being dragged from the United plane, you know it's wrong.
"From the people that were watching it live to the rest of us who saw it on the video, you already knew was wrong and you don't need a series of rules of guidelines to know that was wrong," he said.
Still, in her testimony before the city council last week, Aviation Commissioner Ginger Evans couldn't say what the use of force rules were for aviation officers, also noting, they defied her orders not to call themselves police.
"In a directive in January, we ordered them not to use the word police, to use the word security on their jackets," Evans said.
Mayor Emanuel said the investigation ordered by the commissioner of the Chicago Aviation Department is the right thing to do and he is awaiting her report before making any further moves.
"I want to compliment Ginger - Ginger Evans - for immediately suspending the three employees.
"... You know she's in the middle now of a top-to-bottom review, that in the next two to three weeks should be out. And I don't want to pre-judge that effort."
And there is more fallout from the United incident...
A republican legislator from Lombard, Representative Peter Breen has filed a bill in Springfield that would prevent any government employee from helping remove a peaceful, properly-ticketed passenger from their flight; which is another attempt to prevent a repeat by United or the Chicago employees that assisted the airline.
