The reparations plan will provide substance abuse treatment, counseling and other services to Burge victims and their immediate family members, as well as free tuition at city colleges. The plan also includes a formal City Council apology and a permanent memorial recognizing the victims. The case will be included in eighth and 10th grade history classes in city public schools. In addition, a $5.5 million fund will be created to provide financial reparations to individuals with a credible claim.

Image Jon Burge, a former commander of the Chicago Police Department. Credit... Terrence Antonio James/Chicago Tribune, via Associated Press

Settlements like these are necessary and justified, but they are also a serious drain on Chicago’s precarious finances at a time when the city is closing schools and mental health clinics. According to a 2014 study by the city’s Better Government Association, the government has spent more than $500 million on claims related to police misconduct in the last decade alone.

These losses underscore the failings of a Police Department that cannot seem to shake its lamentable past and, to this day, is poorly trained, poorly managed and ruled by an ingrained culture of hair-trigger violence. Over the last seven years, Chicago police have killed more than 120 people. Mr. Emanuel described the reparations plan as a way to bring a dark chapter of the city’s history to a close. But, even as he spoke, federal and state investigators were combing the city for information about the McDonald shooting.

Last October, a spokesman for the police union said that officers shot the teenager because he refused drop a knife he was carrying. Witnesses have said that he was moving away from the officers and was shot while lying on the ground.

A lawyer for the family who had viewed a police video taken at the scene told the Chicago Sun-Times columnist Mary Mitchell last week that Mr. McDonald was not menacing the officers or running when he was shot and that the officer continued to fire once the young man had fallen. He further asserted that 86 minutes of surveillance video taken by security cameras at a Burger King restaurant near the scene of the shooting had gone missing and that Chicago detectives had visited the restaurant.